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Robert Nower, Unfiltered. Once again, it's been a while. This particular session is about HOAs.

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Now, I've had a lot of homes compared to most Americans. I've had about 29 different homes that I've lived in.

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Some of which I have built myself as a general contractor. Others I have purchased from a developer.

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And others I have purchased from construction firms like, I'm not going to say D.R. Horton, but somebody like that.

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All over the country. California, Florida. But in Florida, HOAs and condo HOAs are the worst.

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Because of the collapse of the seaside condo in Miami, Florida, that was just the tip of the iceberg

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to show how badly condo HOAs had been managing and administering the monies and the rules and requirements

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to protect the interest of homeowners in condos. And as a result of that, recently in the last year and a half,

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the Florida State Legislature under Governor DeSantis had attempted twice to rewrite the HOA rules

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and finally did, but not to any great extent making them any better. They just made them more cumbersome.

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But some of the things that the Florida GOP Legislature has recently done in Florida has been to

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make living in an HOA a living hell because of the administrative burden of living in an HOA,

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the rules and requirements, the paperwork, the accounting, and the compliance aspects of living in an HOA,

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especially if you are a board member of an HOA. Today in the state of Florida, and I was a board member,

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my wife was a board member of a different HOA down in Vero Beach at one time, and we were going to run it

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to the full extent of the Florida State rules and make sure that everybody complied with the rules

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and that the money taken in by the HOA was sufficient to cover all of the maintenance requirements,

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the lakes, the ponds, the roads, the sewage, the septic, and all the things that go into caring for an HOA.

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They can be quite expensive. The homeowners of the small HOA that we lived in didn't want that,

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and so we said, fuck it, and turned it over to an individual who said he would take it over,

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and he didn't want to comply with any of the Florida State rules, which now you have to,

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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.

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We loved where we lived, we just didn't like the HOA, because HOAs are so onerous,

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and now that the Florida State Legislature has stepped in and rewritten the rules under the new Florida State HOA Act

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and the new Condo HOA Act, which falls under Section 720 of the Florida State Code,

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and I believe, if I'm correct, the new Florida HOA Act falls under Section 718 of the Florida State.

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They are specific areas of Florida State statutes that every single HOA member

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should read and know like the back of their hands, and if not, have at least a printed copy

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of the Florida State statutes and be able to refer to it.

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If your HOA today does not have a lawyer representing your HOA, you are in danger, you are in crisis,

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because you can be sued, your board can be sued, your HOA members can be sued, for so many things.

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You need to have an attorney. You also need to have liability insurance, both as a board member

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and as an HOA to protect the individual homeowner, lot owners of your HOA,

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because if you don't have an umbrella policy that will protect everybody, you are in deep, dire danger

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under the new Florida HOA. Same thing with the condos.

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So when I say HOA, I mean the same for a regular HOA with homes as opposed to a condos in Florida.

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Condos are actually a different kind of breed. They're even more complex than a regular HOA

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where homes are involved. You need to know and have read.

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Let me back up. Before you, as an American, moving from California or New York or New Jersey,

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before you ever move to Florida and you are thinking about moving into a particular HOA,

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and remember I said this also applies to condominiums,

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you need to get a copy of the HOA rules and regulations, the covenants,

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and you need to read them, every single line. You need to read them like it's the Bible.

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You need to read and know and understand everything that's in them,

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whether it's talking about fences, dogs, animals, children, basketball hoops,

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what you can park in your driveway, what you can't do, lawn maintenance, financial requirements,

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whatever, you need to read through the HOA covenants, rules and regulations for your HOA,

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and you need to first decide whether or not you want to live in a particular HOA.

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I have seen, my wife and I have come across many HOAs in Florida that we thought we would like to live in,

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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

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that go house hunting, they never bother once to ask for a copy of the HOA documents and read them,

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and you better goddamn well read them before you decide to purchase a home,

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whether it be a DR Horton home or a Lennar home or a custom-made home or a used home in an HOA,

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you better get a copy of those HOA documents from your realtor and you better read them

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because they will bite you in the ass so bad if you don't. I'm not shitting you.

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So you need to read them to know and understand what you can and can't do,

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what's permissible, what's not permissible, and what your requirements are as a homeowner.

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I have a friend, we have a friend who lives in a particular HOA near us here,

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and the HOA board members require that a five-inch spike be placed in every single lawn

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so that the spike when it's in your lawn, if the grass grows up covering the spike

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and your spike must be displayed, you can't take it out,

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and they see that the grass is overgrown your spike of five inches,

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then you are in non-compliance and you can be fined.

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Can you imagine? You're going to be fined if your grass is over five inches tall,

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and I understand that, but that's going a bit too far.

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They further went and said that if you're not going to mow the grass yourself,

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you have to use the board's own lawn service, which was quite expensive,

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instead of hiring or competing for a different one to come in and do your lawn.

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That's just one example.

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When my wife and I moved out of the particular HOA in Vero Beach that we were in,

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the new HOA president who decided that he was going to be better than us at managing the HOA,

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he decided he was going to save money.

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He was going to save money by not spending the money on maintenance of the ponds,

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not spending money on the aerator for the ponds,

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not spending money on septic sewage cleanout of the sewer pipes,

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which is mandatory every 12 months.

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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.

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We were estimating that they were going to go up to $150 to $175

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based on the neglect of the HOA during the time that we lived there,

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that nobody had been complying with doing the minimum things required to keep the roads,

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the sewers, and the ponds in good working order.

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So by his deciding to go against what the mandatory rules and regulations of the HOA were personally

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and doing what he thought would save money for the HOA,

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what he was really doing by those actions was putting the HOA members, the other members that live there, in jeopardy.

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You just can't do that. You have to take care of the maintenance requirements for an HOA,

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the roads, the curbs, the sewers, the lights, the ponds, those kinds of things.

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The electricity for the lights for the entrance, the gates.

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He didn't want to do that. That's a really dangerous bad HOA with a lot of problems coming down the pipe.

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So you as a homeowner, before you even purchase a home at a particular HOA,

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you need to read what the HOA rules and regulations are

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and first decide if you really want to live there or is it going to be a pain in the ass.

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And I can tell you this, nine out of ten people end up finding that in Florida,

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HOAs are a bigger pain in the ass than they are worth.

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Recently, my wife and I drove down back to Vero Beach hoping we could find a place that wasn't too bad

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and it was built by Lennar. Now Lennar, based on YouTube postings, videos, customer complaints,

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has a notorious reputation for being a bad builder.

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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.

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So they were building a new subdivision called Brookhaven down there, which is almost complete.

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And when you read, first of all, the HOA payment per month was $210.

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And that didn't even include mowing the grass.

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That was just for maintenance of the ponds and the lakes because they had so many ponds

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and acreage of ponds and lakes and roads and all the roads had been redone.

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So the maintenance costs were significantly higher than older subdivisions.

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And so you weren't getting a lot of money for paying $210 out of your pocket every month.

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But when you read the rules that I read, they were horrendous.

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They were like, oh, you can't even win this. Oh, my God, you wouldn't even want to live there.

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You couldn't even take a shit without being put on a report by somebody,

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which is why people don't want to live in HOAs.

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Most people in the state of Florida want to opt for non-HOA property.

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But sadly, non-HOA property in the state of Florida is becoming exceedingly hard to find.

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And unincorporated areas of cities like Orlando, the unincorporated areas,

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unincorporated areas of Palm Bay and Melbourne and Vero Beach that are the outliers.

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They're outside of the main living corridor.

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And that's why they're unincorporated. They're not a part of the county.

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They're in the county, but they're not an incorporated part of the county.

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They tend to be cheaper and they also don't tend to have HOAs.

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Homeowner Associations.

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So they tend to be cheaper and you can do what you want to.

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You can shit in a hole that you dig.

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You can do whatever you want to do without having your neighbor put you on a report

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or call somebody and get you fined.

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There was a neighborhood called Pine, Bent Pine in Vero Beach as an example.

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And I wish, I wish in hindsight that my wife and I had bought in there

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because Lifestyles was building a home in Bent Pine that was really nice

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and very good at the time prior to the pandemic.

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And we could have bought that house for $525,000.

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Today that same house is $850,000 two years later.

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But we read, as most people do not do, we read the HOA documents prior to deciding

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if we wanted to purchase that house.

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And what it said was there were two Bent Pines.

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There's the old Bent Pine and the new Bent Pine.

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And it was basically a boilerplate of the old Bent Pine.

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And it said, if you have a car, it must be parked in the garage.

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No cars could be parked outside.

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So we asked the question to the realtor who was selling the property,

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well, what if you had teenagers, what if you had children and they had a car?

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Where are they going to park their cars?

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If our cars are parked in the garage, where are they going to park their cars?

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She goes, well, that's a really good question.

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So she said, I see your point.

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I said, now I have a boat.

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I want to put the boat in the garage because your HOA documents say

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boats cannot be parked outside.

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I want to park my boat inside the garage and leave my car outside,

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but according to your HOA documents, I can't do that.

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And I'll be fined if I do.

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She said, I can get that changed.

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Well, I've talked to thousands of so-called sales agents,

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and they don't know how to get those things changed.

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I do, but they don't.

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Most sales reps for most realtors and construction sites are stupid.

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They don't know HOA documents, and they don't understand how to get them changed.

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They don't understand the fact that changes to HOA documents that are done,

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whether they be done by the developer or by the association itself

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once it's transferred, have to be registered with the state of Florida

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and also registered with the county circuit court.

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And registered and put on file so that the public can read them

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because it is required under the state of Florida sunshine rules.

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So she said that she could get those HOA covenants changed.

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I didn't believe her.

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I didn't believe her.

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I wish I had known her better.

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I wish that I could have believed her because, lo and behold,

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she did get those things changed.

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But the household lost the chance to get the house that we really wanted

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to be able to move back to Vero.

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But I couldn't trust her.

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I couldn't trust that she could truly do what she said she was going to do.

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And that is the problem with most real estate sales agents in the state of Florida.

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They promise you the world, and they deliver nothing.

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So it really comes down to you as a prospective buyer and a homeowner.

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Are you going to get a copy of the covenants and read them first

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before you decide to plunk your hard-earned money down?

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And then how many people really do read the HOA rules and regulations?

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Very, very few people until such time as you get put on report

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for something your children do, you do, or your dog does,

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or your birds do, or your cats do,

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or you wash your boat out in the middle of the driveway

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once you get back from fishing.

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Oh, my God.

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We had a friend who owns a storage facility, multimillionaire,

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and he lived in a very nice neighborhood called...

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what was it called? Not Howie in the Hills.

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It was a different one. Harbor Hills.

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He lived in Harbor Hills, and he would take his kids out

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four-wheeling on the weekend and get the four-wheelers all muddy and dirty,

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bring them back, and he would hose them down and wash them down in his driveways.

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Oh, my God.

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His neighbors went ape shit.

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You can't do that in your driveway.

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You can't bring those shitty four-wheelers in here

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and wash them and hose them down.

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Oh, my God. What a fucking eyesore that is.

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Oh, my God.

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Oh. He had to put up with that shit so much

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that he finally said, fuck it, we're moving.

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And he moved to a non-HOA piece of property,

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and now he's a lot happier.

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He can do what he wants to do, and he doesn't have to worry about people

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getting into his knickers telling him what he can't and can't do.

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I'm just saying.

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So with that, I'm going to say,

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if you're going to live in an HOA, read the documents.

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You can go online in Florida to the state of Florida

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and download them.

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You can go to your county records and download them.

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You can just Google HOA documents for Indian River County as an example,

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and they will pop up.

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You do have to know the name of the HOA that you're moving to,

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but with that, Bob out.

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And so if you've learned anything from this, if you're moving to Florida,

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learn to where you can go to obtain a copy of the HOA documents.

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Learn to read them first before you ever plunk your money down.

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And if what you read is too distasteful,

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then you don't really want to live in that HOA neighborhood.

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Go somewhere else, try to find a piece of property that's non-HOA to live.

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Even if the neighbors living around you are shitty, redneck, have crappy old cars,

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you got to learn to live with it because that is the state of Florida.

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Florida is not necessarily a nice, beautiful place.

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Florida in general is a pretty rednecky place

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and got a lot of rundown property, especially when you're living in non-HOA areas.

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One perfect example of that would be Vero Beach, Lake Estates in Indian River County.

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Sounds great. Vero Beach, Lake Estates.

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Well, when you go there, it looks like a bunch of hillbillies.

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So, anyway, with that, Bob out.