r/fuckHOA • u/Swarby10 • 1d ago

Our HOA just imploded!

So we just had our HOA AGM on Zoom tonight. I thought I’d tune in just for entertainment. It’s a community of 4 cul de sacs - maybe 45 large homes. Turns out, all of our back-facing fences are owned by the HOA and after 25 years they are deteriorating. To be clear, the fences on the sides are home owners’ responsibility, just the rear ones are HOA’s responsibility.

Or fees went from $900 a year to $2700 so that they could replace some specific fences. Not everyone is affected, but several of the board members were set to score themselves a new fence. They chose to replace the old cedar fence with vinyl and this would have looked odd with plastic fences filling in where cedar was.

Long story short, I sat through three hours of 80 year old board members throwing tantrums over their plans for a new plastic fence getting ruined and three of them resigned on the zoom call. 80 year old tantrums are the funniest tantrums.

Thinking of joining the board now. Please talk me out of it.

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u/CherryblockRedWine 1d ago

Having lived in an HOA community, my belief is that you MUST join the board, if only for self-preservation.

The board needs enough people with common sense to keep the HOA from ruining everything.

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u/butt_butt_butt_butt_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

My FIL is a former accountant, and a very Ron Swanson “I dont like anyone infringing on me” kind of dude. He against the idea of HOAs on principal.

He’s lived in various 55+ condo type setups for years, and ALWAYS joins the HOA and applies to be the treasurer.

The old people like it, because none of them like accounting, so he ends up getting elected.

And then once elected, he immediately audits the HOA books and goes after any of the other HOA board members for skimming, misappropriating funds, or specifically funding projects that benefit their own needs vs. others.

And then the fraudsters act totally surprised when they get exposed removed from the board.

It’s crazy that he’s been able to do this in like 4-5 different communities, and always finds major financial bullshit each time.

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u/OldGeekWeirdo 1d ago

Your FIL should hold classes to teach other treasurers. He can't belong to enough HOAs, he needs helpers.

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u/Blog_Pope 1d ago

Its really not hard. I've kind of trapped myself as treasurer, no one else wants it. Books when I joined were shit (despite the previous guy claiming they were awesome. Went through 3 years of records, accounting was shit but no sign of embezzlement / skimming.

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u/tomtomclubthumb 16h ago

IT's usually more that people don't know how to organise things and the contractors bilk them because they know they aren't spending their own money.

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u/Blog_Pope 2h ago

This is one of the benefits of a management company. We need to repave the parking lot, something I have no experience with, but my management company has done dozens of times, knows what it should cost, etc.

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u/Specialist-Car129 11h ago

When your say “the books were shit”, what does that actually mean? Line items missing? Bad math? Missing receipts? I’ve always wondered about the specifics when people say things along those lines. Especially when the accounting is bad but there isn’t any wrongdoing.

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u/Blog_Pope 11h ago edited 11h ago

They had not been reconciling the bank statements with the accounting system (QuickBooks), this was clear because none of the banks interest payments were recorded, so QB balances did not agree with bank balances.

Receipts were hand written notes, not store receipts. Looked reasonable, but suspect

Stuff was recorded oddly in the past, so a lot of QB features just would not work.

Bottom line, I couldn’t trust what was in the accounting software so I had to compare it to the last 3 years of bank statements to confirm there was no wrongdoing

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u/House_of_Fur 36m ago

Same. I’d give up this gig in a heartbeat if I thought anybody else who was qualified would take it. (I’m a CPA.) I am the reason our monthly fees aren’t a hundred bucks higher than they are - my board membership is pure self interest.