Homeowners Association (HOA)

Trees & More

Graphic by Matt Murray

Have you ever lived in a subdivision? I’m here to tell you not to do it. You will be required to comply by strict rules according to your homeowners association (HOA). HOAs come up with the strangest rules.

You must get approval for everything! We found out the hard way.

Do you know that you can’t paint your house without their approval?

You can’t cut down any trees that are large without their approval too.

Want to put up a flag? It needs approval.

First Instance

Having never lived in a subdivision, my Mom and I didn’t know what they consisted of. We didn’t know that the HOA board had to approve everything.

When we moved into our house, they told us where to send the monthly assessment but they didn’t give us any rules or regulations. We didn’t even know there was an HOA board. The board consisted of five people.

We had lived there for a few years when we got tired of raking up the pine needles from a very large and tall pine tree in the front yard. The girth of that tree was so large. I couldn’t even wrap my arms around it. There was a black buzzard that always sat on one of the branches up high. I would raise my head and look straight up and see him. One time he dropped something he was eating.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a chance to see how many pine needles drop from these trees or not. There are hundreds, if not thousands. They are a PITA.

We would get a large trash bag and fill it up in no time. This was backbreaking work. One of us would sweep up the pine needles into a pile. That was usually me. Then my Mom would hold the bag open and I would lift the needles up with my hands. I was wearing heavy duty gloves. I would get it three-quarters full and we would try to get the bag closed. Then we were onto the next bag. It would take more than one bag. I think we totaled four to five bags each time we did this.

This was a weekly occurrence.

It was exhausting work.

Although I say it was a weekly occurrence, we didn’t clean it up every week. It was hard to get out there every week and clean it up. I had to mow the lawn just about every week and I would be dog-tired after doing the weed-eating and edging. Then there were the weeds we couldn’t get and we would have to use grass shears. There was the pruning of the smaller trees and the palm tree. The palm tree was about six to seven feet tall. Having done all of that, we didn’t feel like picking up the pine needles every week.

Then we saw a neighbor about five houses down from us having her trees cut down. Her trees were large but not as large as the one we had. Ours was gigantic.

Somehow we found out who cut her trees down. I think maybe we saw the company doing it and wrote down the phone number. We called them and he wanted us to describe our tree. My Mom told him that it was just like the other woman’s. He said okay and told us $100.

The number one mistake he made was not looking at the tree. On the day he was scheduled to cut it down, he arrived and was shocked at how large it was. My Mom was at work. So I handled everything. He told me that the tree was larger than he had been told. No she told him it was large. He was the one who didn’t look at it before giving us the price. I said something to him that I could go to the bank and get more money if he wanted to re-assess the price. He didn’t get it though.

He was mad but he still cut it down. I watched as his crew cut it down.

He got taken but it was his own fault. Never do a project without looking at the subject matter first.

Imagine how surprised we were when the HOA got in touch with us and said that we needed to contact them about taking the tree down. Like I said, we didn’t know that you had to contact the HOA.

A couple of days after this event, I had gotten dressed and I was lifting the garage door up. I usually did this to see what was going on. I noticed a bicycle in the driveway. I looked around but I couldn’t find anyone. Then I saw a woman leaving the house next door. She walked up to the bike and said, “Oh, there is someone home.” She told she left the “Rules & Regulations” with my neighbor. I said, “Well, could you please get them for me? I’m right here.” She walked back over and got them for me.

Second Instance

There was a tree in between our house and the house next door. It was a large tree. We found a towel had been wrapped around the tree when the original homeowners planted the tree. The towel had pretty much disintegrated. They were probably trying to prop up one of the branches. The branches were going every which way. The tree roots were growing underneath our house and probably under the neighbor’s house as well. You had to be careful when you mowed because you could damage the lawnmower. I hit one of the roots one time and the lawnmower made a zinging noise as the blade caught the root.

The tree towered over the two houses. There was a large crack that started where the branches branched off. During a hurricane, part of the tree swayed up next to our house and made a groove in the side of the house where the lower roof tiles were.

Seeing as it had gotten dangerous, my Mom called a tree trimming expert to come and look at it. He told us that it had to come down. It was getting too dangerous. He wondered why anyone had even thought it was a good idea to put that tree there in the first place.

She called the HOA number and told them that we wanted to cut it down. The HOA president came out and looked at the tree. He agreed that it had to come down. He mentioned something to her about the HOA approval. So she came back to me and said she thought he approved it.

She called the tree company and told them we got the go ahead.

On the agreed upon day, he brought a truck with a small trailer. He also brought a large trailer with a giant loader. This was going to be required to haul the giant tree out through the common area on the other side of our house.

The construction loader looked something like this photo:

Photo by Zac Edmonds on Unsplash

After the first day, the HOA president called my Mom and told her that he didn’t approve the cutting down of the tree yet. He told her it had to go to the HOA board first. She didn’t realize this. Obviously, he had not been clear when he talked to her. While she was on the phone, she was in tears. And after she got off the phone, she was still in tears. I’ll never forget that.

The HOA president also accused the tree company of breaking the sidewalk in two different places. He told this to her on the phone. I went with her to the two locations he mentioned. He was a liar. Those sidewalks were cracked already. I think he was just trying to get someone else to pay for the cracks since the association didn’t have any money for it themselves.

Since they were coming back on day two, they left their equipment in the yard (the big loader) and a small trailer between the mailboxes. The small trailer was in front of the neighbor’s driveway by about two inches. The neighbors called the tree company and made them come out at 11 pm and move it. They moved it up two inches. What a petty request. (Side note: But these same neighbors didn’t mind that they were blocking our mailbox all the time as you probably read in “The Mailbox Blockers”).

They needed two days to cut down the tree and haul it away.

Third Instance

Our HOA even had a thing where you had to get their approval to sell your house. You had to tell them how much the buyers were offering. Then they would review it and approve it.

We DID NOT do that! That was none of their business!

Conclusion

Please don’t live in a subdivision. You have no idea what you will have to go through. Same goes for condo associations. Even though I don’t own the condo I live in, you still have a bunch of rules. Some of them are ridiculous and they don’t even enforce them, only with certain people.

Do you have any unique stories with a HOA board or a condo board?

Until next time, happy reading!

-Matt