[shados]

Did you ever get married, or owned stocks in a company? Have you ever entered into a signed agreement with someone? Signed a contract on anything?

What about signed a lease on an apartment? That's pretty common. The landlord owns it, but you have rights on it and they can't do whatever they want with their own property anymore.

Why does it surprise you that someone can own something but sign some of their ownership rights away? People literally do this all the time for a million reasons.

[dheera]

> What about signed a lease on an apartment? That's pretty common. The landlord owns it, but you have rights on it and they can't do whatever they want with their own property anymore.

Of course they can, they just need to wait till the lease is over.

With HOAs on the other hand they're forever restricted by some old farts who have nothing better to do than nose their way into other peoples' private lives.

[shados]

> Of course they can, they just need to wait till the lease is over.

My property is on a land lease. The term of the lease will literally outlive the owner. Again, consenting adults are allowed to sign papers to come into an agreement that binds both sides. This is nothing weird or nothing new.

The only thing that is a bit unique about HOAs is that there's rarely an easy way out in the agreement, which kind of makes sense since you can't just move the land away. Once large scale teleportation is a thing we'll be able to solve that issue.

[D13Fd]

Funny thing with HOAs is that they are usually based on covenants that run with the land, so you don’t actually sign anything. You just bought property subject to covenants.

[shados]

I don't know about where you live, but when I bought my place, there sure as hell was a note on the deed that I signed that said I was bound by the rules of the bylaws.

Is there a state where you can buy a house without signing anything? How do you transfer deeds over there?

[D13Fd]

My point is that you purchased the land but never signed a contract with the HOA. The deed was the agreement with the previous owner to legally transfer the land. The benefits and burdens run with the land.

[shados]

That's just to simplify things though. We have enough papers to sign when buying property as is. If it was necessary to make things work they'd make you sign it. Either way, the owner of the property cannot sell it to someone who won't agree to be part of it. Everything else is just implementation details.

[pixl97]

Yes, just like when you bought the land you were under many other non-HOA restrictions, like you couldn't install a waste processing plant where your house is.

Many Americans idea of freedom is completely out of touch with the reality on how land contract law works.