Anyone had positive/negative experiences with a homeowner's association?

[CoffeeCat]

I'm wondering if anyone has positive or negative experiences with a homeowner's association?

We are having a really difficult time with ours. The board is a bunch of chumps. They do not take care of the lawn and grounds as they should.

Do most home/condo owners have to fight tooth and nail to get the bushes trimmed? Or is our homeowner's association a rare bad apple?

Our backyard and patio floods every time we get a heavy rain (several times a year). We usually have 2-3 inches of standing water on our cement patio. It's been 14 months since I reported this--and they're "still working on it."

I guess I'm just not getting the politics of homeowner's associations.

Anyone have any insight or experiences you'd like to share?

[Jon8503]

1. Yeah, I know it is a tough battle. I think you can find some legal

help probably out on the Internet or at least some answers to your questions. About the only thing you can do is get some legal assistance from a firm that specializes or knows the ins and outs of the associations.

[izzie]

2. Once I had problems. They would not plow so I would not pay

and they said I would have to pay even if they did not plow. They won and I payed and we got a truck and did our own plowing.I was mad but not worth a court case.

[CottonBear]

3. I have an EXCELLENT homeowner's association. I'm lucky.

We are a 30 year old neighborhood. Our condos can only be occupied by an owner (and a roommate or family members). In other words, you can't move out and lease your home. We live in a college town and this rule keeps our property values high by keeping out student partiers. We have several grad students who bought homes here and we've had a few undergrad homeowners who have their names on the deeds and lived here while in college. They were nice.

We have a neighbor who runs the day to day operations of the neighborhood. We pay her condo monthly fee and give her a cash gift at Christmas in return for her efforts. She is wonderful. There are 5 board members as well. We meet once a year and the board meets each month.