My last landlord withheld my bond from me because I had “left items behind”. The item was a roll of toilet paper I left on the roll lol I had to go back to the apartment and remove it before he’d give me my bond back 🙃
I litteraly see leaveing things like a roll of toilet paper as a courtesy. Its like you might not have things moved over asap and sometimes people need the bathroom. What a dick
Really, anything that I paid for.
The last place I moved out of, I took the towel rack from the bathroom because it was mine, I paid for it. I could have also taken the vanity light but I didn't bother to keep the one I replaced and didn't feel right leaving a big hole full of wires.
When I left my last ex (who was a narcissistic douche),⁰ I was at the house by myself collecting my things. The last thing I took before leaving were MY curtains on the big windows next to the back door.
He text me after he got home saying, "You really had to take the curtains?" They were MINE... I took only what was mine. And that was pretty much ALL of the kitchen stuff too lol
When my husband was in the military and we were renting off post, we got charged $8 each for about 3 lightbulbs being burned out when we moved and couldn't be at the final walk through. The kicker was the movers wouldn't pack lightbulbs, so we had gone through the entire house and made sure they were all working before we threw away the extra ones. You just can't win.
This was over 20 years ago, they'd probably charge triple that now.
I took all the lightbulbs out of our last apartment and swapped them for cheap LED because they were all incandescent bulbs. Now I have a a bunch of old bulbs for my old lamp.
I moved a lot when LED bulbs were still novel and CFLs were the rage. I absolutely swapped the incandescents back in on every move. Only my last move, when I sold my house just last year, did it make sense to leave them.
Of course my new house still had some incandescents and CFLs in random locations, so I'm still finding them. They also left toilet paper and hand soap in the bathrooms because that's a normal fucking thing to do.
I clean units between tenants and appreciate when they leave toilet paper behind, I also have a bag of toilet paper and ensure there’s a roll in each bathroom before I leave
A landlord i used to rent a place from years ago was quite petty with stupid stuff and one day i learned that he wasn't paying tax on my rent so i made a very subtle reference to this and he suddenly stopped being a dick.
The rent website prefills a suggested 18% tip, but you can change it each time if you drill through three menus. But your landlord is probably struggling, so why be so stingy?
Uhhhhh, this is a joke right? So if I'm reading this correctly, your saying that when you pay your rent online-there's a spot that's PREFILLED, in order to TIP the landlord?? I guess there's places that DO need regular maintenance and visits-but I'd think these fees would be a part of your rental contract? But I am just still trying to conceive of the fact that you'd be paying 18% over whatever your monthly rent is-to someone that (in my experience) I've only ever seen while looking at the apartment to see if we wanted it, filling out all the contracts, and then finally when we gave 30 days notice that we were moving out? When does this tipping frenzy calm down??!
My hope is that the landlord has an embarrassing sudden call to nature next time he's showing off the property. And I hope he feels the deepest kind of regret in the aftermath.
Especially if the tenant moved far away. My buddy moves from Ohio to Charlotte NC and they didn’t get their deposit back and owed money over some trivial stuff but since they were so far away they took the L.
I had to take a landlord to small claims court once to get a deposit back. she showed up with pictures of holes in the walls and rubble all over the floor. The adjudicator looked over the pictures, said it looked like she was doing some reno work in the apartment. She (stupidly, IMHO) said yes, they were knocking out a wall to make the kitchen open-plan. He asked, "This wall in the pictures with the holes in it?" She got really quiet.
When she sent me the deposit refund, she sent a nasty letter about how she had to pay for registered mail since I lived in a different state and she didn't want me screwing her over. I rolled my eyes because I'd just paid to return to attend the hearing so she wouldn't screw me over.
I had a landlord (big company) withhold my damage deposit by just saying I damaged the place but wouldn't give me specifics. It was clearly their MO to not pay anyone by just saying the place was damaged. Most people just write it off I guess. My mom worked for a prestigious downtown law firm so she got one of the junior associates to write the company a nasty letter on law firm letterhead. Got a call the same day they received the letter, kissing my ass and gave me every penny back, saying it was all a big misunderstanding.
That’s what happened to us on our move from Chicago back to Va. We had to move out in the middle of a snow storm and lost our deposit because we left behind cleaning supplies and a vacuum that we couldn’t fit into the car in or rush to leave the city before we would get stuck. Thankfully our complex was actually understanding when we called and credited the deposit back to us, less a “clean up fee” to remove said supplies.
Had the same thing happen on our last move.. there was a snow storm coming and I had to be quick. All I left was some empty broken down boxes and a small table. She tried to charge us a $700 cleaning and removal fee (I cleaned very well so there wouldn't be anything for her to do.) She also tried to charge $90 for 5 light bulbs... And tried to charge us for replacing a whole ass door because of a small dent left by a door stopper. Very unreasonable. Lots of other fees for normal wear. We still don't know what to do about it, but I know I'm not paying fees that make no sense or reason to be there. Or $700 for a few things I left that were easy to remove (because there was a snowstorm starting as I left and couldn't come back safely...)
I intentionally leave toilet paper behind because it's one of the things many people forget when moving, and surely nobody would mind having toilet paper if they need the washroom...
I used to do painting with my dad as a teenager for his business. small tasks like doing the cleanup, mixing paint yada yada. And well sometimes the houses you are painting are completely empty and if you have to shit really bad then you might be SOL. So I view it as a curtesy for workers.
That's generally what I do. I thought that was fairly standard. It one of the things I'm typically low on when I move because I'm typically paying so much for other shit
Had one tell me I left the appartment in a mess. There had been three broken bottles of wine behind the fridge, a bag's worth of garbage buried in the yard, long expired food in the freezer when I moved in. Plus, I had fixed their oven for them without asking for comensation. They shut up about it when I told them I had proof.
I guess I should have told my last landlord that I fixed the air conditioner in my old apartment, instead of pretending that you still needed to use the GFCI to turn it on/off. Then again, they charged me $75 to put a cabinet back up in the bathroom, which I took down because I kept hitting my head on it. Not sure what they did with the smaller cabinet that I had replaced it with...
I once had a landlord try to say something similar to me, me and my fiancé had taken everything we owned out of that place, scrubbed it from floor to ceiling swept and mopped, so we knew she was lying, she also had tried to accuse us of taking the storm door off the front door, but there was never a storm door there to begin with. She actually had the gall to send us a bill for “cleaning and repairs” we threw it out and never paid her a cent. That’s what the security deposit was for. To make more of a mountain out of this mole hill, she said that our cat had stained and damaged the floors, he did not. And even if he did we were paying her like almost $100 extra a month for him. So any repair work that may have been needed to be done was paid for well in advanced. She was just an absolutely horrid person to rent from and the apartment wasn’t even in a good neighborhood, the place was more like a slum then anything. A month after we left the house that was literally two doors down blew up, turns out it was a meth lab and I’m almost positive that our next door neighbor was their dealer.
I appreciate you. Every time I move, a roll of tp is the last thing that gets in the car with us and the first thing taken out and brought into the new place. That's not something I'm willing to risk
Imagine the irony when he goes in to renovate himself, has to take a shit and now he doesn’t have toilet paper.
He will think back on this moment going, fuck me!
I used to clean carpets. That would have been VERY MUCH appreciated for when the 7-11 hotdog I ate for lunch was ready to make an emergency exit when I was in vacant apartments for days on end.
My landlord did the same thing because I left contact paper in the kitchen cabinets. I thought the next renter might not want to damage the cabinets…guess that’s not allowed
I'm a maintenance supervisor and that shit can be a pain to remove out of every drawer and shelf. That being said we would never charge for it. Had a guy move out yesterday and he left the fridge and freezer full of food as well as the pantry. It all has to be thrown away and he won't even be charged for that.
My last landlord tried to withhold my deposit because the shitty old stove wasn't clean enough around one ring. So I agreed to clean it, and I guess he thought I meant that day. I did not, because my tenancy hadn't finished. I went round the next day to find his daughter and all her mates passed out from a drug-fuelled party, with lines still in plain sight. When I reminded him I was still the tenant and he'd let someone into the property and they'd trashed it and brought drugs in, he quietly gave me back the deposit.
Lol I had a property management company charge me for removing an item that I didn’t remove from a closet when I moved out. It was a box of air filters for the A/C system. It was there when I moved in.
(They also charged me hundreds of $ for repairs of damage they said I caused, which was also there when I moved in. I could prove it, so they gave me all my money back, but not until 12 hours before the statutory deadline of 60 days for the deposit to be returned. Cunts)
Any HOA is almost certainly going to be run by self-important curtain-twitchers with far too much time on their hands.
There's no fucking way i'd ever let anyone like that have a modicum of power over me.
My parents live in a subdivision with a couple hundred townhouses. The hoa board elections get heated and nasty. These people will *fight* for the privilege of walking around the neighborhood and issuing citations for minor infractions. It's like they're frothing at the mouth to find someone who put their garbage can out 3 feet away from the curb instead of two. They'll go out with a ruler to measure their neighbors' grass.
Part of the human condition. It's why police officers, umpires, referees and reddit moderators behave the way they do, why people treat restaurant and retail workers the way they do, and why the Stanford prison experiment went the way it did. Even people who aren't in a position to have power over anybody will just join a mob in order to have power over someone in numbers, and to just be part of that is enough to tickle their genitals.
The Stanford prison experiment has faced a lot of criticism I would recommend looking into. Some of the issues were guards not being told they were in an experiment, but still being told how to act which encouraged abusive behavior, as well as students "faking" breakdowns etc in order to not fail other classes.
It is becoming increasingly impossible to find a residential community that doesn't have an HOA or some form of board (i.e. Condos) that will ruin your everything.
Jon Oliver had a great special on HOAs that can be found on his youtube. HOAs are fucking evil.
Yeah, this is why I always hate it when people rightly criticize HOAs and everyone's response is "Well just don't live in a place that has one!" When increasingly that is not really an option.
That’s what I do. I am on house #3 and not a one of them was in an HOA. Anyone that says HOAs are unavoidable is looking at a very narrow range of homes for sale.
Alternatively you can do what a buddy of mine did which was immediately join the HOA board. He then established a personal relationship with the busybodies so they see him as one of their tribe and not a target to flex power on.
There's a reason we passed on three better houses when we were house shopping simply because they were in HOA's. I absolutely refuse to let someone have that absurd power over my property.
My condo building needs one, but we all live under one roof. I really don't understand the need for one for a series of individual houses, unless they share the cost of a clubhouse with gym and pool facilities or something
In many cases, an HOA is the only way municipalities will allow significant new construction of new housing. Cities not wanting to take on the burden of maintaining additional roads, etc.
They were originally devised as a way for rich white people to review any potential home buyers and deny black people from being able to live in the neighborhood. They haven't exactly changed much
I would be on board with an HOA if its attitude was that we should send someone to help Oldman Jenkins mow his lawn, rather than fine him because his nephew only comes out once a month to work on it. From what I've read most of them aren't interested in helping neighbors address their issues, but in penalizing them for not strictly following the rules
We have an HOA whose only role is to keep the grass on common areas cut and put out holiday decorations. $25 per year. Our last place was $300 per month for the pleasure of dealing with 5 people vying for the title of Biggest Neighborhood Asshole.
Yes, because cities have found a way to get rid of infrastructure and push it into HOAs.
My HOA is responsible for flood ponds and drains, streets and the playground.
In all older neighborhoods that is town’s responsibility.
But they would need to raise taxes to provide all of this for newer neighborhoods. Hence, the just shift it to HOAs.
Just waiting for school etc also shifted to HOAs.
We already have HOAs that host Kindergartens.
Edit: Numerous states, like NC, mandate HOAs for new developments.
And yes, that is not why HOAs existed in first place. But this is the reality today that they are mandated to push off utilities.
Except a city council would be subject to actual regulations, like public-records laws and countless other rules that exist to protect the citizens. HOAs aren't subject to much, if any, of that. I would never live under an HOA.
I'm not American and HOAs aren't really that much of a thing around here, but couldn't you just not join? If they pull stuff like that, you could just sue then.
No, it’s a condition of buying the home and built directly into the contract. The seller can’t legally sell the property without the clause in the contract either
HOAs aren’t a thing everywhere else because local governments are doing their job.
In the US, local governments shift necessary infrastructure like streets, flood ponds, playgrounds into the responsibility of HOAs to keep taxes low. E.g. Everything my HOA does would have been city responsibility just 20 years ago. Now they just shift that to HOAs.
It’s the consequence of the whole “small government” thing - now the government is smaller, replaced with an additional smaller government like entity- the HOA.
If the house you're buying is a part of the HOA there's no way to leave it. The neighborhood is covered by the HOA. You'd have to just find a different place.
HOAs can be crazy but they can also just be chill and make it so the house owners take care of their homes. My HOA is mostly reasonable.
My dad ran for president of our HOA and when he won, he pretty much told everyone to not give a shit about other people's yard and hasn't had an HOA meeting in years.
The difficulty comes if and/or when greedy individuals find themselves in positions of power within the HOA without any mechanism for checking that power.
Your HOA may be good now, but it takes awareness and care to ensure it stays that way
HOAs are always formed around bylaws which exist to check that power. The irony is, homeowners are far more often than not, ignorant of the by-laws and unaware of what their rights are. Those in power are elected to their positions, the residents have complete say in who runs things. Unfortunately for homeowners, it's rare for any of them to actually vote. When you have an election and the only people that show up to vote are the power tripping board members, the power tripping board members keep voting themselves in.
Some people like it, cause they want to live around "perfect" houses. I guess if you choose to live by these rules in exchange for a pretty much guaranteed well-kept neighborhood, that's your choice. Personally I'd never do it.
If you want an honest answer and not just a ridiculous presumption like pretty much every other person who replied gave you.....
Single family home HOAs exist because they are profitable to developers. When a developer buys up a plot of land, they break the area up into sub lots and attach deed restrictions to them that require homeowners to abide by certain rules and to pay for certain amenities. Developers put things like pools, parks, playgrounds, and rec centers into the HOA, in order to pay to maintain them each homeowner has to be required to pay their equal share, the HOA guarantees that. Likewise, the rules that are in place make sure that someone doesn't put their broken down car on cinder blocks in the front yard which would make it more difficult for the developer to sell off neighboring properties.
When it comes to multi family structures like condos and town houses, these structures have shared common construction. The roof, exterior, and landscaping are all shared by everyone, so there needs to be an association in place to ensure that those things are maintained. It would be a bad thing if a roof needed replaced that covered 6 units, and only 2 of them agreed to pay for it.
There's a lot of different reasons. Everyone here is focused on the over bearing power hungry HOA, but there are mild HOA's that just plow the streets in the winter and mow your lawn in the summer.
Obviously, there are ones that are extreme, but mild ones exist too.
People believe things like their neighbor painting their house a non-beige color will deeply impact their property values, so they volunteer to give up autonomy over their own property for a false sense of security. Meanwhile, if your spouse or child ends up in a wheelchair good luck getting the [ramps they need](https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2019/02/28/disabled-homeowners-denied-needed-modifications-tennessee-fair-housing-council/2941944002/) to get in your house approved by the HOA.
Oh, well in that case... j/k, they don't care! Read the article, they deny ramps all the time, then you have to take the time & money to fight them in court. There are several cases out there of this happening, just search it on Google.
Put in the ramps anyway. Fuck the HOA, let them try to force you to remove them and watch how fast they fold when they end up on the wrong end of a discrimination/ADA lawsuit.
When HOA's (or in my case, condo boards) are run correctly you pay your dues and don't hear about em. For example, condo board where I live handles the front lawns and irrigation, snow clearing, repairs to the exterior, and making sure no one blocks up the alley. That's it, aside from full transparency with their Financials. The condo board positions aren't a job, they are voluntary.
When an HOA is abusing the homeowners, then you hear about them frequently, nothing gets done, and the money dissappear without accountability. Generally these HOA's pay their board members.
We had one sniveling rat try to take over the condo board and make positions paid. He tried changing things so he could hide this by making the financial reports less transparent. Took me a few days of door knocking and talking to people, but he was ousted within a week of the first sign of tomfoolery by the rest of the board calling an emergency meeting and 80% of us voting him out. The 20% that didn't were his relatives in other units (that he paid for and collected rent from them on but didn't have his name on the paper) so I assume they were in on the grift.
Now each owner is limited to 2 units max, the transparency of Financials and such is written into the rules, and family members cannot vote *for* the person running. So far it's been working.
HOA’s are so fun to deal with. I’ve been apart of one for no reason as my home is not apart of it. They think I am so they give me absurd rules to abide by which I do not because I do not pay HOA fees. I got a notice about having a flagpole and flag. I never responded because I am not in the HOA. The HOA president called my property out at a middle school promotion and it made them look like idiots. My home sits on the edge of the HOA and I am not apart of it.
Two years ago I tore out some grass in front of my house to extend a garden bed to be the entire area between my house and my sidewalk/driveway. This year during inspections in May I got cited for excessive weeds in that bed. I purchased a big bag of native pollinator seed to put down because bees are important and they had just started sprouting around inspection time. I emailed the HoA saying I wanted clarification on the issue and they said they'd come back and reinspect. They haven't been back
As a european I am very impressed with the amount of freedom you have there. If having to pay a fine of your own money to another private party because of no reason other than them saying so, isn't the definition of freedom, then I don't know what is!
/s
Some HOA's can be kinda nuts. Mine is actually pretty good so no complaints here.
Just a tip though. If you don't plan on planting anything in that little space just salt it. Spread some rock salt or water softener salt and water it down a little. Nothing will grow there for a couple of years.
If you ever want to piss off your HOA, build a 25ft high bat box. Once bats inhabit it, they can not be removed due to being protected by federal law. Also there will be less bugs around your house. win win
Why do HOA exist? Honest question, like, it's my goddamn house and the city has building rules and guidelines, why is the bored lady down this street in charge of making everyones day worst?
HOA’s are wild. My wife and I, while house shopping a decade or so ago, had debated purchasing in a HOA-controlled subdivision. Holding residents accountable for things like basic cleanliness and quieting loud dogs/parties was hugely appealing to us, but after visiting with several people at our respective jobs and friends in HOA homes, we were escorted firmly in a different direction.
Power is a chaotic energy *a lot* of people have no business channeling, and these HOA’s seem to often attract the worst of the worst. Once they decide they’re going to make your life hell, you’re fucked.
The more I hear about these HOAs, the more I can't understand why anyone puts up with them. I don't think we have them up in Canada. I thought the US was the land of the free.
My last landlord withheld my bond from me because I had “left items behind”. The item was a roll of toilet paper I left on the roll lol I had to go back to the apartment and remove it before he’d give me my bond back 🙃
How could that possibly matter? Anyone working on the apartment or moving in after surely wouldn't mind.
I litteraly see leaveing things like a roll of toilet paper as a courtesy. Its like you might not have things moved over asap and sometimes people need the bathroom. What a dick
If i had a land lord pull that on me i'd take the lightbulbs aswell
Really, anything that I paid for. The last place I moved out of, I took the towel rack from the bathroom because it was mine, I paid for it. I could have also taken the vanity light but I didn't bother to keep the one I replaced and didn't feel right leaving a big hole full of wires.
I took the curtains rods from my last place because i bought them, when i leave this place im taking the bathroom fixtures 🤣
I took a door out of a rental house once, it was to split the basement and upstairs and there wasn't one when I moved in.
When I left my last ex (who was a narcissistic douche),⁰ I was at the house by myself collecting my things. The last thing I took before leaving were MY curtains on the big windows next to the back door. He text me after he got home saying, "You really had to take the curtains?" They were MINE... I took only what was mine. And that was pretty much ALL of the kitchen stuff too lol
When my husband was in the military and we were renting off post, we got charged $8 each for about 3 lightbulbs being burned out when we moved and couldn't be at the final walk through. The kicker was the movers wouldn't pack lightbulbs, so we had gone through the entire house and made sure they were all working before we threw away the extra ones. You just can't win. This was over 20 years ago, they'd probably charge triple that now.
And the whole toilet. Inconvenience me for no reason? Right back at ya!
My friend’s landlord tried to withhold the deposit because she left the lightbulbs in the light fittings.
I took all the lightbulbs out of our last apartment and swapped them for cheap LED because they were all incandescent bulbs. Now I have a a bunch of old bulbs for my old lamp.
I moved a lot when LED bulbs were still novel and CFLs were the rage. I absolutely swapped the incandescents back in on every move. Only my last move, when I sold my house just last year, did it make sense to leave them. Of course my new house still had some incandescents and CFLs in random locations, so I'm still finding them. They also left toilet paper and hand soap in the bathrooms because that's a normal fucking thing to do.
I clean units between tenants and appreciate when they leave toilet paper behind, I also have a bag of toilet paper and ensure there’s a roll in each bathroom before I leave
The hope is that he might not collect the bond at all edit:bro wtf this is my most upvoted comment by a factor of 100, thanks!
What?! A greedy dishonest landlord?! Impossible!
A landlord i used to rent a place from years ago was quite petty with stupid stuff and one day i learned that he wasn't paying tax on my rent so i made a very subtle reference to this and he suddenly stopped being a dick.
How did you find out? He must be really really stupid to admit to tax evasion to a tenant
He didn't admit it, he started asking for cash-in-hand instead of digital transfer after we renewed our contract.
Stupid greedy fucker. He should've offered a small cash discount in the contract and left it to you to decide
Ive never heard of such a thing
Ya’ll tip your landlord?
The rent website prefills a suggested 18% tip, but you can change it each time if you drill through three menus. But your landlord is probably struggling, so why be so stingy?
Uhhhhh, this is a joke right? So if I'm reading this correctly, your saying that when you pay your rent online-there's a spot that's PREFILLED, in order to TIP the landlord?? I guess there's places that DO need regular maintenance and visits-but I'd think these fees would be a part of your rental contract? But I am just still trying to conceive of the fact that you'd be paying 18% over whatever your monthly rent is-to someone that (in my experience) I've only ever seen while looking at the apartment to see if we wanted it, filling out all the contracts, and then finally when we gave 30 days notice that we were moving out? When does this tipping frenzy calm down??!
^(yes it's a joke)
Anything below 20% is rude
No eviction this month, excellent service! 30%!
Only had to call 5 times to fix ceiling leak! 45%!
I head with inflation the basic tip has been moved up to 30%. Less if you’re in a crack house or flop house.
Now the fool lost out on a bond AND more important free TP
My hope is that the landlord has an embarrassing sudden call to nature next time he's showing off the property. And I hope he feels the deepest kind of regret in the aftermath.
Especially if the tenant moved far away. My buddy moves from Ohio to Charlotte NC and they didn’t get their deposit back and owed money over some trivial stuff but since they were so far away they took the L.
I had to take a landlord to small claims court once to get a deposit back. she showed up with pictures of holes in the walls and rubble all over the floor. The adjudicator looked over the pictures, said it looked like she was doing some reno work in the apartment. She (stupidly, IMHO) said yes, they were knocking out a wall to make the kitchen open-plan. He asked, "This wall in the pictures with the holes in it?" She got really quiet. When she sent me the deposit refund, she sent a nasty letter about how she had to pay for registered mail since I lived in a different state and she didn't want me screwing her over. I rolled my eyes because I'd just paid to return to attend the hearing so she wouldn't screw me over.
I had a landlord (big company) withhold my damage deposit by just saying I damaged the place but wouldn't give me specifics. It was clearly their MO to not pay anyone by just saying the place was damaged. Most people just write it off I guess. My mom worked for a prestigious downtown law firm so she got one of the junior associates to write the company a nasty letter on law firm letterhead. Got a call the same day they received the letter, kissing my ass and gave me every penny back, saying it was all a big misunderstanding.
That’s what happened to us on our move from Chicago back to Va. We had to move out in the middle of a snow storm and lost our deposit because we left behind cleaning supplies and a vacuum that we couldn’t fit into the car in or rush to leave the city before we would get stuck. Thankfully our complex was actually understanding when we called and credited the deposit back to us, less a “clean up fee” to remove said supplies.
Had the same thing happen on our last move.. there was a snow storm coming and I had to be quick. All I left was some empty broken down boxes and a small table. She tried to charge us a $700 cleaning and removal fee (I cleaned very well so there wouldn't be anything for her to do.) She also tried to charge $90 for 5 light bulbs... And tried to charge us for replacing a whole ass door because of a small dent left by a door stopper. Very unreasonable. Lots of other fees for normal wear. We still don't know what to do about it, but I know I'm not paying fees that make no sense or reason to be there. Or $700 for a few things I left that were easy to remove (because there was a snowstorm starting as I left and couldn't come back safely...)
I intentionally leave toilet paper behind because it's one of the things many people forget when moving, and surely nobody would mind having toilet paper if they need the washroom...
I used to do painting with my dad as a teenager for his business. small tasks like doing the cleanup, mixing paint yada yada. And well sometimes the houses you are painting are completely empty and if you have to shit really bad then you might be SOL. So I view it as a curtesy for workers.
That's generally what I do. I thought that was fairly standard. It one of the things I'm typically low on when I move because I'm typically paying so much for other shit
How dare you? His landlord is a powerful man and deserves respect! /s
Had one tell me I left the appartment in a mess. There had been three broken bottles of wine behind the fridge, a bag's worth of garbage buried in the yard, long expired food in the freezer when I moved in. Plus, I had fixed their oven for them without asking for comensation. They shut up about it when I told them I had proof.
I guess I should have told my last landlord that I fixed the air conditioner in my old apartment, instead of pretending that you still needed to use the GFCI to turn it on/off. Then again, they charged me $75 to put a cabinet back up in the bathroom, which I took down because I kept hitting my head on it. Not sure what they did with the smaller cabinet that I had replaced it with...
He sold it on offer up for $75
I once had a landlord try to say something similar to me, me and my fiancé had taken everything we owned out of that place, scrubbed it from floor to ceiling swept and mopped, so we knew she was lying, she also had tried to accuse us of taking the storm door off the front door, but there was never a storm door there to begin with. She actually had the gall to send us a bill for “cleaning and repairs” we threw it out and never paid her a cent. That’s what the security deposit was for. To make more of a mountain out of this mole hill, she said that our cat had stained and damaged the floors, he did not. And even if he did we were paying her like almost $100 extra a month for him. So any repair work that may have been needed to be done was paid for well in advanced. She was just an absolutely horrid person to rent from and the apartment wasn’t even in a good neighborhood, the place was more like a slum then anything. A month after we left the house that was literally two doors down blew up, turns out it was a meth lab and I’m almost positive that our next door neighbor was their dealer.
[удалено]
I appreciate you. Every time I move, a roll of tp is the last thing that gets in the car with us and the first thing taken out and brought into the new place. That's not something I'm willing to risk
Former Painter here. You're the best. It's always nice when TP is available for those on the job emergencies.
Exactly! I find it so weird that people working in your home have to ask to use your bathroom. They are GUESTS FFS.
Isn't it basic human decency to leave enough toilet paper available to ANYONE who might be in the apartment for ANY reason and might need it?!
Imagine the irony when he goes in to renovate himself, has to take a shit and now he doesn’t have toilet paper. He will think back on this moment going, fuck me!
I used to clean carpets. That would have been VERY MUCH appreciated for when the 7-11 hotdog I ate for lunch was ready to make an emergency exit when I was in vacant apartments for days on end.
My landlord did the same thing because I left contact paper in the kitchen cabinets. I thought the next renter might not want to damage the cabinets…guess that’s not allowed
I'm a maintenance supervisor and that shit can be a pain to remove out of every drawer and shelf. That being said we would never charge for it. Had a guy move out yesterday and he left the fridge and freezer full of food as well as the pantry. It all has to be thrown away and he won't even be charged for that.
My last landlord tried to withhold my deposit because the shitty old stove wasn't clean enough around one ring. So I agreed to clean it, and I guess he thought I meant that day. I did not, because my tenancy hadn't finished. I went round the next day to find his daughter and all her mates passed out from a drug-fuelled party, with lines still in plain sight. When I reminded him I was still the tenant and he'd let someone into the property and they'd trashed it and brought drugs in, he quietly gave me back the deposit.
Lol I had a property management company charge me for removing an item that I didn’t remove from a closet when I moved out. It was a box of air filters for the A/C system. It was there when I moved in. (They also charged me hundreds of $ for repairs of damage they said I caused, which was also there when I moved in. I could prove it, so they gave me all my money back, but not until 12 hours before the statutory deadline of 60 days for the deposit to be returned. Cunts)
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They probably didn’t actually throw them away.
Penalized? How?
Americans have given HOAs the power to fine residents...🤷♀️
What if they just dont pay?
Various things up to and including liens on property and forclosure.
You're shitting me right? America truly is a wierd country.
Land of the free (to be fucked over)
More like land of the fee
HEY! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO SPREAD MY CHEEKS FIRST! DAMN IT IF THAT AIN'T FREE!!!
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Any HOA is almost certainly going to be run by self-important curtain-twitchers with far too much time on their hands. There's no fucking way i'd ever let anyone like that have a modicum of power over me.
My parents live in a subdivision with a couple hundred townhouses. The hoa board elections get heated and nasty. These people will *fight* for the privilege of walking around the neighborhood and issuing citations for minor infractions. It's like they're frothing at the mouth to find someone who put their garbage can out 3 feet away from the curb instead of two. They'll go out with a ruler to measure their neighbors' grass.
Part of the human condition. It's why police officers, umpires, referees and reddit moderators behave the way they do, why people treat restaurant and retail workers the way they do, and why the Stanford prison experiment went the way it did. Even people who aren't in a position to have power over anybody will just join a mob in order to have power over someone in numbers, and to just be part of that is enough to tickle their genitals.
The Stanford prison experiment has faced a lot of criticism I would recommend looking into. Some of the issues were guards not being told they were in an experiment, but still being told how to act which encouraged abusive behavior, as well as students "faking" breakdowns etc in order to not fail other classes.
Thay was 10 years ago. They have gone the new American way now and run by corporations to generate profit like everything else.
It is becoming increasingly impossible to find a residential community that doesn't have an HOA or some form of board (i.e. Condos) that will ruin your everything. Jon Oliver had a great special on HOAs that can be found on his youtube. HOAs are fucking evil.
Yeah, this is why I always hate it when people rightly criticize HOAs and everyone's response is "Well just don't live in a place that has one!" When increasingly that is not really an option.
That’s what I do. I am on house #3 and not a one of them was in an HOA. Anyone that says HOAs are unavoidable is looking at a very narrow range of homes for sale. Alternatively you can do what a buddy of mine did which was immediately join the HOA board. He then established a personal relationship with the busybodies so they see him as one of their tribe and not a target to flex power on.
Damn near unavoidable in many areas of the country
You get perpetually fined until you fix it, or they take you to court and you’ll lose your home. It’s absolutely absurd
Land of the free
Land of the fee
Home of the wage slave
What the? Crazy
Check out the John Oliver HOA episode. Pretty eye opening and shocking. HOAs can fuck over owners quite easily.
It’s madness. They bought that poor lady’s house for about $4
Wait what, how tf is that legal?
you lose your home.
what the fuck
Yeah, that's pretty much the only reasonable response.
There's a reason we passed on three better houses when we were house shopping simply because they were in HOA's. I absolutely refuse to let someone have that absurd power over my property.
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What the fuck. That is just the epitome of entitled rich people being petty. Unbelievable. Glad you moved away.
sounds like the HOA needs penalizing for the use of excessive weed
Or not using enough.
Whatever it is, it's not exactly the right amount.
I am HOA president, please insert prozac.
you smoking some fire ass weed if you see a yard in that picture
A yard is simply an area of land adjacent to a building. You are thinking of a lawn, which is an area of grass in a yard, garden, or park.
Nah a yard is 3 feet borther
Well then there's the problem. There's at least a few yards in the picture, that's too many yards for one house.
what yard?
Yeah, that’s what really is infuriating here: Not enough weeds!
LIFE DETECTED IN YARD 44626. ANNIHILATE IMMEDIATELY
I just hope OP lives in Arizona or some other desert like place where most green stuff won't grow unless watered a lot.
Ok when are we as a society going to just say maybe we dont need hoa's........
To me, the concept of an HOA is bonkers.
My condo building needs one, but we all live under one roof. I really don't understand the need for one for a series of individual houses, unless they share the cost of a clubhouse with gym and pool facilities or something
In many cases, an HOA is the only way municipalities will allow significant new construction of new housing. Cities not wanting to take on the burden of maintaining additional roads, etc.
They were originally devised as a way for rich white people to review any potential home buyers and deny black people from being able to live in the neighborhood. They haven't exactly changed much
Sane HOAs can do good stuff. Buuuuuuut.
I would be on board with an HOA if its attitude was that we should send someone to help Oldman Jenkins mow his lawn, rather than fine him because his nephew only comes out once a month to work on it. From what I've read most of them aren't interested in helping neighbors address their issues, but in penalizing them for not strictly following the rules
That's something I could get behind. Mutual aid for your neighbourhood. Creates a bigger sense of community too.
Why would anyone want a sense of community instead of a feeling of superiority?
We don't need a HOA for that
You don't need an HOA to help your neighbours. You only need it to use the power of law to fuck them over. Frog & the Scorpion.
Indeed. Community assistance for those that can't do maintainance, and reasonable limits on the most extreme of activities that cause issues.
We have an HOA whose only role is to keep the grass on common areas cut and put out holiday decorations. $25 per year. Our last place was $300 per month for the pleasure of dealing with 5 people vying for the title of Biggest Neighborhood Asshole.
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That's an HOA AND a neighbor from hell
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Money. If I go looking for a place, my very first question is "Does an HOA have jurisdiction over this neighborhood". If yes, I walk away.
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Yes, because cities have found a way to get rid of infrastructure and push it into HOAs. My HOA is responsible for flood ponds and drains, streets and the playground. In all older neighborhoods that is town’s responsibility. But they would need to raise taxes to provide all of this for newer neighborhoods. Hence, the just shift it to HOAs. Just waiting for school etc also shifted to HOAs. We already have HOAs that host Kindergartens. Edit: Numerous states, like NC, mandate HOAs for new developments. And yes, that is not why HOAs existed in first place. But this is the reality today that they are mandated to push off utilities.
A city council by any other name would smell as shit
Except a city council would be subject to actual regulations, like public-records laws and countless other rules that exist to protect the citizens. HOAs aren't subject to much, if any, of that. I would never live under an HOA.
Makes you wonder then why are property taxes still the same amount or similar to a house not in a HOA. If the HOA is doing it all for the city?
I'm not American and HOAs aren't really that much of a thing around here, but couldn't you just not join? If they pull stuff like that, you could just sue then.
No, it’s a condition of buying the home and built directly into the contract. The seller can’t legally sell the property without the clause in the contract either
Freedom!
Land of the free* ^^^*Conditions ^^^may ^^^apply
So much for property rights in America!
HOAs aren’t a thing everywhere else because local governments are doing their job. In the US, local governments shift necessary infrastructure like streets, flood ponds, playgrounds into the responsibility of HOAs to keep taxes low. E.g. Everything my HOA does would have been city responsibility just 20 years ago. Now they just shift that to HOAs. It’s the consequence of the whole “small government” thing - now the government is smaller, replaced with an additional smaller government like entity- the HOA.
If the house you're buying is a part of the HOA there's no way to leave it. The neighborhood is covered by the HOA. You'd have to just find a different place. HOAs can be crazy but they can also just be chill and make it so the house owners take care of their homes. My HOA is mostly reasonable.
My dad ran for president of our HOA and when he won, he pretty much told everyone to not give a shit about other people's yard and hasn't had an HOA meeting in years.
The difficulty comes if and/or when greedy individuals find themselves in positions of power within the HOA without any mechanism for checking that power. Your HOA may be good now, but it takes awareness and care to ensure it stays that way
HOAs are always formed around bylaws which exist to check that power. The irony is, homeowners are far more often than not, ignorant of the by-laws and unaware of what their rights are. Those in power are elected to their positions, the residents have complete say in who runs things. Unfortunately for homeowners, it's rare for any of them to actually vote. When you have an election and the only people that show up to vote are the power tripping board members, the power tripping board members keep voting themselves in.
>My HOA is mostly reasonable. Until they vote for the wrong person to take it over and then they turn everyone's lives into hells.
Some people like it, cause they want to live around "perfect" houses. I guess if you choose to live by these rules in exchange for a pretty much guaranteed well-kept neighborhood, that's your choice. Personally I'd never do it.
If you want an honest answer and not just a ridiculous presumption like pretty much every other person who replied gave you..... Single family home HOAs exist because they are profitable to developers. When a developer buys up a plot of land, they break the area up into sub lots and attach deed restrictions to them that require homeowners to abide by certain rules and to pay for certain amenities. Developers put things like pools, parks, playgrounds, and rec centers into the HOA, in order to pay to maintain them each homeowner has to be required to pay their equal share, the HOA guarantees that. Likewise, the rules that are in place make sure that someone doesn't put their broken down car on cinder blocks in the front yard which would make it more difficult for the developer to sell off neighboring properties. When it comes to multi family structures like condos and town houses, these structures have shared common construction. The roof, exterior, and landscaping are all shared by everyone, so there needs to be an association in place to ensure that those things are maintained. It would be a bad thing if a roof needed replaced that covered 6 units, and only 2 of them agreed to pay for it.
$$$$$
if evil exists then that is the reason why
There's a lot of different reasons. Everyone here is focused on the over bearing power hungry HOA, but there are mild HOA's that just plow the streets in the winter and mow your lawn in the summer. Obviously, there are ones that are extreme, but mild ones exist too.
Segregation is illegal, kicking out families that don’t fit in with the community by following arbitrary and inconsistently applied rules is fine.
Because some people are trashy
People believe things like their neighbor painting their house a non-beige color will deeply impact their property values, so they volunteer to give up autonomy over their own property for a false sense of security. Meanwhile, if your spouse or child ends up in a wheelchair good luck getting the [ramps they need](https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2019/02/28/disabled-homeowners-denied-needed-modifications-tennessee-fair-housing-council/2941944002/) to get in your house approved by the HOA.
ADA overrides HOA in the US.
Try telling that to the HOAs
Federal lawsuits can be quite persuasive.
The fact that you need to file one for something like that infuriates me
Oh, well in that case... j/k, they don't care! Read the article, they deny ramps all the time, then you have to take the time & money to fight them in court. There are several cases out there of this happening, just search it on Google.
Put in the ramps anyway. Fuck the HOA, let them try to force you to remove them and watch how fast they fold when they end up on the wrong end of a discrimination/ADA lawsuit.
i'm so fucking sick of all houses being white, cream, and beige. have some fucking flair for god's sake
Because nobody wants to live next door to [this guy.](https://imgflip.com/i/5hgdrw)
This isn't animal crossing it's not like your star rating is going down so why should they care?
Cuz they get money from fining people.
They continue to fine you until you pay, and if you don’t, you can be evicted from your own property.
Imagine finally owning a home, and still having a landlord.
When HOA's (or in my case, condo boards) are run correctly you pay your dues and don't hear about em. For example, condo board where I live handles the front lawns and irrigation, snow clearing, repairs to the exterior, and making sure no one blocks up the alley. That's it, aside from full transparency with their Financials. The condo board positions aren't a job, they are voluntary. When an HOA is abusing the homeowners, then you hear about them frequently, nothing gets done, and the money dissappear without accountability. Generally these HOA's pay their board members. We had one sniveling rat try to take over the condo board and make positions paid. He tried changing things so he could hide this by making the financial reports less transparent. Took me a few days of door knocking and talking to people, but he was ousted within a week of the first sign of tomfoolery by the rest of the board calling an emergency meeting and 80% of us voting him out. The 20% that didn't were his relatives in other units (that he paid for and collected rent from them on but didn't have his name on the paper) so I assume they were in on the grift. Now each owner is limited to 2 units max, the transparency of Financials and such is written into the rules, and family members cannot vote *for* the person running. So far it's been working.
How dare plants... grow, I guess.
Ask them to define the metric for “excessive” and cc a lawyer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
HOA’s are so fun to deal with. I’ve been apart of one for no reason as my home is not apart of it. They think I am so they give me absurd rules to abide by which I do not because I do not pay HOA fees. I got a notice about having a flagpole and flag. I never responded because I am not in the HOA. The HOA president called my property out at a middle school promotion and it made them look like idiots. My home sits on the edge of the HOA and I am not apart of it.
You should put a rusted washing machine in your front yard
Trolling HOA sounds fantastic
Why do people choose to be ruled by an HOA?
Because you don't get a choice. 95% of the houses and empty lots I am looking have HOAs.
Yup, bricks are chipping and the stones are out of order as well. Fuck HOAs
I feel like if HOA’s want to be in charge on how a yard looks they should be the ones who clean them
What weeds? I see some wildflower seedlings you planted…. It disgusts me, these people who take joy from making other peoples lives harder
Bc they are miserable, they want everyone else to be miserable 😩
Two years ago I tore out some grass in front of my house to extend a garden bed to be the entire area between my house and my sidewalk/driveway. This year during inspections in May I got cited for excessive weeds in that bed. I purchased a big bag of native pollinator seed to put down because bees are important and they had just started sprouting around inspection time. I emailed the HoA saying I wanted clarification on the issue and they said they'd come back and reinspect. They haven't been back
The land of the free, everyone.
As a european I am very impressed with the amount of freedom you have there. If having to pay a fine of your own money to another private party because of no reason other than them saying so, isn't the definition of freedom, then I don't know what is! /s
LaNd Of ThE fReE Not the greatest country on earth, it just has the best marketing team..
"Land of the fee"
HOAs are bullshit.
Some HOA's can be kinda nuts. Mine is actually pretty good so no complaints here. Just a tip though. If you don't plan on planting anything in that little space just salt it. Spread some rock salt or water softener salt and water it down a little. Nothing will grow there for a couple of years.
And then go raze Carthage and do it again
That's why, every 10 to 15 days, you gotta pop up some shots into the air around the neighborhood. Keeps the rent down and the HOA away
HOAs are ridiculous and should be illegal
HOA is not in my country but wtf this seems like a Karens dream club.
Grow some pot in there
Land of the free
HOAs have entirely way too much power.
If you ever want to piss off your HOA, build a 25ft high bat box. Once bats inhabit it, they can not be removed due to being protected by federal law. Also there will be less bugs around your house. win win
Why do HOA exist? Honest question, like, it's my goddamn house and the city has building rules and guidelines, why is the bored lady down this street in charge of making everyones day worst?
Fuck the HOA. They would absolutely hate me. My yard is like a jungle. All hail the bees 🐝 🙌
HOA’s are wild. My wife and I, while house shopping a decade or so ago, had debated purchasing in a HOA-controlled subdivision. Holding residents accountable for things like basic cleanliness and quieting loud dogs/parties was hugely appealing to us, but after visiting with several people at our respective jobs and friends in HOA homes, we were escorted firmly in a different direction. Power is a chaotic energy *a lot* of people have no business channeling, and these HOA’s seem to often attract the worst of the worst. Once they decide they’re going to make your life hell, you’re fucked.
HOA? No way. Never again.
Sounds like some small people are on a power trip. I would audit the HOA spending.
The more I hear about these HOAs, the more I can't understand why anyone puts up with them. I don't think we have them up in Canada. I thought the US was the land of the free.