Can you get rid of your homeowners association?
Plenty of neighborhoods in America manage without a homeowners association. And many families who live under the "government" of neighbors seem to hate it, because the association is too oppressive - or too apathetic.But "I've never heard of one getting undone," says Lawrence Holzman, counsel to the Maryland Homeowners Association, which represents condo owners and homeowners.
One obstacle, he says, is that "local governments gave approvals for developers to build with the assumption that these regimes would take the load off local services."
In neighborhoods where the association contracts for snow removal, roadway maintenance and other services, getting rid of the organization means persuading the local government to take on the tasks.
Some associations have managed to do that, says Wayna Gerhardt, president of Gerhardt & Associates, a Waldorf, Md., management company.
But then there's the issue of who owns the common property. Even in associations with no swimming pool, tennis court or other common facilities, there is common land that must be insured and maintained.
In most cases, bylaws require that the land can be transferred only to a government agency or nonprofit group. And in the unlikely event that such a taker could be found and that every neighbor agreed, the holders of mortgages on the homes in the community might exercise the right to call the loans.
"They lent on the premise that restrictive covenants were in place," preventing the neighbors from, say, leaving an old Chevy parked in the street, says Gerhardt.