Rules about parking, planting, pets, and paint create problems for property owners.

Guitarist Frank Zappa once observed that “the United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.” His description might be equally well applied to homeowners’ associations (HOAs), whose rules and their enforcement often seem to lack logic.

For example, when A.J. Vizzi moved into an Odessa, Florida, neighborhood in 1997, he was assured that parking his truck in his own driveway would not be a problem; but the HOA that governs the community in which Vizzi lives deemed it a violation and fined him. A.J. eventually won the right to park his truck, but not before he had spent about $200,000 in the process.

While foreclosure is a very real threat in associations, few owners expect to lose their home as the result of a gardening violation. But that’s what happened to Rancho Santa Fe, California, resident Jeffrey DeMarco, who planted “too many” roses on his four-acre property, had to pay his association’s $70,000 legal bill, and lost his home to the bank.

A Colorado HOA fined Julianna Rigby for keeping a Pomeranian named Pookee in a Fort Collins condo that did not allow pets. Rigby, who has lost her hearing in one ear, claimed that Pookie alerted her when the telephone or doorbell rang, but the association disagreed with Rigby’s definition of a “service dog,” fined her $500, and threatened to put a lien on her property.

A pale blue house made one Cobb County, Georgia, association see red. Unaware of HOA rules, Michael Bauer painted his house without having the color approved and found himself being fined $25 for every day the house bore something other than a sanctioned hue. In less than a year, Bauer’s penalty costs totaled more than $6,800—and that’s not counting legal fees.

To learn more about how about parking, planting, pets, and paint have created problems for property owners, read “Whoa, There, HOAs” by Sherri Butterfield on page 42 in the May issue of the Orange County REALTOR®. And to avoid getting in HOA crosshairs, read the rules before you sign the paperwork and purchase your home.

By Sherri Butterfield