HOA Management Company: Leave a Message, Pay A Fee

HOA Management Company: Leave a Message, Pay A Fee
Company Says Fee Stopped Overuse Of Emergency Phone Line

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Texas-based home management company has been charging local residents a fee to leave a phone message after hours.

Community Management Professionals is one of dozens of Florida companies run by Associa of Dallas.

Residents in the Weston Hills Subdivision in Orlando said when they called the management company after 5 p.m., a recorded message warned of a $25 fee for every non-emergency message left with the service.

Residents like Mike Izzi simply hung up the phone to avoid the fee.

"It's outright abuse," Izzi said. "Charging people to leave a message? What is that?"

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/23610202/detail.html

If I bust my @$$ to achieve home ownership, why the hell would I want some "association" of busybodies dictating "rules" to me about how my own property will look and be managed? One brief experience with owning a condo and paying what amounted to lifetime rent for the "privilege" of somebody else telling me what color curtains I could put up was enough. It would seem even worse for owners of detached homes. All the benefits of home ownership along with the disadvantages of renting. sheesh.

HOAs serve a purpose. Yes, some can get out of control, but the premise is sound. The HOA is there to ensure compliance with basic tenants that help keep your property value up. Things like prohibiting trailers, making sure homeowners keep their yards neat and keeping the homes maintained are all rules and regulations to which no one should object. Just because the board of your HOA went overboard with regulations on the color of curtains does not mean all HOAs are bad.

In my community, the HOA is needed to keep certain owners in line and to keep them from letting their messes drag down the property values of their neighbors. I don't like that one of my neighbors parks in the street, but the HOA doesn't really do much about that. On the other hand, the HOA DOES get onto another neighbor who apparently runs a scrap metal storage facility from his garage. I don't even want to think about what that guy's house would look like if we didn't have an HOA.

Bought a home in a TH community with a HOA 37 years ago. Lasted 2-1/2 years, never again.

One of the reasons I do not live in a HOA community