All Forum Posts by: Dylan Long

To be transparent, I find myself in this situation personally. We bought a home in March. As part of the entry discussion between our realtor and the builders we asked if there was an HOA, to which they said via email, no.

Fast forward to negotiations and closing, and the papers we signed between us and the builder for this home again stated there was no HOA.

We are one of nine houses in this new "cluster" built into an older neighborhood.  Six have been sold, three, including mine, are occupied  currently.

Fast-forward again to now, and a neighbor knocks on my door as he's received a letter from a new HOA management company welcoming us to the HOA, and telling us how to pay upcoming fees. All three of us, when we closed, were told no HOA, and signed contracts disclosing there was no HOA. Upon checking the mail I had the same letter.

The houses they're still trying to sell advertise a monthly HOA of about $70 I believe. Supposedly they're to cover a private drive to 6 of the houses (mine is not on this drive). There are no shared spaces, and we no landscaping services included.

None of the neighbors living here want this HOA. It's easy to know that, because there are only three of us, and we've all spoken.

So my question is, what is the legality of the builder setting up an HOA after selling three properties, with signed closing contracts all stating there was no HOA? If they insist on having an HOA, can we grandfather out of it as the group who setup the HOA "builder" also signed contracts with us in which no HOA was a provision?

This is in Portland, Oregon.

Cheers and thanks all for any advice. 

My feedback is similar to those who have already posted. From the photos it looks as if you're selling a project, despite what the actual text might say. There are buyers out there who are 100% adverse to having to put any work into something, and many will skip from the photos alone. I do it myself. When I pull up an ad the first thing I do is go to the photos, THEN I read the ad itself. It's your first chance to grab them, and I just see photos of dusty floors, unfinished fixtures in some areas, and some rooms that look like they weren't touched in the reno. The refinished stuff looks great, but it comes across as 30% unfinished, even if that's far from the truth. 

I sold a rental last year that we listed aggressively at $179k, hoping for $190k or so. It was a one bedroom 700 sq.ft cottage with a full-size lot in a great part of town. Still, the market seemed pretty limited on what this could get. Not 3 years prior I bought my brand new 3 bed 2000 sq.ft home for 250k. Anyways, we got an offer for $230k which we accepted. We had several other offers on the table, but all were about 20-30k less. I was nervous as heck for the two months waiting for the appraisal. My realtor did what she could to help guide him, but it's harder now that they're supposed to be more independent. It ended up working out, getting appraised at offer, but man, it was a tough wait. 

You could go with a fixed firm price, but ultimately you might pay a bit more than it otherwise would have cost to have those assurances, as they'll pad their bid to cover unknowns.

Unless you're willing to pay a bonus if they come in under time (and of sufficient quality) I'd be hesitant to try and push a penalty. 

Hey all,

Bought this little 1 bedroom cottage 5 years ago. After living there and renovating it for two years my grandma moved in, and lived out her remaining years. After she passed I decided I didn't want to be a landlord at this time, and the market was great, so put it up for sale. I bought it for $100,000 back in 2011, and just sold it for $220,000 and closed today. We listed it for $179,900 and had multiple offers in the first 12 hours, but didn't think it would go for/appraise for that much. Needless to say, I was happy! Here are some before and after from the reno I did. Some of it back in 2011, and a refresh in 2016. Aside from some electrical and drywall I did the majority of the work myself over weekends.

Got rid of a regular door which opened into the tiny bathroom and went with an exterior slider to free up space as well:

And a narrow sink to get as much room as I could in there!

Cheers all and best of luck!