Quote:
Originally Posted by Ski Bum
Exactly! So you are going to spend $1M+ for shared space with 50 other people who pinch pennies? The end is inevitable. .
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Spot on-I have been involved with three HOA Boards (two up north and one in Florida). You are correct--most HOA Board members ONLY care about "How much is the fee going up?"
Then--they reduce services to keep the fees "as is". We had an AWESOME landscaper but the water bill, insurance and pool maintenance went up--so they dumped the great landscaper and went with a lower quality (and cheaper) company to "keep the fees the same." We want with a cheaper landscaper instead of adding fees for the OTHER services that went up.
And it shows..our neighborhood no longer looks great (we used to be on par with the Villages) and now landscape beds have no flowers, they just blow the grass into the street, the sprinkler heads are constantly damaged because they use HUGE commercial machines everywhere, the common areas are no longer trimmed (they spray RoundUp every other month to kill the grass along beside the walls rather than string-trim-so now we have a 8" brown strip at the base of the community fences and walls rather than green grass). Ugly. But we saved a few bucks....
The Board excitedly claims they kept fees the same and "when you go to sell our association fees are low! That's a selling point!" But who wants to buy when the HOA across the street is 10 years older but still looks as good as the year it opened?
Short-sighted and a slippery slope. Now we look like a neighborhood with low fees. Once of the things my wife and I loved about the Villages is how well-kept it looked--everywhere.
Kudos to the Villages--the maintenance is one of the major reasons so many people look at ten, twenty and thirty year-old neighborhoods here that still look great. It comes at a cost to the residents but it also GREATLY protects/promotes your home's value.