[kcplate]

Exactly. I’m no fan of them and have had a battle or two in the past with a previous house I owned. My issue was not due to ignorance, but a weird interpretation of a statute. I had a tree die. I removed it because it was unsightly. I was dinged because I wanted to replace it when the season was appropriate for planting another tree. Had I left it in I wouldn’t be in violation. So I had to plant a tree (that subsequently died), just to plant another when the season was right. Just dumb.

I swore I’d never buy in an HOA community angain after that, but around me, non-HOA communities are crap. I want to maximize value and opportunity to resell so, HOA it is.

[Bluestrike2]

A bit of common sense and understanding would go a long way to eliminating half the complaints you hear about HOAs.

If you know the tree is going to immediately start dying, you're just going to find the cheapest, least healthy sapling at the nursery. Had they let you wait until the tree is more likely to survive, there's a better chance you'd be willing to spend a bit more to buy an older/larger sapling that'll look better and provide more shade from the start. Plus, the temporary tree slowly dying would probably be less visually appealing than an empty spot for a few months.

There are reasons why we plant street trees: improved aesthetics, increased home value, shade along the street and sidewalks, traffic calming effects, etc. By ignoring the reason behind them and just focusing on checking the box, your HOA was just begging for some malicious compliance that undermined the benefits of the replacement tree.