A homeowner association (HOA) is typically a nonprofit corporation within a community of housing. Most HOAs exist in planned multi-unit community projects such as condominiums and townhomes or in newer developments filled with new construction. Membership is mandatory and the association is governed by a board of directors made up of elected community residents once control is passed off from the developer. Practically all incorporated HOAs are subjected to state laws in addition to unique governing restrictive covenants and bylaws. These restrictive covenants and bylaws define community standards so as to protect property values. It’s this intention that is the good of HOAs. The bad? That’s mostly in the eye of the beholder. Unfortunately, most homebuyers never read the governing documents of an HOA representing a community. This has a couple potential negative effects. First, the buyers could unknowingly violate the covenants. An example of this would be if a homeowner installed a wood privacy fence only to get served a notice by the HOA that the wood violates the restriction of only allowing aluminum fencing. This would result in the owner being required to either legally fight the restriction or to remove the violation and re-install the approved fence, costing both time and money.
Source: Shawnee Mission Post
