yep it is the hipsters that want these things. to me they are just a notch above dumpster and card board box. I will take my 900 square foot apartment
Not to completely derail this but I cannot fathom the energy it takes for someone to constantly have to make efforts to stay "different". My brother in law finally (at age 46) decided he'd had enough of the hipster persona. It just took too much time and energy to constantly be different. Lord forbid someone else on earth had a t shirt like his or had heard of a band he supposedly liked. The struggle must have been real.
Read the fine print Jessica. Used to be a lot of confusion about square footage. Under roof, under beam, heated area, living area etc. If the restriction just says 2500 ft2 then an 1800 foot house with a 500 foot garage and 200 foot screened in porch would do it. Does an association have to approve it?
Here's the way I look at it. I spent me entire adult life, and even a few teen years, providing for myself, then my wife and family. I was able to have an enjoyable career, build and then sell a profitable business.
It all depends on the developer. Before we lived in the house we are in now we lived in a gated neighborhood with all kinds of building restrictions. However, the developer would redefine (as he went along) or re-interpret said restrictions based on the person building. The good ole boy system in other words. There were homes in there for people he knew that were held to a lower standard than other homes who had already built. It was maddening. And the HOA was even worse. Until the development had enough homes built in it the developer owned the majority vote for years. I had all I could take. Stayed there seven years and got out. Now I live on a road with no gates, no HOA hoopla and the headaches that go along with them.
I was told my the realtor that it had to be heated space. The price per acre was crazy anyway so I decided to pass.
i am so glad that i have never lived anywhere with a hoa. i have heard too many horror stories
Home Owners Associations are like a pastorless church where all the men are deacons and all the women are Sunday School teachers.
It's kind of that way for us too We have 125 houses in our development and not many issues. Our neighborhood is transitioning from older retired couples to younger families. Some of the older folks still in charge of the HOA are busy bodies without a lot to do but canvas the neighborhood looking for silly violations like my neighbor who was driving a company owned car with a corporate logo on the door. They made him remove the logo.
My first house had an HOA and a Shared mile long street that was owned by the neighborhood that no one but us and another 2-3 families were willing to start a rainy day fund for, we bailed 12 years ago. Friends who still live there are now trying to figure out how to assess everyone in the neighborhood to pay the huge cost to redo a mile of asphalt
Exclusive and judgmental I see. Don't want to live around the common folks huh? We'll change that come November.
