Feb. 23, 2007: Homeowners associations (HOAs) don't deserve hate; they have a purpose
One of the ironies of our gilded age is that the free-market system, which provides a vast abundance of goods and services ever more cheaply and of ever better quality, is all but universally criticized and derided.
Meanwhile, no amount of fawning attention is too much for our governments, which will happily ram their "benefits" down your throat if you are the least bit reserved in your fawning.
There is one glaring exception to this perverse pattern, however, the only truly voluntary form of government: the homeowners association.
I suppose you could argue that you "join" the government of Glendale or Surprise by moving there, but no form of government is easier to escape than an HOA.
Even worse, as the potential for abuses among governments goes, the HOA is hated all out of proportion to the crimes it might commit. This HOA might get snippy about flagpoles and that one might have a minor league embezzler in its midst. But compared with the offenses municipal and state officials are routinely imprisoned for committing, an HOA hardly qualifies as a government at all.
Moreover, news is news because it is rare, not because it is commonplace. For every HOA that makes the papers because of some tawdry offense, there are hundreds humming away in the obscurity that is proficiency's public reward.
Truly, the worst common offense an HOA can commit is being lax about upholding its codes, covenants and restrictions. Nobody wants to get a letter -- or worse, a fine -- from the HOA for an infraction of what may seem to be picayune rules.
But chaos spreads, and not slowly. When an HOA starts to neglect the little things, big things start to crop up almost at once. Before you know it, a once-delightful neighborhood will start to look seedy.
The purpose of the HOA is to maintain everyone's property values. No one wants to suffer under an abusive HOA. But that's a correctable nuisance.
A worse fate, possibly, is living with an HOA that has lost the will to lead.
Greg Swann is the designated broker for BloodhoundRealty.com, a full-service Metropolitan Phoenix real estate brokerage. This article originally appeared in the West Valley regional sections of the Arizona Republic.
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