Leaders of Florida’s largest homeowners association charged in $2 million fraud scheme

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article268642592.html

Thankfully HOAs are few and far between in my neck of the woods and the couple that do exist are small and relatively weak.

But unfortunately they tend to dominate in urban and suburban areas where almost all subdivisional development is under an HOA.

And in Florida and other States, the laws are deliberately written to give HOAs very dictatorial power and virtually no oversight.

The people in the OP link got caught. But I assure you this is likely going on in a large portion of HOAs and the opaqueness of HOA finance makes it likely that many will get away with it.

HOAs are quasi governmental corporations. They should be treated as governments in that regard and subject to full government in the sunshine and disclosure laws. They should be required to keep their records fully online and be subject to a public audit procedures. It should be made possible and easy to recall abusive directors.

One of my sister’s friends in Florida recently got caught up in abusive condominium association bull ■■■■■ The association sends out parking stickers each year. One of the directors, who has a history of being an intrusive, abusive ass, went out in the early morning hours the day the new stickers were supposed to go into effect, looking for people who may not have attached their stickers yet. She got four, including my sister’s friends husband. She had all four vehicles towed. It cost over $200.00 to get his vehicle out of the yard.

After several very nearly violent and threatening meetings, they were able to boot the lady and a couple of others off the board and forced the board to pick up part of the cost of the impounding for the people that got towed under threat of legal action, given that the towing was done in extremely bad faith.

The laws need to change on HOA and condominium associations. There has to be financial accountability and personal accountability by directors for abusive actions.

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I live in a large unincorporated town (almost 30k homes) with hundreds of HOAs. When we were buying our place our realtor knew we were adamant about not being in an HOA, and after being here 2 years and hearing the horror stories of some of our neighbors, we made the right choice. It appears the HOA board members are those who are looking for some kind of power and notoriety and the infighting is astounding.

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An HOA engaged in fraud!? :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

I normally don’t support the death penalty, but for this…

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I never understood why anyone would pay money to some organization just to be told how their property should be maintained.

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I will NEVER buy a home that requires being a part of a HOA.

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I think it’s the Closed community. It’s a thing. I don’t agree with it.

Unfortunately HOAs are spreading to the UK.

They are all ran by busybodies who are drunk on power. I cannot recall any of my friends who have a HOA having a good thing to say about them.

One of the first things I make clear when buying property for my personal use.

Absolutely NO HOAs.

While there are benevolent HOAs that exist, unfortunately the general situation is that the biggest busybodies and power drunk freaks tend to end up in leadership positions and of course, cliques develop that end up with some property owners getting favorable treatment and others getting the shaft.

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And that’s a problem in the area where I live. It’s getting very hard to find a non HOA home in the new developments being built. In my town, of the 30k or so dwellings less than 10% are without an HOA. Fees are over $600 per month, but luckily, I only pay $125 per year to our lake Master to keep our lake clean and stocked with big, BIG bass.

A few years back I was house hunting in the Austin, TX area. I forgot to tell the Realtor that I did not want to see properties in a HOA. So we had to sort them out of the listings she had compiled for me. I noticed one that had a HOA fee listed at $250.00 per month. I asked her if it was a typo and she checked and said no, that was the correct amount.

In some states, like Delaware, you have to. Because the HOA’s are the ones that make sure neighborhood maintenance like snow plowing, and the like get done.

The neighborhood I moved into was an HOA, and stayed that way until the builder completed all the homes and sold them all. We then had one HOA meeting with one agenda item… the vote to disband the HOA.

Which, of course, we all agreed to unanimously.

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The one thing you have to take care to remember is that while the HOA may be defunct, it is not PERMANTLY dead. The HOA covenant is still present in your deed. So it is possible, however unlikely, that the HOA could be revived. The only way to put the stake through the heart of the HOA is to remove the covenant from your deed and generally a court is not going to go along with that if an HOA is only recently defunct.

I have bought additional acreage in conjunction with the whole Boy Scout purchase. This land was adjacent to the camp and had a 20 year old covenant for an HOA. The development was subsequently cancelled and the HOA was never built. When I bought the land, my offer was contingent on the courts removing the HOA covenant and other covenants from the property, which they did. And all development taking place up here will be HOA free.

Unfortunately, in many areas, it would be unlikely to get support to throttle the beast in the cradle. :smile:

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That’s a good point…the HOA has been dead for about 18 years so hopefully that’s long enough.

For condominiums we call them “condo commandos”. There’s always the busybodies and the folks who get drunk on power.

My HOA was great. They fund raise when someone needs help, hold events and are not at all restrictive.

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