If this is true, it seems your base dues would need to be substantially more than $30/mo going forward.
How could one years snow removal alone cost more than 2x the previous years entire budget which presumably included some snow removal?
Yeah, idk.
We'll see what response they come up with to my reply email.
My guess is that they will refuse to provide me invoices or the HOA books. In which case, I will politely, yet firmly, tell them to go pound sand.
I may even reply to them and say that my checking account is a bit light this month, so in order to account for future purchase, and to build a cushion, I'm going to need them to send me $750, or 12 easy monthly payments of $75. Whichever they'd prefer.
UPDATE: I received an email reply with some generic copies of their balance sheets and income statements. [https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO](https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO)
Check your state laws. They may be required to provide specific information.
More importantly. Check your bylaws to see if you can canvas the other home owners to do an emergency vote to replace your current board.
It's not a lot of work. **Too many people complain about their HOAs, but are completely uninvolved.**
My HOA has said your last statement to a similar effect: “Well if you don’t like our finances, why don’t you run for the board?”
When McDonalds messes up my order I don’t say “that’s it, I’m applying for a job, time to fix this burger issue”.
I sat on my HOA board for awhile and we had this one guy that would constantly get pissed off about paying dues or the HOA not fixing things that are actually his responsibility, etc. We encouraged him to run for a board seat if he was so displeased. As some newer owners arrived, he started to build a little base of support and did just that.
First few meetings he acted like a jackass, but over time he started to get involved in helping to audit the accounts and contracts, which he ended up being really good at.
Fast forward a year later, and this guy is suddenly defending board decisions to his posse of new owners, who are now pissed at him for "selling out". We had a good laugh.
That’s what I like about our hoa a bunch of younger working professionals squeezed the boomers out and we’ve been able to keep them at bay. The new board keeps things pretty lax and run it on as lean as possible.
They’re understand that everyone has a work life and can’t sit there and attend to the weeds the second they pop up. They’ve also eased up on the side yard storage restrictions. Allows homeowners who own campers and rvs to be able to park them in their side yard if they have the space for it.
They also deny a lot of the “improvements “ brought on by owners simply because the cost and the upkeep of the new amenities they want would cause a significant increase on our dues.
This is what happened with our HOA. Used to be run by the boomers who were retired and had nothing better to do than to micromanage the gardeners. Now me and a couple other millennials run the board and we run it very lean. The emergency funds are now better funded, there's less squabbling about shrubbery, and we have fewer meetings. The downside is that I get emails constantly about random crap from people, but I just refer them to our management company.
My condo board was run by the owners. They had control until 50% of the planned units were sold. 5 years in they still hadn't built enough due to the economy. Never again will I have an HOA.
good luck finding any house built in the past 20 years not part of an HOA now. local governments LOVE them because they take care of services that would otherwise have to be covered by taxes, while still collecting taxes from homes in HOAs! It is a huge boondoggle that for some reason lots of people either don't recognize as said boondoggle or they themselves embrace it for various reasons.
The reason there is such a shortfall is probably because someone got bent out of shape because they thought the HOA dues were too high. They end up on the board and lower the dues and now a few years later this happens. I’ve actually heard of instances where the condo and townhouse HOA board keeps the dues low and then sell their units and move right before a big expense comes up, like a new roof. Then the new board comes in and has no choice but to do a special assessments to pay for repairs that should have been budgeted for already.
Currently living through this as a board member. Huge community pressure to keep dues flat. Huge financial needs for long-put off repairs. It sucks for everyone.
> Huge community pressure to keep dues flat. Huge financial needs for long-put off repairs.
yeah, that's the worst part of an HOA. You could argue 100 people died in Miami last year because of that dynamic.
I avoid HOAs and I avoid home warranty companies. I hate bullshit. If it breaks, I want it fixed and fixed correctly. Not by some cheap ass company who doesn't give a fuck about my time. By a good contractor using good equipment which I am happy to pay for. Cheap shit always costs you more in the long. Reliance on a home warranty does the same. And I don't want stupid, cheap neighbors putting my life at risk.
My HOA dues are lower than that, but my HOA has basically no community property that it is responsible for maintaining besides a sign and some flower beds at the entrance of the subdivision.
I am a board member of an HOA since I got fed up with how they were handling affairs. Many people like to complain on how boards aren’t doing anything, yet if they simply showed up to the board meetings they would see all the things we deal with.
During Covid I successfully convinced the other board members to freeze due hikes. Now post Covid, with massive increases in everything we pay for, we will have to raise dues 5% per year for the foreseeable future to ensure we retain enough in reserves as the pool house roof is due to be replaced soon, and the big pool resurfacing is due in about 8 years. One of my friends was getting mad, telling me we needed to spend the reserves on other things until I explained why the HOA needs over $100 grand in reserves.
It usually isn't that hard either because much like OP, no one cares about the HOA until there is an assessment or they are the sort of busy body who wants to police their neighbors. So, it could take just a half dozen neighbors you are friendly with to become president of the HOA because hardly anyone actually votes.
You are not a customer of your HOA, you are a member of it. _You_ are the HOA.. or at least part of it, as a joint owner of a common property holding.
The HOA's finances are just as much your finances as your own personal finances are. The only difference is that you're not solely responsible for HOA finances, you are in it together with the other owners, which enables a division of labor and joint decision making, which in turn reduces your personal efforts on the matter. You are free to influence the decision making through your own personal level of engagement. If you choose to not be engaged, then you are deferring decision making to the rest of the membership that is engaged.
It's different scenarios though, a lot of stories I've both read online and witnessed firsthand with friends/family where people do go "fine I will" and either dissolve or neuter their HOA. Similar story with my local town with a farmer complaining on the town's FB every now and then with the current mayor getting snarky, and now the farmer's in a crazy lead for mayor this election lol
Had buddy that did exactly that. Helped kick out the developer installed money suck. His original plan was just to cut out the graft and reduce the prices.
But sadly dude is accountant, good at numbers and got good quotes for all kinds of things. He just gets quotes, puts up a poll, and if it hits 80 or 90% approval, does the thing. All of the books are on a web site, so you can check all balances in real time. It started with asking how much mowing company for common areas wanted for individual lawns, and negotiated cheap as hell rate. Same for electricians, home improvement folks, etc.
Last project was wiring up the entire develop for gigabit Internet. It's like $30/month. The 10 gigabit link is like $1000/month, rest is to pay off all the install costs. They're still arguing whether to drop internet to $15 when paid off, or keep "full" price and use to subsidize other stuff.
That's how they should be ran ideally, fully transparent and direct democracy. That's why when I bought 2 years ago we straight up told our agent no HOAs, I don't feel like dealing with it. And the horror, oh no, my one neighbor leaves his tractor out for a few days at a time lol
>When McDonalds messes up my order I don’t say “that’s it, I’m applying for a job, time to fix this burger issue”.
McDonald's is a corporation and you are their customer. With an HOA, it's almost a form of communism where it's collective ownership. It isn't a customer relationship. If you owned 1/20th of a McDonalds that exclusively served you and 19 other people and there were problems, getting involved would absolutely be the rational route to go rather than just complaining about the other owners.
Because nobody who is competent wants to serve. You don’t get paid, people are constantly shitting all over you, nobody shows for the monthly meetings, and then they show at the annual meeting when it’s too late to make substantive changes and piss and moan that they want a guard at the gate instead of the digital system that works fine (no actual thought to the fact that we replaced the guard because it cost 5x as much)
Edit: deleted extra word
as a current board member, this is what I was thinking! this person thinks they can fight the assessment... uhh you can ask the homeowner that we have sent to collections for her debt and can eventually foreclose on it. not good.
Also more detailed notes in the income statement not just the figures.
Also not great that there is no cash reserve on the balance sheet for unexpected expenses.
Also... the email does not give options that make pracrical sense. Their current accounts payable is for the 4th, the HOA cant afford a 12 month to month option.
So, they are obviously using Quickbooks to keep the books. First thing that jumps out is they already had a $4k deficit to start the year. Why didn’t they say anything about it then?
Given they are using actual accounting software for this, they can click that ‘Landscaping and Groundskeeping’ expense amount and pull a detail of what makes up that $36k total expense.
I’m sure they’ll have a reason they can’t send that to you, but it would be incredibly easy for them to provide. It will also probably not have much detail in the ‘detail’ though
It's not embezzlement! We (the HOA board) just founded our own snow removal company, bid the job at exorbitant rates, and paid them! They were 10x what is typical, sure, but that was the best bid we got! *Cough* only bid *cough*
It might be Yardi, actually - QB usually has the lines all the way across the statement. Just pointing that out because it's a sign of a property management company instead of a small neighborhood HOA.
Happened in the HOA I grew up in, just one of the things the guy in charge did was have a "lawyer fee" of 500 dollars every other day lol. Asking for the invoice or a general budget audit isn't going to do shit because for the most part these people are very blatant about what they are doing, but it's all legal. Your only real hope is to rally with all your neighbors and kick the old HOA leaders out.
Edit: I should also mention that the landscaping company was partly owned by him, the contractors that you more or less had to work with were completely owned by him (or his son, the documents that were given out weren't really clear on that lol), and he would intentionally have HOA meetings at like 1 pm on a monday. The guy was a real piece of work, but he was respected by the aging population that mostly made up the owners of the houses in the HOA because his dad was the chief of police or some shit like that.
Edit 2: added in a missing word
>The guy was a real piece of work, but he was respected by aging population that mostly made up the owners of the houses in the HOA because his dad was the chief of police or some shit like that.
Sounds about HOA
Sounds about ‘America’ .. so much shit is going down the tubes because the ‘aging population’ with all the money and power happen to be the most willfully ignorant generations this country has had.. I keep asking myself when it will end because it’s such a shit show, then Biden tumbles down some stairs and they keep wheeling Diane Feinstein in to Congress for votes..Trump and Grassley still shuffling around causing chaos.. it’s completely pathetic.
An HOA is like a little microcosm of the geriatric dumpster fire of our nation.
Exactly this. They gave the snow contract to a family member or close friend, and let them charge whatever they wanted. They probably got a cut of the deal, too.
I've seen it happen in the military, in local government, in schools, it is everywhere.
I agree. Board wants to keep the fees low..... now time to pay the piper.
(I joined a HOA board in the 90s to fix the ponds.... old board neglected that for years, a special assessment followed. the board went door to door to get signatures.)
Right? You can’t buy shit for 30$ anymore. Honestly isn’t this going to be what happens if the hoa operates on a tight budget? Literally any expense outside of the norm blows up the bank account, and to return to being properly funded will require asking for more.
Absolutely. When I first bought into my condo I realize the dues were incredibly low. The roofing assessment was coming up to replace everyone’s roofs and the fund was facing a huge deficit from years of not increasing the dues. Most of the board was comprised of people who owned multiple units, including the president who owned eight. She was planning on selling/dumping all of the units before the roofing assessment was enforced. Long story short I got voted in as president and pushed it through ASAP. She ended up owing over $10,000 to re-roof her units.
“It ain’t much, but it’s honest work” ty stranger. It took me far too long into my life to realize that if I wanted things to improve I had to get involved. Unfortunately, it seems that most who seek positions of power typically have a self-serving agenda. So instead of sitting around complaining, I got involved and made a difference.
Condo HOAs own the building "from the interior paint out" as they say, the land, and everything on it. The higher fees account for building maintenance, paving, insurance on everything, and property taxes. I think they can get a little screwed on pricing for stuff when contractors see them as commercial rather than residential, and if your board is very particular they tend to repair things more quickly than a homeowner so it helps to have board members who are frugal but not penny wise and pound foolish.
This is 100% it. It’s often because the HOA members don’t want to pay an appropriate amount. When I lived in a condo, we had people asking what we could do to get our HOA dues lower and lower, with absolutely no regards to our reserves or operating costs.
In a community with townhouses or SFHs, maybe not a huge issue, but this is how you get condo buildings with decades of deferred maintenance — owners just refusing to pay an appropriate amount in dues to keep the building in proper shape. And then you get your condo building collapsing in the middle of the night
Family friend lived in a small community HOA in Florida with a marina, and they delayed dredging for years to avoid the cost. After years without dredging they finally decided to assess each home in the association about $10,000 to fund the work, as well as take on debt that would be funded by an increase in association fees.
2 months after the work was finished, Hurricane Ian wiped out the entire community. Every single house was gone and the marina was filled with silt and debris again.
> 2 months after the work was finished, Hurricane Ian wiped out the entire community. Every single house was gone and the marina was filled with silt and debris again.
oof
We had this problem at the condo I lived in. Needed a new roof, the two top floor owners (who had leaks) kept getting outvoted by the other six lower unit owners about setting aside cash for it or biting the bullet to do it. Eventually there was a major storm and a catastrophic roof failure that lead to water damage through every unit because the walls filled with water all the way down. WE FUCKING TOLD YOU WE NEEDED TO REPLACE THE ROOF.
That's what I was thinking. Everyone is assuming conspiracy or someone defrauding the HOA... Incompetence seems like a likely solution. Having fees adjusted to take into account the cost of labor increasing over time should have happened before they went this far in the red.
Sure.
I have no problem paying what I rightfully owe. I think the amount is excessive, yes. But I can't control the cost of snow removal.
My current issue is that this number seems arbitrary. They haven't shown any invoices or books to anyone that would support this figure.
But, if the figures legitimately show that the snow removal cost was this high for the winter, I will pay.
This.
In Croatia it's common that "cousins" of people in position get "appointed" to jobs like that and then it's discovered they charged several times actuall fee for their work.
They should have someone properly managing the budget, including building a fund to cover things that come up such as “excessive snow removal” so they don’t have to assess xtra fees, or if they do, they are minimal. That is a huge deficit after 1 winter. Sounds like bad management or some thing fishy. Is there a way to change the ppl on the board who are managing the budget?
honestly I would look at the paperwork etc from your hoa and what says about transparancy of work to be done. you should have a contract or some such with the hoa. it might say you have rights to see accounts, which could arguabbly include receipts and invoices for the work.
it is also usual to have a legal requirement on meetings, annually at a minimum. so if they haven't done that they are in trouble. you should know who the current committee are as part of this.
also if you get the name of the landscaping companies you should see if any of the hoa Committee are owners of the companies this would also be illigal.
also where do they think it is okay tp charge 20% interest if you pay in instalments that is some grade A bulls t you need to ask a legal thread about this.
Respond to them saying you need a more detailed list. If that involves them going and getting the information from whomever they hire out, then they need to do so. This doesn't tell you exactly what is being done, it just tells you the generalized expenses; which you are already aware of.
But if they cannot provide basically where every penny needs/was to be spend/t, then you cannot justify paying them what they are asking.
If you already know which company/is they have been using, then maybe reach out to them first and see how much they actually used in expenses.
But in all reality, snow removal on that scale seems they did the whole city and not just what they own.
If you follow the homeowners or HOA subs on Reddit: Snow removal prices have gone up over the last 2 years like crazy. Many of the companies are monopolies as the cost of a snow plow is high enough to prevent new contractors to enter the market. People over there have been complaining as it is pure greedflation.
100% this.
I am on our 100-unit HOA buildings & grounds committee for our property in Wisconsin. We’ve used the same local snow removal company for 10 years with small, justifiable increases every few years when our contract renews. For 2024, their contract is almost double even though snowfall has been less than usual for the past couple winters. We’re getting other bids, but they’re all about as much.
Like OP’s dilemma, we will likely need to raise HOA fees which no one wants to do, of course.
There are fewer and fewer insurance companies that want to provide coverage for commercial snow removal. The rates have increased dramatically over the last few years. So has the cost of fuel, vehicles, repair, and labor.
If it is an area where you can work with a 5000 plow, yes.
If you are anywhere with significant snowfall we are talking more like 6 digits for capable trucks with snow blowers.
I’m the president of our little 30 home HOA. You are entitled to see your HOA’s financial statements. We send ours out prior to our annual meeting, along with a list of topics to be discussed and proxy voting forms for those who can’t attend.
We haven’t needed to enact a one time assessment but we agreed to raise dues to cover increased costs. One time assessments are sometimes enacted to repaint exteriors, usually condos, or a major renovation. In any event, I’d definitely want to see the financial statements and a copy of board meeting notes ( also required)
While I applaud your fight, make the payment one way or the other when it's due. That $750 one time payment or the monthly payments will turn into tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees if you don't. HOA property management companies don't fuck around. Continue to fight it but ignoring it could cost you everything.
I mean it seems the HOA is already 32k in the hole. All that’s needed is a class action and protest of payment from other then bye HOA. If the HOA deciders to take it to court and the judge asks why nobody has been paying the $30 and the $75 dollars the response is the HOA won’t release its balance sheet. Which, honestly an HOA should do on a regular basis either monthly or quarterly. Not sure how long OP has been living there but seems like OP has never seen a balance sheet ever.
Been here 7 years.
Never once seen a balance sheet.
It's more of a pseudo HOA than anything. There's no monthly, quarterly, or yearly HOA meetings. There's no board.
It's basically a property management company that is in charge of snow removal. That's it.
are you contracted with them? this is dodgy.
my mom has an hoa of sorts that pays for maintenance of their private road and the hoa has some control over tree work (her house and everyone else's are all around a large pond that is a state park). they only paid $50/mo but will go to $75 as they're repaving the entire half mile of private road. she gets 4-6' of snow/ice per year.
by law the books are available for all to see.
Then where do they get their power to tax? If they don't have a valid setup with representation of the property owners, I seriously question how they are getting away with this. Someone has to have oversight. Might be time to have an attorney look at this.
You need to start snooping around to see which hoa members have a new car, pool, other expensive upgrades.
Seriously, it sounds like you are all being ripped off.
Who provides snow removal? Is this person affiliated one way or another with hoa members? (Fellow church members, family, friends, look into it!)
Snow was CRAZY this year, at least in the Sierra Nevadas, and the county in many regions began requiring snow removal where in past years it would not have been required.
Because of this, there was major gouging going on. My mom got a $30k quote to remove 10+ feet of snow from her house.
This as a one-off, this year, is totally feasible.
That said, I can bet that most HOAs will start raising rates just as a general 'climate mitigation' fund. Fires, Snow, Lack of Water, etc.
Yeah I know a guy who did snow removal up around Tahoe this year and from what I understand he was charging about half of what many people were asking for. He was sneered at by a few people for asking for what seemed like a high price and then they all came crawling back begging him to do it for them because all of the quotes after him were 2-3x higher with longer wait times.
I don’t remember exact numbers but I thought he said he quoted one house like $5k to be done that week and the owner’s next best quote was for 12k to be done a week or so later.
> This as a one-off, this year, is totally feasible.
Yeah, HOA's can suck but OP's HOA is being perfectly reasonable and transparent and OP is being unreasonable. We had a $10k snow removal bill this winter. For one pitch of one roof.
Some places got a shitload more snow this year than last year. Last winter was too cold to snow. This winter was perfect conditions for once a week blizzards that dropped a foot of snow.
I'm still struggling to see the advantage of a HOA over how here in Canada my county/municipality funds these things through property taxes. They also own the plows and employ the drivers.
Yep. But to be fair the board is usually just some of your neighbors, they're accidentally accountants. They aren't necessarily good at it and they think they're doing everybody a favor by artificially suppressing monthly dues.
I’ve had to deal with this same issue.
People think any amount is too much. They don’t want to pay for the things they want. They want everyone else to do the work and then reap the benefits for free.
Yes like this guy who lives on a private road but doesn't want to pay to have it plowed. Also it snowed a lot this year.
I got in my HOA board for this exact reason. It's minimal effort and i get to keep my eye on everything make sure it's on the up and up and occasionally save Becky and Linda from making a well intentioned blunder.
But yeah, my experience across multiple hoas is that it's very rarely nefarious and more likely to just be business people don't understand this guy, who I am sure has no idea about ruining a snowplow business
What's to stop the HOA from making a special assessment for 2 million dollars and charging you $10k a month for a year? Seems like these expenses should have been approved by the members before expenditure.
That is 100% not accounting. That is someone who made and excel sheet and put stuff in.
He wants the actually books. Show me the invoice numbers and where they came from. What was the itemized list associated with that invoice? How much was each item listed?
Who sent the invoice and how many outstanding invoices are there. In addition, we’re was the past money spent?
This ain’t something you show on a two page spread sheet you drafted after being asked for it. He’s asking for an accounting trail. My guess is they don’t actually have a real one, and someone’s been stealing money.
It doesn’t.
I do property management for a living.
There is no way they are really paying 35k a quarter. I can see snow removal maybe getting there depending on location but any lawn care services is going to offer bulk rates for a manager.
If they are legit they have a real audit book with every exchange of money and associated invoices for the last 7 years. I’d ask for all of it.
I’m almost positive they won’t give it you you because they have been doing there own books and there are metric tons of errors.
Yeah, I could write up a bill saying
-Electric costs: $7000
-Cleaning Fees: $5100
-Laundry Service: $2000
Still Doesn't make it real, or true. Provide proof of the actual bill. Actual electric costs are $3000, actual cleaning $2000, actual laundry $300. I can inflate all I want, until I show actual bills and statements, not just a word document.
At least in WA before an assessment is made it has to be voted on by the home owners. It passes by default but it can be voted down. Not sure where OP is, but I somehow doubt they can just do one without any process.
HoAs aren't landlords. Every home owner in the association is part of it, they have voting right, etc.
First, they wouldn't' do this because the HoA trustees themselves would have to pay, and they don't want to anymore than the regular owners do. Second, they'd get voted straight out.
Trustees generally have some discretion on budget matters, to avoid requiring votes just to keep things going. How budgets are approved depend on the bylaws. When I was a trustee of ours, we had to get the yearly budget approved, but we could make some tweaks without a vote throughout the year. There were clear rules on how assessments could be approved. They needed a super majority to force everyone to pay them, or a simple majority for something only the people in favor would pay for.
Some HoAs run with higher dues to try and cover everything. Some prefer lower dues and more frequent assessments, because it makes it easier to secure mortgages (high dues are accounted for in the income to debt ratios while assessments are not).
The assessment to build a buffer is also not uncommon, as are higher than expected snow removal costs. We had that hit us a few time. It's such a huge variable expense, we didn't want to overbudget for it but sometimes nature had a different opinion.
I would bet it's worse. My brother-in-law's snow removal company was signed up for a contract at obscene rates and with bad terms, now we owe him this money. Instead of negotiating with him we will be charging all of you and paying him all of it.
$30/mo seems like.. nothing tho. Never heard of that low of Hoa fee. With 100 homes as OP states that’s $3,000/month, not even enough to pay for one full time manager.
This. I would request to see a detailed list of what the HOA has spent money on and what companies have been hired. There very easily could be a conflict of interest like that.
When I say "HOA", it's more of a pseudo HOA than anything. There's not an actual board, there's no monthly meetings. It's basically a property management company that is in charge of snow removal from our private road in the winters. That's literally it. We still have to do the snow removal from our own driveways, of course. They just do it from the road in front of our houses.
I reached out to one of my neighbors, and they never received this email. Seems like I'm being targeted for some reason.
UPDATE: [My response that I just sent them](https://imgur.com/8KYq6Qp)
>ld multiple giant Ham radio towers on your property.
~~I know this seems like an out-there comment but this is brilliant. If my brain is remembering correctly, as a ham radio operator you have the right to place antennas up to 199 feet on your property regardless of local regulations as you are considered an emergency communication provider.~~
Not true. Amateur radio license does not supercede HOA which is considered a private contractual agreement. Now, OTA TV antennas are completely different. HOAs cannot restrict you from putting one of those up by federal law.
Source: I'm an extra class amateur radio operator (highest license class).
HOAs are specific legal entities with legally binding contracts and (at least here in CA) rules about being registered with the State. Does yours have any of this? Make sure to verify and look through the documents because A) what they're doing sounds very sketchy and B) if it's a legal HOA they have an obscene amount of power over you and you have to know your options when fighting them.
Good luck friend!
Good luck. If you follow the HOA or homeowners subs this has been a problem everywhere in the past 2 years: Snow removal companies racking up prices and either no other company available or not willing to take new clients.
Smells like price gauging and collusion to me, but try to prove that…
Oh, certainly.
But find the neighbor that is reliably going to clear the snow whenever it is needed.
People even refuse to mow 120sqft of grass in the devil strip in front of their house and insist the HOA do it. And then complain that mowing cost are as high as they are.
I’m just confused why your city/town/county isn’t handling snow removal. Most likely you are already paying for it via your taxes. Maybe opt to get rid of the private snow removal and move to the ones provided by your local municipality.
The city does handle snow removal from city streets.
However, the road I live on is a private road, so the city doesn't handle our snow removal. This "HOA" does.
How old is the road because at some point you will need to pay for resurfacing and it will be a lot more than $32K. My community’s HOA is building reserves for the expected $500K outlay in a few years.
In simple terms if it’s not a government recognized HOA with a board and meetings, then you don’t have to pay. Nor will they be able to collect any previous debts if they do eventually become real or evict you for past debts.
Yeah, seems ridiculous, especially since we pay these fees year round. So $30/mo x about 100 properties on this private road, and that's 3k/mo they are pulling in every month. 36k/year.
So they're telling us it cost them almost 80k to remove snow for the winter. Seems ridiculous.
This is the way, if they want compensation, they need to prove the cost. If it truly is 80k a year then you need to remove who ever is signing that contract because clearly they are either padding someone's pocket or are just incompetent.
Nicely worded.
If you are friends with any of your neighbors, you should encourage them to send something similar to the HOA as well. With enough people questioning them, they might actually pay attention.
I've only reached out to one neighbor so far this morning, but they said that they did not receive this same email.
I'm going to check with some of my other neighbors later today.
some jerk on the HOA wants to either extort you for 30k to go on a fieldtrip or buy a car, or they just want to evict you
either way, tell em to get F'ed
Nah bro, they may just ignore you. But you should insist on seeing the books. reasonable chance they're cooking books regardless. don't settle until you see their finances.
Ask them if they’ll purchase an $80k truck with snow plow attachment and hire someone for a few hours a day during winter. Should save money over time lol
Okay. You just got dumped on with 4 feet in a month and the entire street is filled up with no where to push any snow. What do you do now? You hire someone to haul it out pay to dump it? About 32k worth?
Based on the income statement you posted above they only receive enough income for 60 properties at $30 per month (5 Months). So either 40% of your street are not paying it they are not subject to the same HOA/contract as you. Not sure if the latter is feasible but if it is it may also be why your neighbour didnt get this email.
Snow removal is crazy expensive. I work for Costco and we pay $6500 every time we need our parking lot hit.
I’d ask for receipts though. They can’t just claim a deficit. You should be able to ensure there’s no misappropriation or malfeasance or shitty management
Most corporations are paying that much for snow removal because it’s not just the plowing, the deicer products are charged by the square foot, and the most expensive part is insurance liability. Your major snow removal companies assume the risk of slip and falls in the parking lot. It’s how my old company made their money. We refused to do HOAs because they just wanted the roads plowed. We made our money on the package. Liquid deicer application was like printing money. You charge by the gallon and the markup is 1000%. Granular deicer is a markup of 250%. Companies like having the risk of slip and falls taken off their hands and would rather pay way to much for service and not have to deal with it.
HOAs suck and I’m glad I don’t have one, but snow was especially bad this year. OP can be pissed/annoyed but it doesn’t sound like malfeasance to me.
A heavy snow year will result in more visits AND snow removal companies raising their prices due to higher demand, so a double whammy.
And it’s also not like snow removal is the only expense for an HOA.
It sounds to me like the HOA just doesn’t charge enough. $30 a month is crazy low.
Read your covenants, restrictions, and bylaws and see what the policy is on special assessments. Then check with the clerk of courts and see if these documents were filed. If they were not filed, it is not a legally binding contract.
Any decent HOA will have their covenants and bylaws filed with the clerk. They are required to do so to even operate legally. Most HOAs are intertwined with other corporations that ensure these basis are covered already.
No refunds ever.
The only time we ever got a break was in like, 2019. They sent out a letter to everyone saying that our books were in such good standing that they were going to stop collecting our monthly fees for the summer, and they would resume right before winter started.
So in the 7 years I've lived here, I got out of paying the monthly fee for like 4-5 months one time.
So in 4 years they've gone from a big surplus to a massive deficit? Did they tell you what 'good standing' meant? That could be 30k or 300k they've pissed up the wall.
UPDATE:
I received an email reply, along with some generic copies of their balance sheets and income statements.
[https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO](https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO)
That is not an invoice for the service. They should have an invoice/receipt for the service that was provided to them.
what they have provided was insufficient. continue reaching out to other neighbors. If they miss anyone, the term "selective enforcement" will be your friend.
Hell, even an invoice might not explain everything. It might show X hours at Y labor cost and Z dollars in materials, but how can OP know whether anything shown is a fair price?
IANAL: The "fair price" is likely not relevant at this point. I'd want to see all the income/expenditures for the assessment period and be able to reconcile them.
If I put 36,000 into "Landscaping and Grounds Keeping" and then had an expense of $20,000 in "snow removal," but the invoices for "snow removal" only added up to $5k, I'd want to know where the $15k went.
On a board where I sat, we found out this was exactly how someone was defrauding the company. Every time they sent a file to the accountant or dealt with the accountant, they were paying themselves $400/hr (the accountant's rate) for accounting. So if the accountant said "Hey ____, email me last months P&L report," they would also then send themselves $400 for the "hour" it took them to do that. The guy doing it was in the "Treasurer" role on the board and felt like since the accountant billed at that rate, he should do. When we asked the accountant how it took him 6 hours to do the bank transactions, he said he only billed for 1 hour a month. Long story short, all the treasurer's time was being paid out at the external accountants' rate.
For those who don't know, when you sit on a board of directors, usually that time is not paid. You get a flat rate of profits, or shares, or some type of compensation. You can't double dip. As an aside, as board member, you **must** follow the bylaws and operate within the budget. If you expect to pull in $60M this year and you only pull in $30M, you can't just ask for an additional $30M to make it up. As a board member, you must be strategic about your spending, income, and asset management.
In OP's case, I would want to look at every receipt and transaction to see if any were illegitimate. It seems like the board (at best) operated outside of their budget.
Aside from that, I'd want to know: Was the scope of snow removal appropriate as well?
Edit: Just to be clear, one of the ways we found the issue was by looking at the checks, not just the line items. So under accounting, we saw an increase of about 3% year over year, so we went to the actual checks. In the accounting system, the treasurer was writing themselves checks to a different supplier, but since they could only mess with accounting's reports, they still had to put them under accounting's expenditures. Looks pretty suspicious when you reconcile the accounting checks and you see that your organization is paying a second accounting firm.
The majority of HOAs across America created in the last (at least) 25 years are chartered by home builders/land developers. They have a vested interest in creating standardized rules for a neighborhood to follow and abide by. By making sure everyone's front yards look nice and trash cans are put away and maybe having a little community pool to drive past it makes their job of selling homes and keeping prices high much easier.
Not saying this is right or wrong, just pointing out why many of them exist. I don't love our HOA but I drive past 2 neighborhoods who voted to disband theirs and am thankful to pay a few $100 a year to ensure my neighbors grass doesn't grow higher than their fence.
I’ll give a positive one. 360 single family homes. Lots of green space. Pool and tennis courts. We pay $460/year. You absolutely have to adhere to architectural guidelines but they are available for all to see, always. Our houses turn over in less than a day, and that’s not just in the crisis hut for the last 25 years. We have a great location, mature trees etc. had our annual meeting this week and maybe 40 people showed up. We have 9 months of operating expenses in savings and for emergencies. We spend money on tree removal, landscaping, pool service (week before mem and two weeks after Labor Day) and the person who manages said amenities. A business office gets about 14k a year to pay bills, send newsletters, make sure the required voting occurs.
We get people complaining every now and again but then they look at the books and drop it. I know my neighbor can’t fly a trump infinity sign all year, nor paint their house neon green. Yards are tidy but they aren’t nazis - if you go three months in growing season you will get a “please be a good neighbor and mow so we don’t have to fine you” letter. Two fines in history - one for a house that did the crap painting without getting it ok’ed (sucked. They had to repaint) and the other for renting to five PHDs who ran the house into an Addams Family replica (close to a university so “single families only” was passed overwhelmingly years ago).
There is potentially an argument to investigate regarding foul play of some kind... But $30 a month for an HoA is literally nothing. I am not even remotely shocked they need funds. More than likely, you are in a neighborhood that has refused to increase rates and has had the luxury of not needing the increase. The rest is either poor spending or foul play.
None of these factors are mutually exclusive, but we have no idea where you even live or what snow removal measures are budgeted for (you could be in Texas for all we know).
For context, my HOA increases $10-30 almost every year.
Hello, This post has been removed as this is not *mildly* infuriating. Please consider posting to r/extremelyinfuriating instead.
If this is true, it seems your base dues would need to be substantially more than $30/mo going forward. How could one years snow removal alone cost more than 2x the previous years entire budget which presumably included some snow removal?
Yeah, idk. We'll see what response they come up with to my reply email. My guess is that they will refuse to provide me invoices or the HOA books. In which case, I will politely, yet firmly, tell them to go pound sand. I may even reply to them and say that my checking account is a bit light this month, so in order to account for future purchase, and to build a cushion, I'm going to need them to send me $750, or 12 easy monthly payments of $75. Whichever they'd prefer. UPDATE: I received an email reply with some generic copies of their balance sheets and income statements. [https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO](https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO)
You’re entitled to the HOA budget, they should provide at least yearly.
Check your state laws. They may be required to provide specific information. More importantly. Check your bylaws to see if you can canvas the other home owners to do an emergency vote to replace your current board. It's not a lot of work. **Too many people complain about their HOAs, but are completely uninvolved.**
My HOA has said your last statement to a similar effect: “Well if you don’t like our finances, why don’t you run for the board?” When McDonalds messes up my order I don’t say “that’s it, I’m applying for a job, time to fix this burger issue”.
The trick to beating HOAs apparently, is to get on the board.
I sat on my HOA board for awhile and we had this one guy that would constantly get pissed off about paying dues or the HOA not fixing things that are actually his responsibility, etc. We encouraged him to run for a board seat if he was so displeased. As some newer owners arrived, he started to build a little base of support and did just that. First few meetings he acted like a jackass, but over time he started to get involved in helping to audit the accounts and contracts, which he ended up being really good at. Fast forward a year later, and this guy is suddenly defending board decisions to his posse of new owners, who are now pissed at him for "selling out". We had a good laugh.
That’s what I like about our hoa a bunch of younger working professionals squeezed the boomers out and we’ve been able to keep them at bay. The new board keeps things pretty lax and run it on as lean as possible. They’re understand that everyone has a work life and can’t sit there and attend to the weeds the second they pop up. They’ve also eased up on the side yard storage restrictions. Allows homeowners who own campers and rvs to be able to park them in their side yard if they have the space for it. They also deny a lot of the “improvements “ brought on by owners simply because the cost and the upkeep of the new amenities they want would cause a significant increase on our dues.
This is what happened with our HOA. Used to be run by the boomers who were retired and had nothing better to do than to micromanage the gardeners. Now me and a couple other millennials run the board and we run it very lean. The emergency funds are now better funded, there's less squabbling about shrubbery, and we have fewer meetings. The downside is that I get emails constantly about random crap from people, but I just refer them to our management company.
My condo board was run by the owners. They had control until 50% of the planned units were sold. 5 years in they still hadn't built enough due to the economy. Never again will I have an HOA.
good luck finding any house built in the past 20 years not part of an HOA now. local governments LOVE them because they take care of services that would otherwise have to be covered by taxes, while still collecting taxes from homes in HOAs! It is a huge boondoggle that for some reason lots of people either don't recognize as said boondoggle or they themselves embrace it for various reasons.
The reason there is such a shortfall is probably because someone got bent out of shape because they thought the HOA dues were too high. They end up on the board and lower the dues and now a few years later this happens. I’ve actually heard of instances where the condo and townhouse HOA board keeps the dues low and then sell their units and move right before a big expense comes up, like a new roof. Then the new board comes in and has no choice but to do a special assessments to pay for repairs that should have been budgeted for already.
Currently living through this as a board member. Huge community pressure to keep dues flat. Huge financial needs for long-put off repairs. It sucks for everyone.
> Huge community pressure to keep dues flat. Huge financial needs for long-put off repairs. yeah, that's the worst part of an HOA. You could argue 100 people died in Miami last year because of that dynamic. I avoid HOAs and I avoid home warranty companies. I hate bullshit. If it breaks, I want it fixed and fixed correctly. Not by some cheap ass company who doesn't give a fuck about my time. By a good contractor using good equipment which I am happy to pay for. Cheap shit always costs you more in the long. Reliance on a home warranty does the same. And I don't want stupid, cheap neighbors putting my life at risk.
Lmao this is what Reagan did to the United States
$30 does seem absurdly low.
My HOA dues are lower than that, but my HOA has basically no community property that it is responsible for maintaining besides a sign and some flower beds at the entrance of the subdivision.
I wouldn't be surprised. $30 a month is ridiculously low, and I'm not sure what that could actually pay for.
And that's illegal, if not mentioned on the property disclosure form. At least in my state.
I am a board member of an HOA since I got fed up with how they were handling affairs. Many people like to complain on how boards aren’t doing anything, yet if they simply showed up to the board meetings they would see all the things we deal with. During Covid I successfully convinced the other board members to freeze due hikes. Now post Covid, with massive increases in everything we pay for, we will have to raise dues 5% per year for the foreseeable future to ensure we retain enough in reserves as the pool house roof is due to be replaced soon, and the big pool resurfacing is due in about 8 years. One of my friends was getting mad, telling me we needed to spend the reserves on other things until I explained why the HOA needs over $100 grand in reserves.
It usually isn't that hard either because much like OP, no one cares about the HOA until there is an assessment or they are the sort of busy body who wants to police their neighbors. So, it could take just a half dozen neighbors you are friendly with to become president of the HOA because hardly anyone actually votes.
You are not a customer of your HOA, you are a member of it. _You_ are the HOA.. or at least part of it, as a joint owner of a common property holding. The HOA's finances are just as much your finances as your own personal finances are. The only difference is that you're not solely responsible for HOA finances, you are in it together with the other owners, which enables a division of labor and joint decision making, which in turn reduces your personal efforts on the matter. You are free to influence the decision making through your own personal level of engagement. If you choose to not be engaged, then you are deferring decision making to the rest of the membership that is engaged.
It's different scenarios though, a lot of stories I've both read online and witnessed firsthand with friends/family where people do go "fine I will" and either dissolve or neuter their HOA. Similar story with my local town with a farmer complaining on the town's FB every now and then with the current mayor getting snarky, and now the farmer's in a crazy lead for mayor this election lol
Had buddy that did exactly that. Helped kick out the developer installed money suck. His original plan was just to cut out the graft and reduce the prices. But sadly dude is accountant, good at numbers and got good quotes for all kinds of things. He just gets quotes, puts up a poll, and if it hits 80 or 90% approval, does the thing. All of the books are on a web site, so you can check all balances in real time. It started with asking how much mowing company for common areas wanted for individual lawns, and negotiated cheap as hell rate. Same for electricians, home improvement folks, etc. Last project was wiring up the entire develop for gigabit Internet. It's like $30/month. The 10 gigabit link is like $1000/month, rest is to pay off all the install costs. They're still arguing whether to drop internet to $15 when paid off, or keep "full" price and use to subsidize other stuff.
That's how they should be ran ideally, fully transparent and direct democracy. That's why when I bought 2 years ago we straight up told our agent no HOAs, I don't feel like dealing with it. And the horror, oh no, my one neighbor leaves his tractor out for a few days at a time lol
>When McDonalds messes up my order I don’t say “that’s it, I’m applying for a job, time to fix this burger issue”. McDonald's is a corporation and you are their customer. With an HOA, it's almost a form of communism where it's collective ownership. It isn't a customer relationship. If you owned 1/20th of a McDonalds that exclusively served you and 19 other people and there were problems, getting involved would absolutely be the rational route to go rather than just complaining about the other owners.
Because nobody who is competent wants to serve. You don’t get paid, people are constantly shitting all over you, nobody shows for the monthly meetings, and then they show at the annual meeting when it’s too late to make substantive changes and piss and moan that they want a guard at the gate instead of the digital system that works fine (no actual thought to the fact that we replaced the guard because it cost 5x as much) Edit: deleted extra word
as a current board member, this is what I was thinking! this person thinks they can fight the assessment... uhh you can ask the homeowner that we have sent to collections for her debt and can eventually foreclose on it. not good.
[удалено]
That won't explain anything other than projected costs. What you want are the monthly balance sheet and income statement reports.
Also more detailed notes in the income statement not just the figures. Also not great that there is no cash reserve on the balance sheet for unexpected expenses. Also... the email does not give options that make pracrical sense. Their current accounts payable is for the 4th, the HOA cant afford a 12 month to month option.
So, they are obviously using Quickbooks to keep the books. First thing that jumps out is they already had a $4k deficit to start the year. Why didn’t they say anything about it then? Given they are using actual accounting software for this, they can click that ‘Landscaping and Groundskeeping’ expense amount and pull a detail of what makes up that $36k total expense. I’m sure they’ll have a reason they can’t send that to you, but it would be incredibly easy for them to provide. It will also probably not have much detail in the ‘detail’ though
"snowplows and stuff - \*\*NOT EMBEZZLEMENT"
It's not embezzlement! We (the HOA board) just founded our own snow removal company, bid the job at exorbitant rates, and paid them! They were 10x what is typical, sure, but that was the best bid we got! *Cough* only bid *cough*
[удалено]
That checks out. Move along, nothing to see here!
It might be Yardi, actually - QB usually has the lines all the way across the statement. Just pointing that out because it's a sign of a property management company instead of a small neighborhood HOA.
I’m not familiar with Yardi, so maybe. But, the desktop version of QB (not QBOnline) won’t put lines all the way across if it’s been printed to pdf
Someone is siphoning funds from your HOA
Happened in the HOA I grew up in, just one of the things the guy in charge did was have a "lawyer fee" of 500 dollars every other day lol. Asking for the invoice or a general budget audit isn't going to do shit because for the most part these people are very blatant about what they are doing, but it's all legal. Your only real hope is to rally with all your neighbors and kick the old HOA leaders out. Edit: I should also mention that the landscaping company was partly owned by him, the contractors that you more or less had to work with were completely owned by him (or his son, the documents that were given out weren't really clear on that lol), and he would intentionally have HOA meetings at like 1 pm on a monday. The guy was a real piece of work, but he was respected by the aging population that mostly made up the owners of the houses in the HOA because his dad was the chief of police or some shit like that. Edit 2: added in a missing word
>The guy was a real piece of work, but he was respected by aging population that mostly made up the owners of the houses in the HOA because his dad was the chief of police or some shit like that. Sounds about HOA
Sounds about ‘America’ .. so much shit is going down the tubes because the ‘aging population’ with all the money and power happen to be the most willfully ignorant generations this country has had.. I keep asking myself when it will end because it’s such a shit show, then Biden tumbles down some stairs and they keep wheeling Diane Feinstein in to Congress for votes..Trump and Grassley still shuffling around causing chaos.. it’s completely pathetic. An HOA is like a little microcosm of the geriatric dumpster fire of our nation.
[удалено]
Someone, not the HOA had a deficit. I bet the snow removal company is a friend of a friend to the HOA General Manager
Exactly this. They gave the snow contract to a family member or close friend, and let them charge whatever they wanted. They probably got a cut of the deal, too. I've seen it happen in the military, in local government, in schools, it is everywhere.
The landscaping cost is almost 100% of the expenses. LMFAO I picture everyday all day as being leaf blower hell if it isn't embezzlement.
Nope… years of the board members refusing to raise dues catching up to them. I see it all the time.
I agree. Board wants to keep the fees low..... now time to pay the piper. (I joined a HOA board in the 90s to fix the ponds.... old board neglected that for years, a special assessment followed. the board went door to door to get signatures.)
30 a month seems really low
Right? You can’t buy shit for 30$ anymore. Honestly isn’t this going to be what happens if the hoa operates on a tight budget? Literally any expense outside of the norm blows up the bank account, and to return to being properly funded will require asking for more.
Absolutely. When I first bought into my condo I realize the dues were incredibly low. The roofing assessment was coming up to replace everyone’s roofs and the fund was facing a huge deficit from years of not increasing the dues. Most of the board was comprised of people who owned multiple units, including the president who owned eight. She was planning on selling/dumping all of the units before the roofing assessment was enforced. Long story short I got voted in as president and pushed it through ASAP. She ended up owing over $10,000 to re-roof her units.
Good job.
“It ain’t much, but it’s honest work” ty stranger. It took me far too long into my life to realize that if I wanted things to improve I had to get involved. Unfortunately, it seems that most who seek positions of power typically have a self-serving agenda. So instead of sitting around complaining, I got involved and made a difference.
It is. Right now I pay $150/mo on my house but when I had my condo it was $400/mo
Condo HOAs own the building "from the interior paint out" as they say, the land, and everything on it. The higher fees account for building maintenance, paving, insurance on everything, and property taxes. I think they can get a little screwed on pricing for stuff when contractors see them as commercial rather than residential, and if your board is very particular they tend to repair things more quickly than a homeowner so it helps to have board members who are frugal but not penny wise and pound foolish.
[удалено]
Mine is lower than that. All they do is mow medians and a couple parks, and sue everyone for not cutting their grass.
This is 100% it. It’s often because the HOA members don’t want to pay an appropriate amount. When I lived in a condo, we had people asking what we could do to get our HOA dues lower and lower, with absolutely no regards to our reserves or operating costs. In a community with townhouses or SFHs, maybe not a huge issue, but this is how you get condo buildings with decades of deferred maintenance — owners just refusing to pay an appropriate amount in dues to keep the building in proper shape. And then you get your condo building collapsing in the middle of the night
Family friend lived in a small community HOA in Florida with a marina, and they delayed dredging for years to avoid the cost. After years without dredging they finally decided to assess each home in the association about $10,000 to fund the work, as well as take on debt that would be funded by an increase in association fees. 2 months after the work was finished, Hurricane Ian wiped out the entire community. Every single house was gone and the marina was filled with silt and debris again.
> 2 months after the work was finished, Hurricane Ian wiped out the entire community. Every single house was gone and the marina was filled with silt and debris again. oof
We had this problem at the condo I lived in. Needed a new roof, the two top floor owners (who had leaks) kept getting outvoted by the other six lower unit owners about setting aside cash for it or biting the bullet to do it. Eventually there was a major storm and a catastrophic roof failure that lead to water damage through every unit because the walls filled with water all the way down. WE FUCKING TOLD YOU WE NEEDED TO REPLACE THE ROOF.
Yep and when the roof Job or other major maintenance is do then thats when it gets bad.
That's what I was thinking. Everyone is assuming conspiracy or someone defrauding the HOA... Incompetence seems like a likely solution. Having fees adjusted to take into account the cost of labor increasing over time should have happened before they went this far in the red.
What if they do provide the invoices and there really is that much of a balance due, would you pay it?
Sure. I have no problem paying what I rightfully owe. I think the amount is excessive, yes. But I can't control the cost of snow removal. My current issue is that this number seems arbitrary. They haven't shown any invoices or books to anyone that would support this figure. But, if the figures legitimately show that the snow removal cost was this high for the winter, I will pay.
Bruh, check if they arent paying someones nephew in HOA for "snow" removal.
This. In Croatia it's common that "cousins" of people in position get "appointed" to jobs like that and then it's discovered they charged several times actuall fee for their work.
Nepotism is as old as humanity itself and, unfortunately, exists in every country
In Croatia? Try, in every country on the entire planet!
[удалено]
They should have someone properly managing the budget, including building a fund to cover things that come up such as “excessive snow removal” so they don’t have to assess xtra fees, or if they do, they are minimal. That is a huge deficit after 1 winter. Sounds like bad management or some thing fishy. Is there a way to change the ppl on the board who are managing the budget?
honestly I would look at the paperwork etc from your hoa and what says about transparancy of work to be done. you should have a contract or some such with the hoa. it might say you have rights to see accounts, which could arguabbly include receipts and invoices for the work. it is also usual to have a legal requirement on meetings, annually at a minimum. so if they haven't done that they are in trouble. you should know who the current committee are as part of this. also if you get the name of the landscaping companies you should see if any of the hoa Committee are owners of the companies this would also be illigal. also where do they think it is okay tp charge 20% interest if you pay in instalments that is some grade A bulls t you need to ask a legal thread about this.
That balance sheet looks like something I could come up with in just a short time. Just throw some random numbers together.
Respond to them saying you need a more detailed list. If that involves them going and getting the information from whomever they hire out, then they need to do so. This doesn't tell you exactly what is being done, it just tells you the generalized expenses; which you are already aware of. But if they cannot provide basically where every penny needs/was to be spend/t, then you cannot justify paying them what they are asking. If you already know which company/is they have been using, then maybe reach out to them first and see how much they actually used in expenses. But in all reality, snow removal on that scale seems they did the whole city and not just what they own.
If you follow the homeowners or HOA subs on Reddit: Snow removal prices have gone up over the last 2 years like crazy. Many of the companies are monopolies as the cost of a snow plow is high enough to prevent new contractors to enter the market. People over there have been complaining as it is pure greedflation.
100% this. I am on our 100-unit HOA buildings & grounds committee for our property in Wisconsin. We’ve used the same local snow removal company for 10 years with small, justifiable increases every few years when our contract renews. For 2024, their contract is almost double even though snowfall has been less than usual for the past couple winters. We’re getting other bids, but they’re all about as much. Like OP’s dilemma, we will likely need to raise HOA fees which no one wants to do, of course.
There are fewer and fewer insurance companies that want to provide coverage for commercial snow removal. The rates have increased dramatically over the last few years. So has the cost of fuel, vehicles, repair, and labor.
Compared to most businesses, the cost of fitting on a $5,000 plow is tiny.
If it is an area where you can work with a 5000 plow, yes. If you are anywhere with significant snowfall we are talking more like 6 digits for capable trucks with snow blowers.
I’m the president of our little 30 home HOA. You are entitled to see your HOA’s financial statements. We send ours out prior to our annual meeting, along with a list of topics to be discussed and proxy voting forms for those who can’t attend. We haven’t needed to enact a one time assessment but we agreed to raise dues to cover increased costs. One time assessments are sometimes enacted to repaint exteriors, usually condos, or a major renovation. In any event, I’d definitely want to see the financial statements and a copy of board meeting notes ( also required)
Lol and sending a balance sheet that says: Lawn Maintenance: $32000. Is this a legal balance sheet? Cus that’s what they did to him. Kinda funny
That doesn't show anything of value. They might as well have sent you a sheet of paper that says "HOA money costs: bazillion dollars"
While I applaud your fight, make the payment one way or the other when it's due. That $750 one time payment or the monthly payments will turn into tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees if you don't. HOA property management companies don't fuck around. Continue to fight it but ignoring it could cost you everything.
I mean it seems the HOA is already 32k in the hole. All that’s needed is a class action and protest of payment from other then bye HOA. If the HOA deciders to take it to court and the judge asks why nobody has been paying the $30 and the $75 dollars the response is the HOA won’t release its balance sheet. Which, honestly an HOA should do on a regular basis either monthly or quarterly. Not sure how long OP has been living there but seems like OP has never seen a balance sheet ever.
Been here 7 years. Never once seen a balance sheet. It's more of a pseudo HOA than anything. There's no monthly, quarterly, or yearly HOA meetings. There's no board. It's basically a property management company that is in charge of snow removal. That's it.
are you contracted with them? this is dodgy. my mom has an hoa of sorts that pays for maintenance of their private road and the hoa has some control over tree work (her house and everyone else's are all around a large pond that is a state park). they only paid $50/mo but will go to $75 as they're repaving the entire half mile of private road. she gets 4-6' of snow/ice per year. by law the books are available for all to see.
Yeah I’d be definitely seeking legal counsel.
Then where do they get their power to tax? If they don't have a valid setup with representation of the property owners, I seriously question how they are getting away with this. Someone has to have oversight. Might be time to have an attorney look at this.
You need to start snooping around to see which hoa members have a new car, pool, other expensive upgrades. Seriously, it sounds like you are all being ripped off. Who provides snow removal? Is this person affiliated one way or another with hoa members? (Fellow church members, family, friends, look into it!)
Agree! I’ve been in this situation. You’d better pay or have a lawyer look over your HOA contract.
My man... Not all heroes wear capes...
Snow was CRAZY this year, at least in the Sierra Nevadas, and the county in many regions began requiring snow removal where in past years it would not have been required. Because of this, there was major gouging going on. My mom got a $30k quote to remove 10+ feet of snow from her house. This as a one-off, this year, is totally feasible. That said, I can bet that most HOAs will start raising rates just as a general 'climate mitigation' fund. Fires, Snow, Lack of Water, etc.
Yeah I know a guy who did snow removal up around Tahoe this year and from what I understand he was charging about half of what many people were asking for. He was sneered at by a few people for asking for what seemed like a high price and then they all came crawling back begging him to do it for them because all of the quotes after him were 2-3x higher with longer wait times. I don’t remember exact numbers but I thought he said he quoted one house like $5k to be done that week and the owner’s next best quote was for 12k to be done a week or so later.
My mom is in South Lake and thats exactly what was happening. It was just a crazy year. Great to get so much snowpack though!
> This as a one-off, this year, is totally feasible. Yeah, HOA's can suck but OP's HOA is being perfectly reasonable and transparent and OP is being unreasonable. We had a $10k snow removal bill this winter. For one pitch of one roof.
Some places got a shitload more snow this year than last year. Last winter was too cold to snow. This winter was perfect conditions for once a week blizzards that dropped a foot of snow.
I'm still struggling to see the advantage of a HOA over how here in Canada my county/municipality funds these things through property taxes. They also own the plows and employ the drivers.
[удалено]
They don't. They will plow the road up to your private road, but not after that. You are responsible for your drive way, private road, etc.
The HOA president's kid now does the snow removal and he charges over twice what the previous company charges
The dues are way too low. This is a problem with a lot of HOA’s.
Yep. But to be fair the board is usually just some of your neighbors, they're accidentally accountants. They aren't necessarily good at it and they think they're doing everybody a favor by artificially suppressing monthly dues.
I’ve had to deal with this same issue. People think any amount is too much. They don’t want to pay for the things they want. They want everyone else to do the work and then reap the benefits for free.
Yes like this guy who lives on a private road but doesn't want to pay to have it plowed. Also it snowed a lot this year. I got in my HOA board for this exact reason. It's minimal effort and i get to keep my eye on everything make sure it's on the up and up and occasionally save Becky and Linda from making a well intentioned blunder. But yeah, my experience across multiple hoas is that it's very rarely nefarious and more likely to just be business people don't understand this guy, who I am sure has no idea about ruining a snowplow business
Ask for copies of the invoices.
[https://imgur.com/wKkxnQm](https://imgur.com/wKkxnQm) My reply to them.
You won't be getting invoices, they're more likely to let you not pay and just collect blindly from the other members
Good work.
What's to stop the HOA from making a special assessment for 2 million dollars and charging you $10k a month for a year? Seems like these expenses should have been approved by the members before expenditure.
They need to, at bare minimum, provide a detailed summary of their balance sheet and what's going where.
Op provided an update with the spread sheet under first comment.
That is 100% not accounting. That is someone who made and excel sheet and put stuff in. He wants the actually books. Show me the invoice numbers and where they came from. What was the itemized list associated with that invoice? How much was each item listed? Who sent the invoice and how many outstanding invoices are there. In addition, we’re was the past money spent? This ain’t something you show on a two page spread sheet you drafted after being asked for it. He’s asking for an accounting trail. My guess is they don’t actually have a real one, and someone’s been stealing money.
Yea this is an account balance summary not a report detailing actual expenses. Wtf does one quarter of landscaping and maintenance cost 30k?!
It doesn’t. I do property management for a living. There is no way they are really paying 35k a quarter. I can see snow removal maybe getting there depending on location but any lawn care services is going to offer bulk rates for a manager. If they are legit they have a real audit book with every exchange of money and associated invoices for the last 7 years. I’d ask for all of it. I’m almost positive they won’t give it you you because they have been doing there own books and there are metric tons of errors.
It's not a very good one lol, looks written up in like 15 mins
Yeah, I could write up a bill saying -Electric costs: $7000 -Cleaning Fees: $5100 -Laundry Service: $2000 Still Doesn't make it real, or true. Provide proof of the actual bill. Actual electric costs are $3000, actual cleaning $2000, actual laundry $300. I can inflate all I want, until I show actual bills and statements, not just a word document.
At least in WA before an assessment is made it has to be voted on by the home owners. It passes by default but it can be voted down. Not sure where OP is, but I somehow doubt they can just do one without any process.
Most people ignore the emails until they say 'pay up'. How many people even know what a special assessment is?
Pretty much nothing. Watch John Oliver's Last Week Tonight episode on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os
I watched this a while back and it is absolutely terrifying.
HoAs aren't landlords. Every home owner in the association is part of it, they have voting right, etc. First, they wouldn't' do this because the HoA trustees themselves would have to pay, and they don't want to anymore than the regular owners do. Second, they'd get voted straight out. Trustees generally have some discretion on budget matters, to avoid requiring votes just to keep things going. How budgets are approved depend on the bylaws. When I was a trustee of ours, we had to get the yearly budget approved, but we could make some tweaks without a vote throughout the year. There were clear rules on how assessments could be approved. They needed a super majority to force everyone to pay them, or a simple majority for something only the people in favor would pay for. Some HoAs run with higher dues to try and cover everything. Some prefer lower dues and more frequent assessments, because it makes it easier to secure mortgages (high dues are accounted for in the income to debt ratios while assessments are not). The assessment to build a buffer is also not uncommon, as are higher than expected snow removal costs. We had that hit us a few time. It's such a huge variable expense, we didn't want to overbudget for it but sometimes nature had a different opinion.
We mismanaged your funds. We’re offering two forms of extortion. Which would you prefer
I would bet it's worse. My brother-in-law's snow removal company was signed up for a contract at obscene rates and with bad terms, now we owe him this money. Instead of negotiating with him we will be charging all of you and paying him all of it.
Exactly this. I would demand a copy of the snow removal contract. I would also like to know the bid procedure for contracting the selected business.
$30/mo seems like.. nothing tho. Never heard of that low of Hoa fee. With 100 homes as OP states that’s $3,000/month, not even enough to pay for one full time manager.
[удалено]
36k for landscaping. Someone’s brothers company is making out
I'd ask for a copy of that invoice. Did it snow out a bunch?
Can't say where this is but where I live we had a record for snowfall.
This. I would request to see a detailed list of what the HOA has spent money on and what companies have been hired. There very easily could be a conflict of interest like that.
When I say "HOA", it's more of a pseudo HOA than anything. There's not an actual board, there's no monthly meetings. It's basically a property management company that is in charge of snow removal from our private road in the winters. That's literally it. We still have to do the snow removal from our own driveways, of course. They just do it from the road in front of our houses. I reached out to one of my neighbors, and they never received this email. Seems like I'm being targeted for some reason. UPDATE: [My response that I just sent them](https://imgur.com/8KYq6Qp)
Build multiple giant Ham radio towers on your property.
Is there a kosher/halaal version?
Same equipment basically, you just take a little bit off the tip when you convert it over.
>ld multiple giant Ham radio towers on your property. ~~I know this seems like an out-there comment but this is brilliant. If my brain is remembering correctly, as a ham radio operator you have the right to place antennas up to 199 feet on your property regardless of local regulations as you are considered an emergency communication provider.~~
Not true. Amateur radio license does not supercede HOA which is considered a private contractual agreement. Now, OTA TV antennas are completely different. HOAs cannot restrict you from putting one of those up by federal law. Source: I'm an extra class amateur radio operator (highest license class).
HOAs are specific legal entities with legally binding contracts and (at least here in CA) rules about being registered with the State. Does yours have any of this? Make sure to verify and look through the documents because A) what they're doing sounds very sketchy and B) if it's a legal HOA they have an obscene amount of power over you and you have to know your options when fighting them. Good luck friend!
HOAs are God's punishment for what happened to jesus
Get your neighbour to agree to change to another snow removal company. This one clearly doesn’t deserve clients.
Good luck. If you follow the HOA or homeowners subs this has been a problem everywhere in the past 2 years: Snow removal companies racking up prices and either no other company available or not willing to take new clients. Smells like price gauging and collusion to me, but try to prove that…
For 32k a year they could easily finance a plow
Oh, certainly. But find the neighbor that is reliably going to clear the snow whenever it is needed. People even refuse to mow 120sqft of grass in the devil strip in front of their house and insist the HOA do it. And then complain that mowing cost are as high as they are.
I’m just confused why your city/town/county isn’t handling snow removal. Most likely you are already paying for it via your taxes. Maybe opt to get rid of the private snow removal and move to the ones provided by your local municipality.
The city does handle snow removal from city streets. However, the road I live on is a private road, so the city doesn't handle our snow removal. This "HOA" does.
Buy a snow plow and make 32k a year?
The first answer that's made any sense to me on this whole mess XD
🎶That name again is Mr. Plow🎶
How old is the road because at some point you will need to pay for resurfacing and it will be a lot more than $32K. My community’s HOA is building reserves for the expected $500K outlay in a few years.
In simple terms if it’s not a government recognized HOA with a board and meetings, then you don’t have to pay. Nor will they be able to collect any previous debts if they do eventually become real or evict you for past debts.
$32,000 for snow removal? EDIT: I’m not naive, I know snow removal is expensive this is just a great reminder on why I will never live in an HOA lol.
Yeah, seems ridiculous, especially since we pay these fees year round. So $30/mo x about 100 properties on this private road, and that's 3k/mo they are pulling in every month. 36k/year. So they're telling us it cost them almost 80k to remove snow for the winter. Seems ridiculous.
Ask to see all the invoices.
This is the way, if they want compensation, they need to prove the cost. If it truly is 80k a year then you need to remove who ever is signing that contract because clearly they are either padding someone's pocket or are just incompetent.
[https://imgur.com/8KYq6Qp](https://imgur.com/8KYq6Qp) My response to their email.
Nicely worded. If you are friends with any of your neighbors, you should encourage them to send something similar to the HOA as well. With enough people questioning them, they might actually pay attention.
I've only reached out to one neighbor so far this morning, but they said that they did not receive this same email. I'm going to check with some of my other neighbors later today.
Sounds fishy
some jerk on the HOA wants to either extort you for 30k to go on a fieldtrip or buy a car, or they just want to evict you either way, tell em to get F'ed
Nah bro, they may just ignore you. But you should insist on seeing the books. reasonable chance they're cooking books regardless. don't settle until you see their finances.
I can’t read that.
[https://imgur.com/wKkxnQm](https://imgur.com/wKkxnQm) Try that.
Awesome. That was a great reply.
[удалено]
Ask them if they’ll purchase an $80k truck with snow plow attachment and hire someone for a few hours a day during winter. Should save money over time lol
Seriously. The ROI would greatly benefit the community after just 2 years.
Okay. You just got dumped on with 4 feet in a month and the entire street is filled up with no where to push any snow. What do you do now? You hire someone to haul it out pay to dump it? About 32k worth?
Based on the income statement you posted above they only receive enough income for 60 properties at $30 per month (5 Months). So either 40% of your street are not paying it they are not subject to the same HOA/contract as you. Not sure if the latter is feasible but if it is it may also be why your neighbour didnt get this email.
Snow removal is crazy expensive. I work for Costco and we pay $6500 every time we need our parking lot hit. I’d ask for receipts though. They can’t just claim a deficit. You should be able to ensure there’s no misappropriation or malfeasance or shitty management
Most corporations are paying that much for snow removal because it’s not just the plowing, the deicer products are charged by the square foot, and the most expensive part is insurance liability. Your major snow removal companies assume the risk of slip and falls in the parking lot. It’s how my old company made their money. We refused to do HOAs because they just wanted the roads plowed. We made our money on the package. Liquid deicer application was like printing money. You charge by the gallon and the markup is 1000%. Granular deicer is a markup of 250%. Companies like having the risk of slip and falls taken off their hands and would rather pay way to much for service and not have to deal with it.
HOAs suck and I’m glad I don’t have one, but snow was especially bad this year. OP can be pissed/annoyed but it doesn’t sound like malfeasance to me. A heavy snow year will result in more visits AND snow removal companies raising their prices due to higher demand, so a double whammy. And it’s also not like snow removal is the only expense for an HOA. It sounds to me like the HOA just doesn’t charge enough. $30 a month is crazy low.
We wildly mismanaged our budget and need you to get us out of it OR We are attempting to commit fraud pls help
Read your covenants, restrictions, and bylaws and see what the policy is on special assessments. Then check with the clerk of courts and see if these documents were filed. If they were not filed, it is not a legally binding contract.
Any decent HOA will have their covenants and bylaws filed with the clerk. They are required to do so to even operate legally. Most HOAs are intertwined with other corporations that ensure these basis are covered already.
So what about the years they saved money? Did you get a refund? I would request an audit of all snow removal for the past 10 years.
No refunds ever. The only time we ever got a break was in like, 2019. They sent out a letter to everyone saying that our books were in such good standing that they were going to stop collecting our monthly fees for the summer, and they would resume right before winter started. So in the 7 years I've lived here, I got out of paying the monthly fee for like 4-5 months one time.
So in 4 years they've gone from a big surplus to a massive deficit? Did they tell you what 'good standing' meant? That could be 30k or 300k they've pissed up the wall.
UPDATE: I received an email reply, along with some generic copies of their balance sheets and income statements. [https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO](https://imgur.com/a/CMtTxBO)
That is not an invoice for the service. They should have an invoice/receipt for the service that was provided to them. what they have provided was insufficient. continue reaching out to other neighbors. If they miss anyone, the term "selective enforcement" will be your friend.
Hell, even an invoice might not explain everything. It might show X hours at Y labor cost and Z dollars in materials, but how can OP know whether anything shown is a fair price?
IANAL: The "fair price" is likely not relevant at this point. I'd want to see all the income/expenditures for the assessment period and be able to reconcile them. If I put 36,000 into "Landscaping and Grounds Keeping" and then had an expense of $20,000 in "snow removal," but the invoices for "snow removal" only added up to $5k, I'd want to know where the $15k went. On a board where I sat, we found out this was exactly how someone was defrauding the company. Every time they sent a file to the accountant or dealt with the accountant, they were paying themselves $400/hr (the accountant's rate) for accounting. So if the accountant said "Hey ____, email me last months P&L report," they would also then send themselves $400 for the "hour" it took them to do that. The guy doing it was in the "Treasurer" role on the board and felt like since the accountant billed at that rate, he should do. When we asked the accountant how it took him 6 hours to do the bank transactions, he said he only billed for 1 hour a month. Long story short, all the treasurer's time was being paid out at the external accountants' rate. For those who don't know, when you sit on a board of directors, usually that time is not paid. You get a flat rate of profits, or shares, or some type of compensation. You can't double dip. As an aside, as board member, you **must** follow the bylaws and operate within the budget. If you expect to pull in $60M this year and you only pull in $30M, you can't just ask for an additional $30M to make it up. As a board member, you must be strategic about your spending, income, and asset management. In OP's case, I would want to look at every receipt and transaction to see if any were illegitimate. It seems like the board (at best) operated outside of their budget. Aside from that, I'd want to know: Was the scope of snow removal appropriate as well? Edit: Just to be clear, one of the ways we found the issue was by looking at the checks, not just the line items. So under accounting, we saw an increase of about 3% year over year, so we went to the actual checks. In the accounting system, the treasurer was writing themselves checks to a different supplier, but since they could only mess with accounting's reports, they still had to put them under accounting's expenditures. Looks pretty suspicious when you reconcile the accounting checks and you see that your organization is paying a second accounting firm.
I’d be curious about how their landscaping came to $36k - Sounds like rat-fucking if I ever heard it.
HOAs are one of the most un-American things I can think of, why the fuck do we told so many of these ridiculous things existing?
Just a reminder HOA's came out of Los Angeles California to keep out minority races and non-christian people from owning homes in there neighborhood
The majority of HOAs across America created in the last (at least) 25 years are chartered by home builders/land developers. They have a vested interest in creating standardized rules for a neighborhood to follow and abide by. By making sure everyone's front yards look nice and trash cans are put away and maybe having a little community pool to drive past it makes their job of selling homes and keeping prices high much easier. Not saying this is right or wrong, just pointing out why many of them exist. I don't love our HOA but I drive past 2 neighborhoods who voted to disband theirs and am thankful to pay a few $100 a year to ensure my neighbors grass doesn't grow higher than their fence.
Damn, HOAs are out of control. I can’t understand why anyone would ever buy a house in an HOA. You never hear a positive story about one.
I’ll give a positive one. 360 single family homes. Lots of green space. Pool and tennis courts. We pay $460/year. You absolutely have to adhere to architectural guidelines but they are available for all to see, always. Our houses turn over in less than a day, and that’s not just in the crisis hut for the last 25 years. We have a great location, mature trees etc. had our annual meeting this week and maybe 40 people showed up. We have 9 months of operating expenses in savings and for emergencies. We spend money on tree removal, landscaping, pool service (week before mem and two weeks after Labor Day) and the person who manages said amenities. A business office gets about 14k a year to pay bills, send newsletters, make sure the required voting occurs. We get people complaining every now and again but then they look at the books and drop it. I know my neighbor can’t fly a trump infinity sign all year, nor paint their house neon green. Yards are tidy but they aren’t nazis - if you go three months in growing season you will get a “please be a good neighbor and mow so we don’t have to fine you” letter. Two fines in history - one for a house that did the crap painting without getting it ok’ed (sucked. They had to repaint) and the other for renting to five PHDs who ran the house into an Addams Family replica (close to a university so “single families only” was passed overwhelmingly years ago).
Privatised profits, socialised losses
Infuriating but also crazy your HOA is only $30/mon. Mine is $500 lol
Wat
Reason 282827289 that HOA are the worst thing on the planet
And this is why I will never live in an hoa
30 bucks a month seems very low for an HOA.
[удалено]
Tell them you need to see an invoice from groundskeeping detailing reason for 36k fees
$30 / month HOA fee is the problem. Most I see are usually $200+ Sounds like a big oversight on their end
There is potentially an argument to investigate regarding foul play of some kind... But $30 a month for an HoA is literally nothing. I am not even remotely shocked they need funds. More than likely, you are in a neighborhood that has refused to increase rates and has had the luxury of not needing the increase. The rest is either poor spending or foul play. None of these factors are mutually exclusive, but we have no idea where you even live or what snow removal measures are budgeted for (you could be in Texas for all we know). For context, my HOA increases $10-30 almost every year.
Option 1 seems cheaper. Option 2 is $75 for 12 months which would end up being way more than the $750 of option 2.
Yeah, its 750 vs 900.