Homeowners Associations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

As a law student, one of my lifelong goals is to dismantle as many HOA's as I possibly can.

I remember reading a story a few years ago where a guy had a house out in the country. Soon a developer came in and built a HOA community around his house. His house was legally excluded from the HOA as it was not part of the development, but still in the neighborhood. On the back of his house, he had a huge deck. The HOA started harassing him about the deck saying it did not meet the rules and needed to be removed. He kept telling the them his house was not part of the HOA. Then one day he came home and his deck was gone. The HOA sent in contractors to remove it. He sued them and won. The court made the HOA rebuild his huge deck. That ended up bankrupting the HOA. Man, I wish I could buy that guy a beer!

As a 31 year old aspiring homeowner, I’m appalled at the dark side of Chuck E Cheese your investigative team uncovered.

As a Canadian home owner, it's shocking to hear that things like "trash collection" and paving roads aren't covered by local government taxes! Aren't these homeowners paying taxes for these services?? The states is such a broken place, it honestly shocks me!

In the USA, individuals living in cars due to partial homelessness result from a complex interplay of factors. High housing costs relative to income, stagnant wages, and income inequality drive this issue. Job loss, weak social support, medical expenses, evictions, and lack of affordable housing also contribute, while systemic problems and inadequate policies further perpetuate the phenomenon.

What confuses the hell out of me is that the people who are so damn adamant about not being told what to do by a government aren't doing a damn thing about this.

i’m an incredibly non-violent person, but if an HOA secretly bought my house a year before evicting me for less than a Happy Meal i’d be catching multiple life sentences

all i've learned from years of watching this show is that America has a million ways to stumble into extreme debt but only like two ways to get rich

I fought my HOA and won. You have to understand how to play the game. A shared drain flooded my 1st floor condo. Because the drain was used by more than one unit it was considered community property and therefore the responsibility of the HOA. After 3 months of refusing to pay up, I called my local city inspectors office and asked for a code inspection of the building I was living in. I advised I had safety concerns, etc. A week later, the inspector came and He found 10 violations for my building alone. So he promptly called the HOA office to discuss the “violations”. Well needless to say, the HOA was extremely upset with my “tactics”. I advised that I would continue with my “tactics” until my condo was repaired. They finally agreed to cover the cost of the repair. The city also required them to repair the code violations or face fines. Haha 😂 I sold and moved out within a year. Just not worth the hassle living in a HOA community.

As a person born after 1988, after watching the whole episode, I am totally fine with not owning a home.

My house here in AZ falls under a HOA. I get fined all the time for little weeds that you can barely see with a microscope. One time I got fined when removing those little weeds, putting them in my trashbin and left the bin in the frontyard during the day. How ridiculous is that! These HOA should be outlawed. I hate them!

Bizarre to me as a foreigner that, for a country that values freedom as one of its core values, America has things like this. Functionally, Americans are some of the least free of the first world. Never have i heard of a private organisation issuing fines for trees "not being tree shaped" anywhere else in the world.

The fact that HOAs can perfectly, legally bypass even SCOTUS rulings on desegregation is some truly dystopian BS.

I lived in an HOA community for less than a year. In that time I was fined for not having a parking pass for a (non-running and unregistered) project car that never left my private garage. I don't know how they knew it was in there, and they refused to tell me. My best guess is that they climbed up my stairs high enough to look through the little windows at the top of the garage door on some day when I left the lights on in the garage. Never again. I'll live in my truck before I live in another HOA community.

I love the jokes in this and hate how accurate it is. HOAs are a damn nightmare. They literally have people who walk around the neighborhood looking for "violations" such as weeds growing through the cracks in the driveway, hedges that aren't trimmed enough, or the sidewalk being dirty. Yes, you're responsible for keeping the sidewalk cleaned in front of your home even though you don't own it.

I got my girlfriend that banana duck a year ago and seeing our boy on HBO was a big moment

I got into it with my HOA in a multiple building condo community because my unit flooded multiple times. Their property manager tried to get their attorney on the line to tell me what was my responsibility in my home, which wasn't what was in the contracts anywhere, and when he said I didn't have a law degree like him I simply said "but I do know what a 1 party consent state is to record conversations, and you and your client have now tried to defraud me of thousands of dollars now making this a felony." That lawyer flipped on the waterworks faster than I could have hung up, "don't turn me in, I have strikes against me already with the state BAR association..." well I turned him in and he lost his license and I turned in the property manager who in my state is required to have a real estate license and they also took his license away do to repeated violations.
I did not realize it was a nepotism case and that the property management company's owners were our property managers parents, and they proceeded to try to fine me for everything they could think of. They kept sending me pictures from other people's units and even a couple with time stamps from before I bought the property, so I threatened legal action about them and installed some hidden cameras outside of my unit and then proceeded to watch them on camera destroy/deface some of my property. They were a little shocked when I sued them for the damages, and got their real estate licenses taken away too meaning they couldn't operate their company anymore. They lost everything for their son, and the best part is the HOA and all of the neighbors now know not to mess with me at all or they'll end up with their careers in jeopardy too.

Laws limiting HOA power and authority need to be enacted.

As someone who is indeed under 35, I can confirm the chuck e cheese site does not disappoint. This right here is why I enjoy this show

When I bought my house I purposely avoided HOAs at all costs. With the budget I had, it significantly reduced the options I had, but I'm so glad I did.

I met a HOA board member who acts like Todd McCoy when asked simple inguiring questions, and yea, she deserves every bad thing you can think of.
-Actively turning down minorities looking to own a home
-Openly hating minorities/LGBTQ
-Fines because you chose a wrong color (where's the freedom)
-Fines because you chose to drink a beer on your lawn (where's the freedom)
-Fines because you chose to work on your car in your driveway (wheres' the freedom)
-Not having a job and just being a nosy busy-body all up in your freedom.
-Eventually foreclosing on a neighbors home because the neighbor wanted to discuss things and work things out.
Again, she deserves what your creative mind can imagine.

Yet another episode of Last Week Tonight that makes me ever so grateful to not be born and/or not live in USA.

I'm pretty sure that the "nope, you have to sign before you can read the rules" ones are ripe for law suits. "Unconscionable contracts" are still a thing.

The irony about "Ted" and the park bench in his front yard is that he was a long-time board member for the community in which he lives. All the years that he served on the board of directors, he helped enforce that exact same rule. Ted is fully aware that the bench wasn't allowed but willfully chose to ignore the rule when he decided that he wanted one himself.

Seeing this from the Netherlands, where HOAs only exist for apartments, and have nowhere near these powers, it's obvious that 'freedom' in the US is primarily for corporations, not individuals.

My dad was on the board of the HOA for his townhouse complex. They were very unobtrusive and just took care of the maintenance of the buildings and landscaping. They didn't care about what people did in their back yards or if their cars were parked in their driveways. Over the course of a year or two, my dad any all the other board members left. The new group that came in wanted to hire a management company. To pay for it, they needed more revenue. They started fining people for things that had never been enforced. When people started complaining, the new board sued my dad and the other board members who had never enforced the petty rules. The ironic part was that, as ex-board members, the HOA had to provide legal counsel for everyone they were suing. They were basically suing themselves. If they won, the HOA would also be responsible for paying the $1 million dollars they were suing each ex-board member for. It was insane. As the legal fees mounted, and the reserves were depleted, the board tried to bill the homeowners for them. Eventually, all of the new members were voted out, the lawsuit was dropped, and things went back to how they were.

Violence may not be an appropriate response but damn I could certainly empathize with anyone who chose to do so against their HOA.

I'm thrilled that Last Week Tonight is becoming a showcase of former SNL cast members playing unhinged characters, especially so with Rachel Dratch and now Chris Parnell. We'll probably have to wait another 10 years for Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong to be cast, but I'm absolutely here for it✨

A family member of mine had a hired landscaper mow their lawn and they missed a week due to family circumstances. The HOA literally measured the grass with a ruler and sent a passive aggressive letter telling them to cut it. It was half inch over the limit.

In Utah. An HOA in daybreak kept charging my brother fines for having dog poop in his front yard. He doesn't own a dog. It's also part of the HOA to pick up after your dog. $74 per day. He went on vacation once and got charged $1400 for poop in his yard that wasn't from his dog while in vacation

As a European I'm shocked this exists. This is genuinely one of my worst nightmares.

I used to take minutes (as a professional recording secretary) for several HOAs. The horror stories I could share!! One owner couldn't park his own pickup truck in the parking area because it was classified as a "work vehicle" and therefore prohibited. The fights about house colors! - all homes had to be 'earth tones', but that kind of went out the window when a new golf resort hotel was painted Pepto-Bismol Pink. Constant assessments for new roofs, parking lot paving and striping, and any other 'improvement' project that struck the board's fancy. Fines you had to deal with (read: pay) before you were allowed to sell your own home. People get on these boards and become little dictators, drunk on power. Never buy in an HOA!!!

Australian here, US HOA's are insane. Organisations like this shouldn't be allowed to have this much power.

It really must be great to live in such a free country.

For a country that talkes so much about freedom, it looks like nobody has it other than some rich companies.

Looking for homes in the Salt Lake City area, I came across a single wide mobile home in a very nice subdivision which was selling for $160,000, but the monthly HOA fee was almost $1,000. That's totally insane.

My grandfather lived in a neighborhood with an HOA. After a lengthy battle over a flagpole that was 1 ft too tall he went around to each of the board members houses at night and burned their lawns with fertilizer. He then reported them to their own boary that they weren't following HOA rules to keep grass at acceptable length. They didn't have any grass at all as the fertilizer burned it to death 😂
Gramps was a legend.

I'm so happy that the 7 years I lived in an HOA in Austin, Texas, they were just down to earth people. Most annoying things we got were being told our trash can couldn't be at the curb 24 hours after trash was picked up, no big deal. But they let us have lawn decorations, a shed (as long as the color was relatively close to the house color and we submitted some building sketches and measurements), built a deck and a firepit in my backyard no problem, and community issues were handled immediately. I called about a nasty pothole on my way to work once, and it was fixed before I got home for lunch. They did require *front* lawns/drives to be maintained, but it was never overly enforced. They even put on community gatherings like block parties and 4th of July celebrations, and had very open HOA meetings where we could ask any questions and they actually listened to residents, and made changes that the majority agreed with.
This all being said, I still don't trust HOAs and recognize that I was indeed one of the few lucky ones to just have some decent people in charge of it. I do wonder how bad it could've been if I had missed a single payment or if their had been a change of management.

I've had way too many bad neighbors to put myself in a situation where the bad neighbors have control over my lawn

That was my number one rule when i bought my house, NO HOA. I'm so happy and my neighbors are so cool. Everyone does whatever they want and there is no issues with anyone, and this is a multi racial neighborhood. Besides, who wants a home that looks like all the other houses on the block? HOA is where karens thrive.

My husband and I bought a condo when we first got married. The HOA was such a nightmare we sold the place and moved to a house with NO HOA! We will never live under an HOA ever again! This piece is so true and so sad and horrifying at the same time.

My mom’s HOA ended up charging us over $2000 after we missed one yearly payment of $100 on a condo that had burnt down, the month after she died. They hired attorneys to send a demand letter for us to pay. $100 fee, $1900+ in attorney’s fees, on a nonexistent condo because of the fire. Still wish the absolute worst for all those involved in kicking us when we were down.

I rent a condo in an HOA. After my wife left they decided I could no longer live with anyone who wasn't immediate family, and rejected my girlfriend's application. Even though they had no problem with me having a roommate in previous years, they just decided one day to discriminate against unmarried couples with children. This seems completely legal where I live in FL. I am now forced to live alone or get married before living with someone.

I would never buy a house in an HOA. I don’t even consider that you own your home if you buy into one of those things. It’s insane to me that Americans willingly join them. I guess the only thing we love more than freedom is policing our neighbors 🙄

I was born in 1988, only able to buy my home because of an inheritance. Literally said while I was house hunting that I would not buy ANY home in an HOA. Bought a house built in 1922 and no HOA in sight. Loathed the idea of ever owning a home in one, because I don't want a bunch of busybodies who are not paying one red cent of my mortgage to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own home.

😂 we went to war with our HOA 😂 my ex actually was arrested. He Refused to pay them a dime and still hasn't (I can't imagine) it became a battle of wills. The lady didn't have another job. Her job was to ride around and be a Karen. It got ugly. She would use rulers and some more. Come anytime of the day and night and stalk around the property 😅
It was an experience alright

When mentioning the "segregation loophole" I thought about an episode of Highway to Heaven (80s show). There's a community HOA. A house is for sale and a black family may buy it. The HOA President wants to get the board together to vote on pooling their money to buy the house themselves. This way they can sell the house to the "right people." Being a fictional show I thought it was bs. Turns out this is a very real thing they can do.

Ah, suburbia. The American dream, one HOA-approved tree at a time. ❤

A tip I've heard someone share before is to threaten HOA with a radio tower, because the us government sanctions radio tower construction under almost all circumstances and so the hoa can't stop you. Threaten them with thag great big eyesore until they relent

Then there's the problem of HOA developments that get built near or around homes or farms (that were there long before the first HOA house was built) that demand the pre-existing homes join the HOA and conform to their rules.
When I lived in Montana, a new development went up next to a farm that had been there for over a hundred years. The HOA actually tried to foreclose on the farm, because the owner declined to join. Unfortunately for the HOA, the farmer happened to be related to the county sheriff, the mayor, and the only judge in the local town. Montana doesn't put up with "snowbirds" coming in and dictating rules to the locals.

As a note - you do not HAVE to sign on to an HOA when you move into a home. You CAN opt out regardless of what the members say.

I can testify to the fact that local government does NOT have any power over HOA's. We were denied for years financial disclosure and meetings. Myself and my neighbor had to threaten for over many months to allow it to go public (which wouldn't have changed anything, just embarrassed them) before they reluctantly agreed. After at least 5 years of mishandling the books, we still don't know where all that money went. Hiring a lawyer would have cost thousands and years of litigation. Welcome to America when government does nothing for anyone but themselves and their friends.

I'm one of those rare people who dug the last HOA I lived in. I never wanted my own pool--too much maintenance and upkeep--but I got access to one through the HOA. I went to a meeting and asked them to put in a Little Free Library at one of the parks and they were on it right away--and fixed it when someone backed into it. The meeting was interesting, reminded me a lot of local government meetings, with that same mix of eccentrics, cranks and sincere community volunteers. The leadership of the HOA reflected the predominately Latino (and older) neighborhood. We never got a letter, even when we took down some trees and put in a garden. But I understand they were the exception, rather than the rule.
As a whole, they need a lot more oversight and obviously, people should know what they're getting into and have a say in HOA governance and rules. In many communities, they even have rules that the governing board CAN'T live in the neighborhood. That's crazy--how can you enact rules that you don't even have to live with?

It quickly escalated from “Ted can’t have a bench” to “Pat was forced to sell her house for $3.24”

That skit at the end with Chris Parnell is fantastic, hahaha! Chris Parnell has such a distinctive yet pleasant voice that is instantly recognizable no matter what you watch him starring in as a voiceover artist. He's one of my favorites right along side his Archer costar H. Jon Benjamin and David Wald. I would love to work alongside any one of those amazing voice actors someday.

Had a home in an HOA before this current house we have. That was it! Never again. We found a realtor to look for our current house a little over three years ago. Told her no HOAs and she returned with several homes one with an HOA. She explained she saved it for us because there wasn't an HOA fee there. I told her, the fees were not the issue, it's their stupid bullshit policies. Our current house doesn't have one and it's wonderful!! This story is spot on!

So basically, HOAs are legalized piracy, preying on the vulnerable, and the aged. What can people do to rein them in? Class action lawsuits maybe?

You'd think with the idea of 'Private property' you'd be able to do anything you wanted in the privacy of your own home without people barging in and poking their nose in.

As an Arizonian, the stipulations for our front yard are very similar to the one shared at the start of the video and our Association members are as crazy as that guy on the news. We get fined constantly for things like our tree branches being too close to our house. We literally see them driving around taking pictures of people's houses to send them fines.

As a millenial, I thank you for this video. It made a perspective of never owning a home MUCH better!

Before I bought my first home, I lived with a friend whos neighborhood had an HOA. I saw the stupid shit they would try to enforce. To the level of telling people what they could and couldn't have **inside** their garage. We even got a letter instructing my husband how to park his classic car in the driveway so the flames that were painted on it were not facing the street. It was well kept classic car that was in daily use! Someone just didn't like it and complained. It was a good learning experience. Since then, every home I've ever purchased since involved ensuring there was no HOA or deed restrictions involved.

Its ironic that HOAs are supposed to preserve property values but typically end up turning off a majority of potential home buyers

Every time I think I know all the horrible things that happen in America, there’s always one I haven’t hear of yet. Absolutely insane.

I'd love to see a segment on the related topic of lawns & weed ordinances, and how we often see people as negligent if they use any portion of their land for anything other than a sterile, resource-intensive, chemical-laden and non-native ground cover that we chop to the ground weekly. My impression is that the manicured lawn is a uniquely American obsession, and it's a major factor in the mass extinction of pollinators. Would be a great candidate for this show's theme of "things we assume are normal but are actually pretty messed up."

A rather different story exists in the UK, in the village of Bournville, near Birmingham; it was built in the 1890's by the Cadbury family to provide housing for the families of workers at the world-famous Cadbury factory and, to independently administer the village, the "Bourneville Village Trust" was set up, which still operates to this day.
Due to the unique nature of Bournville (most buildings in the village are Grade II Listed), the ability of people living there to make alterations to the housing stock is severely restricted, even down to the colours they can be painted, limits on the types of window that can be installed etc, but the residents are fine with it, as the Trust allow improvements so long as they retain their character.
Oh, and one more thing - Bournville is a Dry Village (the Cadburys were Quakers, and that rule is still in place to this day).

As somebody who used to be a manager for a HOA management company, I can tell you that everything in this is 100% correct. I was told by my boss on day 1 that I needed to have my assistant do daily inspections of all my communities and that if she didn't find at least 1 violation during each inspection, she wasn't doing her job correctly.
And the board members are a joke... I oversaw 13 communities and never once did I have a board of directors that were decent people... all self absorbed penny pinchers who wanted to pass on their misery to other hard-working homeowners.
I quit after only 7 months of employment - my breaking point was after an elderly man who had over $30k in back fees... all because he didn't get the boards "approval" to paint his house... and the management company I worked for was in the process of foreclosing on his home.

I found a home I really liked with HOA and I’m glad I passed on it. I dislike how nothing is disclosed until you’re already committed to buying.

As a 36 year old that owns a home, that intro was depressingly on point

The more I learn about America, the happier I am that my parents migrated to Australia. America in one massive cluster.

In Pennsylvania: Upon purchase of property within a planned community with an HOA, a public offering statement must be provided to the buyer describing community regulations. The buyer then has seven days to cancel the deal if they choose. If they continue with the purchase, they must obey all rules set forth by community documents

Homeowners Associations are set up by the original developer and are managed by a management company with ties to the developer who is hired by the HOA. Our HOA had had this relationship with the one management company for over 30 years. While the HOA is supposed to control the management company its the management company that sends you the violations and it is the HOA lawyers that are the ones who make billions going after you. I volunteered to assist my HOA clarify its communications after I was accused of having a bird bath I did not have. I sent them a photo of my front lawn and it took several months before they acknowledge their mistake and I informed them that the community manager didn't even know the rule that she claimed I violated. In our HOA we have an HOA code enforcement officer who drives around the community and reports any violations to the community manager. I seriously doubt even code enforcement officer knew the rule I supposedly broke since the community manager could not repeat it.
So the HOA president, allowed me as a marketing communications professional to revise their rules document to make it clearer and to create a PDF of it where the table of contents linked to the rule each item applied to in order for both the community manager and residents to identify the violation. Having done it we showed it to the community manager and explained to her that she needs to be less threatening. Her response got her fired when she claimed that it was her job to threaten residents. The HOA also took my recommendation to allow residents to upload their documents via the HOA web site to the architectural review committee which made getting approvals faster and I recommended they put up examples of houses painted in the approved colors for residents to see. Which they did. Yet the HOA had a vote online to reduce the quorum requirement necessary to allow them to change policy easily. I warned them they would not get the vote necessary because we residents don't trust HOAs and they didn't get the vote necessary because lacking 25% of the residents is how we residents limit the HOA.

As someone who always checks the "no HOA" box when looking at homes, that 82% statistic is very concerning

My parents moved to the suburbs when they retired and they are now a part of an HOA. Before they moved in, the head of the HOA was fighting for the power to be able to approve or deny renovations people wanted INSIDE THEIR OWN HOME. Needless to say, he's not in that position anymore.

My HOA’s management company is useless so I started telling them that in our email communications. I noticed the “junior account rep” and the management company owner had the same surname so I asked if they were related. The boomer owner was shocked and asked incredulously if I thought that him hiring his failson at 14 years old implied any kind of “favouritism” on his part. He then promoted him to community manager in the same email. I call the boy either “boy” or nepobaby in all our email communications now.

Like so many people, I've had experience of an HOA, coincidentally, the Providence one mentioned in the report - a subdivision further along the highway had what looked like watchtowers recognisable to any Briton my age as the guard towers from Stalagluft III. Seeing them at work helped me to make the best decision ever: move away from the United States - obviously not the only thing, but it all added grist to the mill. And since this was in 2005, I've never had a single day when I've not been proved right.

Does anyone remember the episode of The X Files where the HOA's rules were enforced by a monster who would kill you? Seems tame compared to the reality!

Even if you're over 35, please go and watch the Chuck E special! As a European who has never been in their restaurant, I thoroughly enjoyed that special.

HOAs are basically an answer to the question “what if Karens formed a union?”

Born in 88, we bought our first house basically in the middle nowhere. It’s amazing not having to abide by anyone’s rules.

HOAs are so weird. I'm in Australia and our local council handles road maintenance and trash collection, but it has no input on how my house looks and can definitely not issue a foreclosure on my property

I would never make the mistake of buying a house in an HOA, but if I did, and somehow got foreclosed and evicted, I can 100% promise that there would be a devastating fire in the home the same day I happened to move the last of my stuff out of it.

This really underscores the difference between the City and the Suburbs. My high rise condo has an HOA and we have very little problem with them. In fact, I’ve only interacted with them when doing big projects like replace my floors or replace a kitchen sink.
But, this is a problem for entitled suburbanites. They don’t know how to live in a community so they balk at HOA’s. High Rise HOA’s are very different than the suburban ones portrayed in this piece.

I was under the 35-year threshold for this video's viewerbase and boy, should I have listened. I'm never going within 10 miles of a homeowners' association ever again!

When my HOA tried to penalize a few people over trash cans being "visible from the street", it turned into every house leaving their trash cans out front and people threatening to burn down the clubhouse. Needlesstosay, they haven't bothered anyone about trash cans in years.

I lived in an HOA once in my life and luckily mine was hands off so we never heard from them. The unlucky part is when I went to sell my house for me to close I had to have a "certificate" from the HOA. It took me 6 weeks to get in touch with someone (this was in 2020). No one was answering emails or phones. I finally had to track down the HOA presidents personal phone number and call her because I couldn't get any response from the management company

I live in Poland, we only have HOA in apartments and I've obsessed to get out of their reach. I finally live in a house and I'm free. This episode genuinely scared me. I thought America was better than this. We have some landscape guidelines when we build, but its government-regulated and not so tight. Come on, regulate the SHAPE OF BUSHES in a yard??!!

Ah, John Oliver. Always a source of joy and optimism!

When I grow up I wanna live in a tiny house in the middle of nowhere. No neighbors for miles... That's the dream.

As someone who is drastically weird and only wants to own a home so that no one can stop my aesthetic ambitions, I will be avoiding HOAs like the plague. My belief that lawns are a crime against nature alone would get me kicked out.

A few home owners in my dads neighborhood tried to start an HOA a few years ago. They had a meeting to vote if it should be put in place and only two people voted for it. Those people were then ostracized to the point they sold their homes and moved. Truly the best outcome imo

HOAs can be either good or bad. Sometimes it’s the board members that create annoyances and nightmares.

As an Arizona resident and homeowner I can tell you or HOA is the worst!.. absolute tyrants controlling things they don't own.

This video is truly enlightening! Thank you for sharing.

I lived in Amberleigh, a HOA community near Springfield in Fairfax County, Virginia. Sadly, the HOA President would patrol the area looking for vehicles with expired DMV stickers and report them to the police. Three of my neighbors received violation notices for minor issues. As a result, we all decided to sell our homes and leave the community within a year and a half.

The Chuck E Cheese segment is very real - URL still works - and is amazing! Very thorough and funny.

We bought a home from a developer while they were building the neighborhood and our contract did not have an HOA established because everything was still being built, (best way to buy a home by the way if you're going to do it).
After about a year, the neighborhood built up around us and the HOA, which was created for the new home buyers, harrassed the crap out of us to try and get us to sign an agreement to join the HOA.
Remember, we bought before one existed from the developer. There was no HOA provision in our agreement, so they couldn't force us into the HOA so we had to agree to join the HOA, and their tactics were absolutely ridiculous.
Three times a week, we'd have someone come by our house to "meet with us" about joining, including lawyers. They tried to force us into paying fines, leave warnings, etc. BUT as long as we ignored them, they were uninforceable because, we weren't part of the HOA.
So, they put a stop sign in front of our house, and made that a designated bus stop, so it became a hassle to even leave the house sometimes. They even tried to put a lean on the home, but it was dismissed because the judge saw all of their tactics and was absolutely disgusted.
We never did join the HOA, but to absolutely tick them off, we sold the home direct to buyer, and the people that bought the home also had ZERO obligation to the HOA, not for lack of them trying to make sure that if we sold it, the person buying would be automatically part of the HOA. That was kicked out because, again, the judge was ticked off at them.
As far as I know, the people that bought from us still own the home, and they haven't joined the HOA, which is good, because their fee at $2500 a year. Screw 'em lol

I'm so glad HOA's don't exist in the UK. I once heard a story of a wheel chair user who was continually fined by his HOA for having put up letter box he could actually reach because the rules said letter boxes had to be over a height he couldn't reach

Once the purpose of the rule enforcement is to make money, rather than to protect the community, then the HOA has become predatory.

A year or so back I ended up a few weeks behind on my HOA payment and had the guy who fancies himself the "King of the HOA" show up at my back door one evening asking me when I was going to pay it. To which my answer was, as soon as I was able. Found it hilarious he threatened to put a lien on my home for 125$..Said do whatever you feel you need to do chief.
Also told him to never show up at my home again. If he had something he needed to communicate, feel free to do so via email or phone.

My last two homes I bought in neighborhoods where the HOA has dissolved years ago, but all the adjacent neighborhoods still have theirs. You get the aesthetic pressure of HOA compliance keeping the neighborhood looking nice, but with none of the legal or social hassle of a real HOA. Unless I buy a farm or a warehouse as my next home, this is the only way I’ll buy a home from here to perpetuity.