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Of course the question re: HOA living is whether one thinks The Rules are reasonable or not. One person's "reasonable" rule is another's "intrusive overreach."
For example: I don't want some clique-y board of HOA directors telling me that I can only plant flowers or a shrub on certain specific parts of the piece of land that I own, and nowhere else on my property. That, IMHO, is unreasonable. For Pete's sake, I would be wanting to plant something like a 3-foot-tall azalea, not a freakin' 30 ft tall redwood tree with the attitude of "who cares if it ends up crashing onto my neighbor's house, I want a redwood and I can do whatever the bleep I want on my own property, so there." Yet to an HOA there's no difference between the azalea and the redwood. IMHO that's ridiculous.
I don't want to be told that if someone comes to visit me they cannot park their car in my driveway, or that I'm not allowed to wash my own car in my own driveway in front of my own house. (the above example from the HOA rules of two friends, one in CA and the other in NC)
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Then don't buy in an HOA like that. As I said you had a lazy realtor. Covenants are easily accessible for ones who care to look. And HOAs are only required in subdivision built after a certain date (1995-1999, somewhere in there) which leaves plenty of housing stock built after 1980.
Funny that people who hate HOAs generally end up living in towns/villages where the government ends up acting as the HOA. Unless they can't afford that and then we end up with threads "my neighbor is doing this that and the other thing and won't stop what should I do". If you live in a town willing and able to enforce rules, you don't end up with those problems because people who don't want to be good neighbors aren't attracted to those towns and villages. Location government enforcement vs. HOA? It's the same thing, different name. With an HOA, you actually can better control the type of environment you want to live in within a town. Drive through my neighborhood and you'll immediately see that it's pretty live and let live, unless you really push it. Drive through my parents', you'll see every rule that there exists and that it's strictly enforced.
If you had a realtor who told you that you have to buy in an HOA to get what you want, and left it at that, you had a really lazy realtor. I just found exactly what you were looking for in 5 minutes.
So true many LI villages are pretty much defacto HOAs
So, in the mid-90s, with 1 baby, we left NY for the mountains. As in Rockies. Utah. There were some positives, such as cheaper everything, lower taxes, but culturally, it wasn't a fit. Plus the business environment in NY was still going gangbusters. We returned after a year and moved to LI. LI was pretty good back in the late 90s, good economy, reasonably priced homes and property taxes still hadn't run away. We bought a house in western Suffolk. Fast forward 20 years. Property taxes zoomed $1000 per year over 10 years. My public library and volunteer fire departments became tax authorities (afterall, the head librarian at my local library was making $160k plus benefits and pension).
Left again a few years ago, after spending 18 years commuting, paying taxes, and dealing with all of the BS. Haven't looked back. Left family to be out of Dodge. Sure, been back for visits and each time, glad to be out. I could enumerate all of the wins and the litany of complaints about LI that have gone to from bad to worse. Oh and what about the bagels, pizza and beaches? Haha. But there's a number of folks on this forum who will defend Long Island to the end. All I can say, leaving NY/LI I went from carry costs of $5000-6000/month to literally a fraction of that. Life's not perfect elsewhere, but it sure is more relaxed and rewarding.
So, in the mid-90s, with 1 baby, we left NY for the mountains. As in Rockies. Utah. There were some positives, such as cheaper everything, lower taxes, but culturally, it wasn't a fit. Plus the business environment in NY was still going gangbusters. We returned after a year and moved to LI. LI was pretty good back in the late 90s, good economy, reasonably priced homes and property taxes still hadn't run away. We bought a house in western Suffolk. Fast forward 20 years. Property taxes zoomed $1000 per year over 10 years. My public library and volunteer fire departments became tax authorities (afterall, the head librarian at my local library was making $160k plus benefits and pension).
Left again a few years ago, after spending 18 years commuting, paying taxes, and dealing with all of the BS. Haven't looked back. Left family to be out of Dodge. Sure, been back for visits and each time, glad to be out. I could enumerate all of the wins and the litany of complaints about LI that have gone to from bad to worse. Oh and what about the bagels, pizza and beaches? Haha. But there's a number of folks on this forum who will defend Long Island to the end. All I can say, leaving NY/LI I went from carry costs of $5000-6000/month to literally a fraction of that. Life's not perfect elsewhere, but it sure is more relaxed and rewarding.
Of course the question re: HOA living is whether one thinks The Rules are reasonable or not. One person's "reasonable" rule is another's "intrusive overreach."
For example: I don't want some clique-y board of HOA directors telling me that I can only plant flowers or a shrub on certain specific parts of the piece of land that I own, and nowhere else on my property. That, IMHO, is unreasonable. For Pete's sake, I would be wanting to plant something like a 3-foot-tall azalea, not a freakin' 30 ft tall redwood tree with the attitude of "who cares if it ends up crashing onto my neighbor's house, I want a redwood and I can do whatever the bleep I want on my own property, so there." Yet to an HOA there's no difference between the azalea and the redwood. IMHO that's ridiculous.
I don't want to be told that if someone comes to visit me they cannot park their car in my driveway, or that I'm not allowed to wash my own car in my own driveway in front of my own house. (the above example from the HOA rules of two friends, one in CA and the other in NC)
Look, I get the conformity/Big Brother aspect of HOAs and if that's the kind of environment that appeals to some people, that's fine. They are willing to give up an extra measure of individual freedom in exchange for what they see as "safety" (from whatever they regard as unacceptable or threatening.)
But just because someone else thinks that the loss of those rights/freedoms is not worth that 'gain', does NOT mean that they are self-centered b*****s just one step removed from an invading Mongol horde either. Or that they are championing the freedom to be as obnoxious and annoying as possible. It just means that they think the HOA-life tradeoff of certain freedoms for "protection" (from whatever, all the time) is not worth it.
To say that everyone who does not want to live in the "Stepford" environment of an HOA is a some kind of selfish, uncivilized lout is painting with way too broad a brush.
I’ve lived in 3 HOA communities.
The biggest Nazis were on LI.
A close second was Florida.
My current HOA has common sense rules, no massive egos on the board and people conform to a minimum standard.
But to say that everywhere in the South is an HOA is ridiculous. It’s a small fraction of properties.
So, in the mid-90s, with 1 baby, we left NY for the mountains. As in Rockies. Utah. There were some positives, such as cheaper everything, lower taxes, but culturally, it wasn't a fit. Plus the business environment in NY was still going gangbusters. We returned after a year and moved to LI. LI was pretty good back in the late 90s, good economy, reasonably priced homes and property taxes still hadn't run away. We bought a house in western Suffolk. Fast forward 20 years. Property taxes zoomed $1000 per year over 10 years. My public library and volunteer fire departments became tax authorities (afterall, the head librarian at my local library was making $160k plus benefits and pension).
Left again a few years ago, after spending 18 years commuting, paying taxes, and dealing with all of the BS. Haven't looked back. Left family to be out of Dodge. Sure, been back for visits and each time, glad to be out. I could enumerate all of the wins and the litany of complaints about LI that have gone to from bad to worse. Oh and what about the bagels, pizza and beaches? Haha. But there's a number of folks on this forum who will defend Long Island to the end. All I can say, leaving NY/LI I went from carry costs of $5000-6000/month to literally a fraction of that. Life's not perfect elsewhere, but it sure is more relaxed and rewarding.
Amazing how culture becomes secondary when the costs get out of control.
But to say that everywhere in the South is an HOA is ridiculous. It’s a small fraction of properties.
Sorry if I wasn't clear; I didn't mean to imply that everywhere in the South is HOA Country. Just that it was the case in all of the areas in the south that we (at that time) were considering buying in. Or that friends or relatives of ours had relocated to.
Our public-water Must Have was definitely tied to the HOA situation in probably 80% of cases. Unlike here, where public water is the norm rather than the exception, as soon as we said "public water is a must, HOA is a deal breaker" that small fraction of properties you mention suddenly ballooned into being the majority.
I'm not saying that having public water isn't an issue in more northerly areas also: It definitely is. After we decided against moving South (for cultural reasons as much if not more than the HOA thing) we started looking in Connecticut. HOAs weren't the problem, but again, once you get out of a fairly urban setting it was a real challenge to find houses that (a) had public water and (b) weren't located too close to a Superfund site. I never realized how many of those Connecticut has..... again, in the majority of the towns that we'd be interested in moving to.
One could argue that Long Island really does not have any culture aside from commuting into NYC to catch an occasional show or visit a museum. ---But there's something about the sarcastic, angry energy that I really miss -- It's kind of like diving into the ocean when it's 60 degrees
As somebody that left Long Island and couldn't be happier, I was always taken back by the group think of the crybabies that leave and come back. There are other places to move to besides Florida and the Carolinas lol. Common sense would dictate that to leave LI an be happy, you should find a place that has the positives of Long Island, while avoiding most of the negatives that you despise about the place. Such places do exist. If you move JUST because you want a bigger house...well you are bound to be disappointed, for that is a materialistic endeavor and reeks of superficiality at its core. If that is one component of why you move, than that is fine. Where I currently reside offers everything that NY and LI does, except at 2/3 the price, much cleaner, much friendlier people, great schools, not as densely populated. PS. It's not The Carolinas or Florida
You'd be surprised how hard it is to find places in the Carolinas and points south that are NOT in an HOA. It's way different than here when it comes to the whole HOA/not HOA thing.
About 10 years ago I looked into the whole Maybe Retiring Down South Makes Sense thing and was really surprised that almost all the houses that met our other criteria turned out to be in HOAs. We would want suburbia but on more property (like 1 acre) and with a larger house for the money and of course lower taxes, LOL. Also fairly recent construction (not older than say 1980, and this was in the early 2000s.) Public water is an absolute written in stone MUST for us. And as soon as we said that, whammo! every single realtor said "Well, to get those things you will pretty much have to buy in an HOA." And because ever living in an HOA falls into the It'll Be a Cold Day In H**l category, that effectively eliminated most of the housing stock in any town/area we'd have wanted to live in.
One of the many reasons we decided we would never be happy anywhere south of New Jersey. (if even that, lol)
Cheap living is cheap for a reason
And to the bolded, same
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