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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1767 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 27, 2025

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What is your advice for getting to know the ins and outs of a local community? We just bought a house and are joining an HOA for the first time. There are various things I'm a little frustrated about in the community, but overall it seems like a good place.

We plan to stay here for a while, so I don't want to come out brandishing my frustrations first thing. How would you go about learning more about the community, outside of going to the meetings and social events and such? (which we plan to do)

Also, feel free to use this as a general thread to discuss good or bad HOA experiences! I'm curious...

What is your advice for getting to know the ins and outs of a local community? We just bought a house and are joining an HOA for the first time.

Umm, abandon all hope ye who enter here? (Kinda sorta but not really) Kidding!

I've had the misfortune pleasure of living in two separate places with different flavors of homeowners organizations. The first community in question was a relatively large community of several hundred houses and the second was a much smaller community of ~50 houses. Both communities provided water and road maintenance for the respective homes. The first had some pretty restrictive covenants, was well run, and expensive AF while the second was almost completely unrestricted, cheap AF, and still trying to live in the close knit community days where everyone knew everyone and households pitched in together to fix community problems, which to me does not seem to work in the 21st century. Regardless, my experience has been tons of dramatically unreal expectations and soul sucking low stakes drama, which greatly inhibits the ability of the HOA to do meaningful things. This was, IME, especially true of the smaller community, which did not have enough of a homeowner base to really afford the type of service and reliability that the homeowners desired and expected. Both communities were big on getting new homeowners involved in the HOA. DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE ROPED INTO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Leave the complainers and the power trippers to each other--your sanity will thank you.

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