Robert Nower, Unfiltered. Once again, it's been a while. This particular session is about HOAs.
Now, I've had a lot of homes compared to most Americans. I've had about 29 different homes that I've lived in.
Some of which I have built myself as a general contractor. Others I have purchased from a developer.
And others I have purchased from construction firms like, I'm not going to say D.R. Horton, but somebody like that.
All over the country. California, Florida. But in Florida, HOAs and condo HOAs are the worst.
Because of the collapse of the seaside condo in Miami, Florida, that was just the tip of the iceberg
to show how badly condo HOAs had been managing and administering the monies and the rules and requirements
to protect the interest of homeowners in condos. And as a result of that, recently in the last year and a half,
the Florida State Legislature under Governor DeSantis had attempted twice to rewrite the HOA rules
and finally did, but not to any great extent making them any better. They just made them more cumbersome.
But some of the things that the Florida GOP Legislature has recently done in Florida has been to
make living in an HOA a living hell because of the administrative burden of living in an HOA,
the rules and requirements, the paperwork, the accounting, and the compliance aspects of living in an HOA,
especially if you are a board member of an HOA. Today in the state of Florida, and I was a board member,
my wife was a board member of a different HOA down in Vero Beach at one time, and we were going to run it
to the full extent of the Florida State rules and make sure that everybody complied with the rules
and that the money taken in by the HOA was sufficient to cover all of the maintenance requirements,
the lakes, the ponds, the roads, the sewage, the septic, and all the things that go into caring for an HOA.
They can be quite expensive. The homeowners of the small HOA that we lived in didn't want that,
and so we said, fuck it, and turned it over to an individual who said he would take it over,
and he didn't want to comply with any of the Florida State rules, which now you have to,
and if you aren't, you can be sued big time, and so we left, and now we live in a different place in North Florida.
We loved where we lived, we just didn't like the HOA, because HOAs are so onerous,
and now that the Florida State Legislature has stepped in and rewritten the rules under the new Florida State HOA Act
and the new Condo HOA Act, which falls under Section 720 of the Florida State Code,
and I believe, if I'm correct, the new Florida HOA Act falls under Section 718 of the Florida State.
They are specific areas of Florida State statutes that every single HOA member
should read and know like the back of their hands, and if not, have at least a printed copy
of the Florida State statutes and be able to refer to it.
If your HOA today does not have a lawyer representing your HOA, you are in danger, you are in crisis,
because you can be sued, your board can be sued, your HOA members can be sued, for so many things.
You need to have an attorney. You also need to have liability insurance, both as a board member
and as an HOA to protect the individual homeowner, lot owners of your HOA,
because if you don't have an umbrella policy that will protect everybody, you are in deep, dire danger
under the new Florida HOA. Same thing with the condos.
So when I say HOA, I mean the same for a regular HOA with homes as opposed to a condos in Florida.
Condos are actually a different kind of breed. They're even more complex than a regular HOA
where homes are involved. You need to know and have read.
Let me back up. Before you, as an American, moving from California or New York or New Jersey,
before you ever move to Florida and you are thinking about moving into a particular HOA,
and remember I said this also applies to condominiums,
you need to get a copy of the HOA rules and regulations, the covenants,
and you need to read them, every single line. You need to read them like it's the Bible.
You need to read and know and understand everything that's in them,
whether it's talking about fences, dogs, animals, children, basketball hoops,
what you can park in your driveway, what you can't do, lawn maintenance, financial requirements,
whatever, you need to read through the HOA covenants, rules and regulations for your HOA,
and you need to first decide whether or not you want to live in a particular HOA.
I have seen, my wife and I have come across many HOAs in Florida that we thought we would like to live in,
but the first thing we always do, and I'm going to tell you this, 99.5% of all human beings in the state of Florida
that go house hunting, they never bother once to ask for a copy of the HOA documents and read them,
and you better goddamn well read them before you decide to purchase a home,
whether it be a DR Horton home or a Lennar home or a custom-made home or a used home in an HOA,
you better get a copy of those HOA documents from your realtor and you better read them
because they will bite you in the ass so bad if you don't. I'm not shitting you.
So you need to read them to know and understand what you can and can't do,
what's permissible, what's not permissible, and what your requirements are as a homeowner.
I have a friend, we have a friend who lives in a particular HOA near us here,
and the HOA board members require that a five-inch spike be placed in every single lawn
so that the spike when it's in your lawn, if the grass grows up covering the spike
and your spike must be displayed, you can't take it out,
and they see that the grass is overgrown your spike of five inches,
then you are in non-compliance and you can be fined.
Can you imagine? You're going to be fined if your grass is over five inches tall,
and I understand that, but that's going a bit too far.
They further went and said that if you're not going to mow the grass yourself,
you have to use the board's own lawn service, which was quite expensive,
instead of hiring or competing for a different one to come in and do your lawn.
That's just one example.
When my wife and I moved out of the particular HOA in Vero Beach that we were in,
the new HOA president who decided that he was going to be better than us at managing the HOA,
he decided he was going to save money.
He was going to save money by not spending the money on maintenance of the ponds,
not spending money on the aerator for the ponds,
not spending money on septic sewage cleanout of the sewer pipes,
which is mandatory every 12 months.
He was going to save all this money so that he could keep the HOA fees for that particular HOA low at $75 a month.
We were estimating that they were going to go up to $150 to $175
based on the neglect of the HOA during the time that we lived there,
that nobody had been complying with doing the minimum things required to keep the roads,
the sewers, and the ponds in good working order.
So by his deciding to go against what the mandatory rules and regulations of the HOA were personally
and doing what he thought would save money for the HOA,
what he was really doing by those actions was putting the HOA members, the other members that live there, in jeopardy.
You just can't do that. You have to take care of the maintenance requirements for an HOA,
the roads, the curbs, the sewers, the lights, the ponds, those kinds of things.
The electricity for the lights for the entrance, the gates.
He didn't want to do that. That's a really dangerous bad HOA with a lot of problems coming down the pipe.
So you as a homeowner, before you even purchase a home at a particular HOA,
you need to read what the HOA rules and regulations are
and first decide if you really want to live there or is it going to be a pain in the ass.
And I can tell you this, nine out of ten people end up finding that in Florida,
HOAs are a bigger pain in the ass than they are worth.
Recently, my wife and I drove down back to Vero Beach hoping we could find a place that wasn't too bad
and it was built by Lennar. Now Lennar, based on YouTube postings, videos, customer complaints,
has a notorious reputation for being a bad builder.
Not my opinion, just saying it's all over the web if you go check out Google and see what customer complaints are about Lennar.
So they were building a new subdivision called Brookhaven down there, which is almost complete.
And when you read, first of all, the HOA payment per month was $210.
And that didn't even include mowing the grass.
That was just for maintenance of the ponds and the lakes because they had so many ponds
and acreage of ponds and lakes and roads and all the roads had been redone.
So the maintenance costs were significantly higher than older subdivisions.
And so you weren't getting a lot of money for paying $210 out of your pocket every month.
But when you read the rules that I read, they were horrendous.
They were like, oh, you can't even win this. Oh, my God, you wouldn't even want to live there.
You couldn't even take a shit without being put on a report by somebody,
which is why people don't want to live in HOAs.
Most people in the state of Florida want to opt for non-HOA property.
But sadly, non-HOA property in the state of Florida is becoming exceedingly hard to find.
And unincorporated areas of cities like Orlando, the unincorporated areas,
unincorporated areas of Palm Bay and Melbourne and Vero Beach that are the outliers.
They're outside of the main living corridor.
And that's why they're unincorporated. They're not a part of the county.
They're in the county, but they're not an incorporated part of the county.
They tend to be cheaper and they also don't tend to have HOAs.
Homeowner Associations.
So they tend to be cheaper and you can do what you want to.
You can shit in a hole that you dig.
You can do whatever you want to do without having your neighbor put you on a report
or call somebody and get you fined.
There was a neighborhood called Pine, Bent Pine in Vero Beach as an example.
And I wish, I wish in hindsight that my wife and I had bought in there
because Lifestyles was building a home in Bent Pine that was really nice
and very good at the time prior to the pandemic.
And we could have bought that house for $525,000.
Today that same house is $850,000 two years later.
But we read, as most people do not do, we read the HOA documents prior to deciding
if we wanted to purchase that house.
And what it said was there were two Bent Pines.
There's the old Bent Pine and the new Bent Pine.
And it was basically a boilerplate of the old Bent Pine.
And it said, if you have a car, it must be parked in the garage.
No cars could be parked outside.
So we asked the question to the realtor who was selling the property,
well, what if you had teenagers, what if you had children and they had a car?
Where are they going to park their cars?
If our cars are parked in the garage, where are they going to park their cars?
She goes, well, that's a really good question.
So she said, I see your point.
I said, now I have a boat.
I want to put the boat in the garage because your HOA documents say
boats cannot be parked outside.
I want to park my boat inside the garage and leave my car outside,
but according to your HOA documents, I can't do that.
And I'll be fined if I do.
She said, I can get that changed.
Well, I've talked to thousands of so-called sales agents,
and they don't know how to get those things changed.
I do, but they don't.
Most sales reps for most realtors and construction sites are stupid.
They don't know HOA documents, and they don't understand how to get them changed.
They don't understand the fact that changes to HOA documents that are done,
whether they be done by the developer or by the association itself
once it's transferred, have to be registered with the state of Florida
and also registered with the county circuit court.
And registered and put on file so that the public can read them
because it is required under the state of Florida sunshine rules.
So she said that she could get those HOA covenants changed.
I didn't believe her.
I wish I had known her better.
I wish that I could have believed her because, lo and behold,
she did get those things changed.
But the household lost the chance to get the house that we really wanted
to be able to move back to Vero.
But I couldn't trust her.
I couldn't trust that she could truly do what she said she was going to do.
And that is the problem with most real estate sales agents in the state of Florida.
They promise you the world, and they deliver nothing.
So it really comes down to you as a prospective buyer and a homeowner.
Are you going to get a copy of the covenants and read them first
before you decide to plunk your hard-earned money down?
And then how many people really do read the HOA rules and regulations?
Very, very few people until such time as you get put on report
for something your children do, you do, or your dog does,
or your birds do, or your cats do,
or you wash your boat out in the middle of the driveway
once you get back from fishing.
Oh, my God.
We had a friend who owns a storage facility, multimillionaire,
and he lived in a very nice neighborhood called...
what was it called? Not Howie in the Hills.
It was a different one. Harbor Hills.
He lived in Harbor Hills, and he would take his kids out
four-wheeling on the weekend and get the four-wheelers all muddy and dirty,
bring them back, and he would hose them down and wash them down in his driveways.
Oh, my God.
His neighbors went ape shit.
You can't do that in your driveway.
You can't bring those shitty four-wheelers in here
and wash them and hose them down.
Oh, my God. What a fucking eyesore that is.
Oh, my God.
Oh. He had to put up with that shit so much
that he finally said, fuck it, we're moving.
And he moved to a non-HOA piece of property,
and now he's a lot happier.
He can do what he wants to do, and he doesn't have to worry about people
getting into his knickers telling him what he can't and can't do.
I'm just saying.
So with that, I'm going to say,
if you're going to live in an HOA, read the documents.
You can go online in Florida to the state of Florida
and download them.
You can go to your county records and download them.
You can just Google HOA documents for Indian River County as an example,
and they will pop up.
You do have to know the name of the HOA that you're moving to,
but with that, Bob out.
And so if you've learned anything from this, if you're moving to Florida,
learn to where you can go to obtain a copy of the HOA documents.
Learn to read them first before you ever plunk your money down.
And if what you read is too distasteful,
then you don't really want to live in that HOA neighborhood.
Go somewhere else, try to find a piece of property that's non-HOA to live.
Even if the neighbors living around you are shitty, redneck, have crappy old cars,
you got to learn to live with it because that is the state of Florida.
Florida is not necessarily a nice, beautiful place.
Florida in general is a pretty rednecky place
and got a lot of rundown property, especially when you're living in non-HOA areas.
One perfect example of that would be Vero Beach, Lake Estates in Indian River County.
Sounds great. Vero Beach, Lake Estates.
Well, when you go there, it looks like a bunch of hillbillies.
So, anyway, with that, Bob out.