If you live in a community that has an HOA, or homeowners association, you know that this can be both a blessing and a curse. While an HOA can help keep everyone in your neighborhood properly maintaining the look of their homes and steadily increasing everyone’s property values, all the rules and regulations that you must follow can sometimes be more than you want to deal with.
When this happens, you may find yourself taking some issue with your HOA. If this is the case for you, here are three tips for dealing with legal issues with your HOA.
Know The Rules Of Your HOA
Before you can know whether you’re following along with your HOA as you should or not, you first have to take the time to learn the rules of your particular association.
According to Sarah Alban, a contributor to How Stuff Works, you’ll want to read through all of your HOA’s rules, covenants, bylaws, deeds, and more to ensure that you thoroughly understand what it is that you’re required to do as part of your HOA. In many instances, you might view the rules of your HOA as being finicky or overbearing. And while this may be the case, knowing these rules backward and forward can help you know if you’re following the rules how you should and where your wiggle room is, especially when it comes to doing something that might be frowned upon by others.
Address Violations Quickly
If your HOA has deemed that you’ve violated the rules of bylaws in some way, you’ll receive a notification that a violation has taken place and that you need to pay a fine or take some other action.
In this situation, Jennifer Bradley Franklin, a contributor to Bankrate.com, shares that you should address the violation as quickly as you can. If you ignore it, you could make the situation much worse for yourself. So if you plan to either pay the fine or appeal it, the faster you’re able to do this, the better off you’ll be.
Take It To Court If You Have To
In some instances, you might feel that your HOA is overstepping their bounds or being unfair to you as a homeowner. If you find yourself feeling this way, your first step should be to address the HOA and try to get your issues resolved on your own. But if this isn’t a possibility, Jamie Wiebe, a contributor to Realtor.com advises that you take your HOA to court.
When doing this, you might find that you have a better chance of getting your point across and having your ideas heard when speaking to an impartial judge rather than to your HOA board.
If you’re having legal issues with your HOA, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you better handle these situations.