Annual HOA fee to have renters ("lease maintenance fee??")

[Kimberly Gillock]

For those of you who own properties in HOA's, has anyone had experience with a "lease maintenance fee" imposed by the HOA? If so how much? How did they justify charging this fee (ie-- what is this money actually going towards?) Just curious. Thanks for sharing your experience!

[Greg M.]

Seen them occasionally. Typically see them around a couple of hundred dollars a year or a one time fee of a similar amount at initial lease inception. I've seen the occasional one that was close to a months rent. That was just the HOA's way of saying they don't want renters, but they aren't going to ban them.

HOA's don't need to justify the fee. It's a money grab and they know you're stuck paying it. It's just a cost of doing business and you'll pass that cost on to the renter. However, if they wanted to justify it, I'm sure the justification is that renters cause more problems than owners; renters tend to live then shorter periods of time and there are expenses when someone moves in/out such as extra trash pick-ups, programming them into an entry system, cleaning costs as the move in/out can be messy around the building, light damage to the building, scheduling of the freight elevator, cost of providing additional notices as now the tenant and owner need to receive copies, etc.