Side note to anyone reading this, don’t fucking buy a house with an HOA
Fun fact: lots of city and county governments either mandate or highly encourage HOAs for new subdivision developments. This is mostly because they love abdicating their responsibility to maintain infrastructure for low-density parcels that will never generate enough tax revenue to pay for it, but in some cases could also be for the traditional reason HOAs exist (to facilitate racism and classism).
In other words, most homebuyers will essentially be forced into an HOA simply because most homes are encumbered by them.
What would help is zoning reform to increase density, both so that more housing would be allowed to exist in the places people want it, and so that the infrastructure serving it would be efficient enough for those local governments to remain financially solvent.
But I don’t wanna live in a densely populated area! I wanna live in a predominantly white suburb built on top of a large deforested area with an enormous grass lawn I will never use!
That’s “fine*,” if you’re willing (and able) to pay the full cost of the infrastructure to maintain it and the real fair market value of the land. But the entitled NIMBY welfare queens who whine about such things invariably aren’t capable, let alone willing, which is why they’re demanding the government subsidize their privilege in the first place.
And the even more fucked-up part is that, because of how ubiquitous the automaker, oil industry, and racism-fueled “American dream” propaganda has been over the last century, they often don’t even realize how ridiculous their position actually is!
A crash in home prices may motivate folks to go door to door to gather the votes needed to dissolve their HOA and raise their property values by the amount that the HOA reduces them.
The reduction isn’t dramatic today, because while everyone hates HOAs few neighborhoods have disovled their HOA.
But it could gain ground rapidly, with the folks in neighborhoods that don’t dissolve their HOAs stuck with properties that sell for substantially less money.
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Fun fact: lots of city and county governments either mandate or highly encourage HOAs for new subdivision developments. This is mostly because they love abdicating their responsibility to maintain infrastructure for low-density parcels that will never generate enough tax revenue to pay for it, but in some cases could also be for the traditional reason HOAs exist (to facilitate racism and classism).
In other words, most homebuyers will essentially be forced into an HOA simply because most homes are encumbered by them.
Maybe that will help the housing market crash? Idk I’m not an economist
What would help is zoning reform to increase density, both so that more housing would be allowed to exist in the places people want it, and so that the infrastructure serving it would be efficient enough for those local governments to remain financially solvent.
But I don’t wanna live in a densely populated area! I wanna live in a predominantly white suburb built on top of a large deforested area with an enormous grass lawn I will never use!
That’s “fine*,” if you’re willing (and able) to pay the full cost of the infrastructure to maintain it and the real fair market value of the land. But the entitled NIMBY welfare queens who whine about such things invariably aren’t capable, let alone willing, which is why they’re demanding the government subsidize their privilege in the first place.
And the even more fucked-up part is that, because of how ubiquitous the automaker, oil industry, and racism-fueled “American dream” propaganda has been over the last century, they often don’t even realize how ridiculous their position actually is!
(* except for the racist part)
The opposite may help, at least.
A crash in home prices may motivate folks to go door to door to gather the votes needed to dissolve their HOA and raise their property values by the amount that the HOA reduces them.
The reduction isn’t dramatic today, because while everyone hates HOAs few neighborhoods have disovled their HOA.
But it could gain ground rapidly, with the folks in neighborhoods that don’t dissolve their HOAs stuck with properties that sell for substantially less money.