In subdivisions that are away from normal traffic, I really hate people who always park in the street. It can be dangerous near stops signs (not sure why they don't get tickets), and having to dodge and weave sucks. I'm not referring to having the occasional party and people need to park somewhere, but rather having your normal parking spot be in the street in front of your house. There are garages and driveways for a reason. In my old neighborhood (which was pretty nice), people would leave cars in the street with flat tires or other issues for months.

I like that you can't fire off guns and fireworks in our town. Seems reasonable. Not sure what other restrictions exist. You can have chickens, no rooster. Not sure if you can have any other farm animals. There's people around town that have converted their whole yard into gardens, so there must not be any restriction against that here.

Pretty sure you need a permit to build anything substantial.

yeah something that is NICE about the no sidewalks is that everyone parks their cars in their driveways (they could park in the street) but for reasons people like the streets to be clear (it also gives a more "cleaner") look.

Na, our city just charges the homeowner directly. If the sidewalk is in front of your house, they bill the homeowner $300 for each slab. Which was the negotiated rate between them and the contractor.

There is a pocket of neighborhoods just west of the Memorial Villages (Houston) that were middle class homes as recently as 15 years ago. Now the lots cost $600K and new homes are being sold starting at $1.5M. It is interesting because with 8500 sq ft lots you simply cannot build a 3 car garage without sacrificing the needed square footage to justify the price. So it is not uncommon to see a car in the street.

I live in a township that rejected the building codes when they came up for a vote before I moved there. In a county with very little zoning. So it is pretty much anything goes. Now my little pocket was all sold off of a farm, so the 8 - 10 houses right by me are covered by deed restrictions that cover the kind and sizes of houses, outbuildings, setback, etc.. But the only enforcement mechanism is for you to sue your neighbors, which always makes the block party more fun.

Where I am it has been handy because you don't have to worry about getting permission for every little things. But you also can't control the bad stuff. 3 miles north of me there is the jankiest looking house I have ever seen. I think it started as a story and a half. It looks more cartoonish than real. It looks to have somewhere around 4 - 6 levels with a great big upper observation deck. I am assuming that sometime in the not distant future it will collapse. If you look at the satellite map there appears to be 7 semi trailers and a bunch of cars. https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

If you go a few miles to the north or east of there it gets really weird. Single wides with an addition. Trailers glommed on to the side of an existing house. Shit that I can't even describe that you would swear no one would live in, but drive by and you see the TV on.

So I like and dislike a lot of the same things. Minimum lot size makes for a nice neighborhood but requires sprawl. Building codes are a PITA but prevent the above. Minimum house and maximum outbuilding sizes make for a more residential and upscale place, but keep you from doing what you want to do.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

There's a couple of those sorts of weird construction jobs that we drive by in rural Maine a few times a year. There never seems to be any progress being made.

Speaking of sidewalks, I live in Loudoun County in northern Virginia, largely an affluent suburb/exburb of DC. The county board has always proffered zoning changes in exchange for developers doing certain things - building sidewalk is one of them. Over the years, as pieces of land got rezoned, some sidewalk got built. But in a lot of cases, the rezoned lands are not adjacent, so you have these non-continuous sidewalks, totally useless, and not useful at all for pedestrians. What's worse? In some cases, the developers agreed to building sidewalks but never followed through, the the county simply let them get away with it. So, there is effectively no sidewalks in our area you can count on being there.

Live in Boise, Idaho area. For any new subdivision that gets put in one of the first things that gets done is curb and gutter. This would include sidewalks. It's up to the developer to cover these costs and more than likely gets rolled into the cost of a house once built. No houses are built until the streets, curbs, sidewalks etc are all installed and ready to go.

I like the process as it assures a certain level of appearance and uniformity for the new subdivision. Not sure what happens on individual pieces of land in the country where there is no need for sidewalks etc.

In America and Canada it is assumed people don't walk anywhere. Therefore sidewalks are unnecessary. Such a pain to shovel them too.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

My favorite housing restriction (to my kids) -- once you move out, you don't get to move back in without contribution something toward rent, utilities, food, beer.

I live in a gated community with two parks, horse trails, a horse arena with stable (if we had a horse, we could stable it for free), etc. The city has no jurisdiction over maintenance and upkeep, but we have a hefty HOA fee. We bought into that knowingly, so I'm fine with the cost, even though some of the resources go toward the operation and maintenance of an arena and stables that we don't use. But it still annoys me with how uptight the HOA can sometimes be about property improvements. For example, a few years back we repainted out house. We kept the same color, except that we changed from a very traditional and conservative green for the trim to a very conservative and traditional brown. (I'm colorblind, so don't ask for more details about the colors -- my opinion is based on my wife's claims.) We immediately received a letter from the HOA noticing a potential citation and fine for not having received prior approval for the color change. We challenged, and it turns out that their dispute had absolutely nothing to do with the color we selected. It was only about the process, that they wanted to be able to weigh in if necessary. But the whole thing still pissed me off.

You willingly signed a contract and are pissed that someone would actually want to enforce compliance with it. SMDH.

I like most of our restrictions (contractually agreed to) such as no boats or trailers or cars under repair or atvs or mowers stored except in the garages. No outbuildings. Minimum size and investment requirements.

I drive by nearby neighborhoods without them and they are all cluttery, junky and unappealing.

Umm. No.

We purchased a house knowing it was subject to a HOA, the rules of which (arbitrary or not) were not disclosed at the time. The HOA also has the ability to reasonably change rules from time to time. None of that means that I cannot complaint or be annoyed with or pissed at the arbitrary enforcement of some of the rules.

At the end of the day, it's 70 households running the HOA. The HOA contracts with a servicing company, which like you appears the rather anal. Once the HOA board was aware of the issue, they dropped it. Still, the whole thing pissed me off.

As a lawyer, I can appreciate a HOA being anal about the procedure. You were likely 100% fine. The issue comes when your neighbor comes and paints their house lime green/something that would be abnormal.

Its better to just be anal everyone. It is also fair to be annoyed at the HOA.

I totally get that.

But a more reasonable approach would be to have a rule that you need prior approval and, if you don't get it, whatever you do is at your risk, with the risks including the possibility of undoing whatever improvement was made.

Some people will submit color schemes in advance, and they will be approved or not. So long as those people follow what has been approved, they incur no risk. But there are others like me who will just paint, without first going through the timely process seeking prior approval. We incur a risk. If we don't get the color scheme right, then we can be fined and required to repaint. But if we get the color scheme right, then there should no longer be an issue.

In our case, we were issued a citation and successfully appealed. (I was pretty condescending in my appeal.) A better process would have involved an analysis of whether the paint job was inconsistent with the communities norms, but this should have happened before a citation was issued.

Interesting. By law, here you have to sign an acknowledgment that you were given them. I have had more than one person state that while they signed the acknowledgment, they didn't read them nor know what they said. Of which, I suggest they stop signing contracts they haven't read.

Kelo v. New London!

It's been quite a few years. I don't remember having been provided with the rule in at the time. But I'm also old and short on memory.

Regardless, these rules are not those set up at the time the HOA was established as part of the development. Rather, they are rules created after the fact by the HOA, which are subject to change.

Just because you buy property in a particular municipality doesn't mean that you have to accept and cannot complaint about what you believe to be unreasonable ordinances/codes, including the interpretation, application, and enforcement of them. This applies even if you knew about them in advance.

A few years back I was looking seriously at solar panels on my roof. My roof is a 45 degree angle facing due south so would have been perfect. The other option would have been a couple of those large rotating systems up on poles in my backyard. Fuglier than hell and I'm sure wouldn't have pleased the neighbors. I was glad when I found out the by laws wouldn't allow it but the roof panels were OK. I never did get the roof panels either.

Yes. Both are fugly. I am glad our contract prohibits both.

Our HOA does not allow RV's/Campers to be parked within the HOA area. I'm cool with that. (I don't own an RV/Camper.)

There are some otherwise nice areas in town where every other house seems to have a grandparent/uncle/old friend who has parked their RV/Camper in the driveway or in front of the house. Sometimes it's for a few days, but some of them have been there as long as I can remember.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

I live in a suburb of Orlando in an HOA. Most of the communities in my immediate area also HOAs. Here’s my like/don’t like

Like:
-building height restriction (county)
-setbacks (county)
-concurrency (county, basically sets a limit on how small lots can be in a roundabout way for residential and limits commercial)
-home color restrictions (HOA)
-architectural style restrictions (HOA)
-landscaping requirements (HOA)
-no permanent street parking, have to give advance notice of parties etc that require street parking. (HOA)

Don’t Like:
-Concurrency should allow for things like row houses in my opinion. Flip side is our roads couldn’t handle the density and there’s no room to expand the roads so... a wash
-HOA is very political and rules are enforced selectively
-HOA is corrupt and/or misspending HOA feed in my opinion. In particular I’m very bitter about the HOA turning down AT&T, Verizon, etc for running fiber. HOA president works for Comcast/Xfinity...