Homeowners Share The Best Revenge They’ve Taken Against Their HOA

By Zach Brown

April 22, 2022

It’s no secret that HOAs are the bane of neighborhoods. Often times they can get away with pushing people around, but not for the folks in these stories. These disgruntled homeowners share the times they get even with their ridiculous HOA.

Revenge of the Pink Flamingos

“I don’t live in an HOA but a friend of mine does and I helped him.

Backstory:

When writing the CC&Rs they failed to check the township ordinances (I live in OH, if you don’t live in a city/town/village you live in a township) and permitted several things that the township didn’t. This resulted in everyone in the HOA getting fined by the county for violating local law (they all made the assumption that the township was less strict than the HOA, which is usually true). Nobody knew why they were getting fined until I told them about the county ordinance they were violating. The HOA, even though it was their mistake, refused to reimburse everyone for the fines.

Revenge:

The HOA had a regulation that your holiday decorations could be a theme, submit it for approval and, if you could prove it, you could use items that they typically banned in the theme. No approval and you couldn’t do the theme you had originally picked out. This HOA banned plastic flamingos. Well, I had been to Antigua and brought back Christmas Cards that depicted Santa’s sleigh being pulled by pink flamingos. So my friend submitted the theme ‘Christmas in the Caribbean’ for approval because December, in our area, is grey and gloomy. He also listed using flamingos instead of reindeer. The HOA approved it (without reading everything) and even said ‘Really looking forward to how you depict this!’

Cue pink flamingos pulling Santa’s sleigh and plastic palm trees, in addition to Christmas lights. As well as motion-activated music, mainly ‘Christmas in the Caribbean’

They tried to fine him for the flamingos. He pulled out the Christmas card I brought back from Antigua and showed them that an artist had already depicted Santa’s sleigh with flamingos and ‘Oh, by the way, my friend brought this back from Antigua which is in the Caribbean.’

It was great watching the board members and HOA CC&R enforcement walk/drive by his house with steam coming out their ears because he followed their requirements to the letter and got their approval before he even put it up. It wasn’t his fault they didn’t read through the entire decoration proposal before approving it.”

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Malicious Compliance

“This wasn’t an HOA, but a new neighbor that took a city ordinance too far.

I had a classic Cadillac that I had been restoring. I had already completed all of the interior and exterior bodywork and paint. I had the engine out and was slowly rebuilding it. The car sat in my driveway beside my garage. This is about the time a new neighbor moved in across the street from me. A few days after he moved in I received a violation of the city ordinance that all vehicles on private property must be fully registered and licensed. When I called the city wondering why after more than 2 years, they were hassling me. I was told there had been a complaint. So I threw a cover over the car. A week later I got another violation. The cover wasn’t enough. I moved the car to my back yard, parked it between 2 sheds with the cover….another violation and this time there was a fine. I took it to court. I was told that the ordinance was clear. No vehicle could be parked on private property unless it was properly licensed. It was part of the blight laws. It cost me $250.

So I got even with the city and my new neighbor. I owned the lot next to my house and generally used it for family gatherings. I now decided that this would make a great place for an art exhibit. I moved the car to the front of that lot, put it on a foundation, and painted it purple, pink, and green. I said it was an art sculpture and let them take me to court. I took a pic of Cadillac Ranch in Texas as one of my exhibits that my car was a piece of art. The judge agreed and that work of ‘art’ stayed in my yard for the next eight years until I moved.”

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Going HAM

“My family lived under the dictatorial regime of an HOA for about a year and a half…

My dad, who is into ham radios, put up a small but hardly visible antenna on the back of the house. The top of it could be seen from the front, but only just the very top. Well, the HOA president told him that he had to take it down. He told them he would (although there was nothing in the bylaws forcing him to do so).

The next day, the antenna is 15 feet taller, as my dad had raised the extension in response. The HOA president put a fine in our mailbox immediately and gave my dad a stern talking-to at our front door.

The following day, the antenna was raised up another 10 feet with an extension added in. At that point, it was clearly visible all over the neighborhood. Another fine showed up in our mailbox, and my dad had to go to another meeting. They threatened to begin eviction proceedings if he didn’t take it down immediately. He acquiesced and agreed to take it down.

The next day the antenna was still there, with my dad on the roof first thing in the morning, waving at the HOA president as he predictably came around to inspect.

In a furious huff, he went to the council, called my dad in, and told him that they would begin eviction proceedings since he was not only violating HOA rules but making a mockery of them. At that point, my dad pulled his ace card and had my uncle’s lawyer come in and explain that where we lived, HOAs could not regulate the use and transmission of ham radios and licensed operators due to their use for emergency communications and transmissions. My dad knew this all along but just decided to mess with the HOA regardless. He kept his tower, and the HOA caved in on the fines and punishments and realized they couldn’t do anything unless they wanted to take us to court and prove that what my dad had was unreasonable (which it clearly wasn’t).

It’s his favorite story to tell at parties. I still think ham radios are boring, though.”

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Arrested For Walking Your Dog?

“I go into work early some days to get at least some of my work done before the idiots to show up. Usually, before work, I go on about a five-mile walk with my dog. I live in a condo so I walk about a quarter-mile up the road and walk around in a neighborhood.

About eight months ago while I’m walking a golf cart with actual lights and sirens pulled up in front of me. This huge old lady gets out and starts yelling before I can even get my headphones out of my ears. Turns out walking dogs isn’t allowed before 7 am according to the HOA. I informed her that first of all I don’t live there and second of all the streets were all public so she couldn’t really do much. She responded by threatening to call the cops and have me arrested. I just told her to do whatever she felt she had to and walked away.

This really ticked her off. She started following me in her golf cart with the lights and siren going. This continued for about ten minutes until the cops arrived on the scene. I stopped and talked with them for a bit and explained my side of things. Took maybe 20 minutes before they came back over to explain what was going to happen.

In the end, I had every right to walk my dog at any time of day or night as long as I had light when it was dark and had reflective clothing (I had both), as for her though they tested the siren which exceeded noise levels for any time before 8 am. Then to top it off she didn’t have it registered for use on public roads, and the tail lights didn’t work. As I looped back around the golf cart was getting loaded onto a tow truck and I just kinda laughed the whole way back to my condo.”

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HOA Picks On The Wrong Rich Guy

“My mom told me a great story of the vengeance one of her clients enacted after being harassed by a tyrannical HOA. The guy is a surgeon, and very wealthy. He bought a piece of property and the HOA started really messing with him bad, ripping his trees out, fining him large sums of money for infractions that were baseless, and when he would fight them and ask for proof, they would retaliate by messing with him even more, they fined him for the paint color of the house (which was already on there when he bought the property) so he paid to have the house repainted. Then they fined him because ‘the mailbox wasn’t the right color,’ the list goes on and on. This guy even stopped coming to the property after a while and lived in another house because he couldn’t take it anymore. The pettiness and retaliation were becoming overwhelming and he was done.

The revenge: Being a pretty prestigious surgeon, and having a boatload of money, he decided to buy every piece of property that became available in the neighborhood. This plot took over a year of buying property after property in this neighborhood, he would put them in names of different businesses he owned as to not raise suspicion. The HOA didn’t even see it coming. He showed up to an HOA meeting where they were re-electing all of the board members for the year, to discuss a grievance he had about one of the many letters he had received, fining him for yet another ridiculous ‘violation.’ They basically told him to pound sand. He said something to the effect of ‘Here’s a list of all the properties I now own in this neighborhood, and that makes me the majority owner, I’m disbanding this HOA.’ They were stunned, but there was nothing they could do. He defeated them. When my mom told me this story it really gave me a justice hard-on because of the heinous HOA that we grew up with.”

“I actually helped a customer stand up to their nasty HOA and win. I worked as a team supervisor for DirecTV at this time. Most of my duties were administrative, but if anyone on my team had an escalated call (supervisor requested), then those were my job too. One of my agents got a call, and from what he told me, the customer needed someone with more authority than a front-line service rep. So I took the call and the guy was frantic and asking me for help. He had been going through rounds with his HOA over the placement of his satellite dish. As it turned out, due to various obstructions, the only way his dish could be installed and maintain a quality signal was to be was pole-mounted.

So it was on a pole in his side yard, instead of on the roof or the side of the house. The HOA had deemed that a violation and fined him. They then threatened further proceedings against him when he refused to pay. There was something about violation of the HOA covenant agreement or some such nonsense like that. They had shown up that day to further the issue, and he decided to call us and see if there was anything we could do. Oh yes, there was.

I asked if I could speak to the HOA rep that was in his home, and he was more than pleased to let me handle it. After introducing myself and whatnot, I informed the HOA rep it was a violation of federal law to deny the homeowner the placement of their dish if that was the only place it could be installed to get a high-quality signal. The HOA rep instantly started trying to tell me what’s what, when I just rattled off, ‘Over the Air Reception Devices Rule (OTARD),’ of the Telecommunications Act in 1996.

I told him, ‘It is the OTARD Rule. It’s a part of the act I just named that explicitly forbids the restriction of placement of a signal reception device if that is the only feasible installation option. In short, you can’t make him remove it, and if you force it, he has options.’

I couldn’t literally say, ‘He can take you to court,’ since I’m not one of the corporate lawyers, but the point was made clear enough. He just handed the phone back to my customer and left the house.

The customer was so freaking excited and said, ‘You have no idea how much of a hassle this has been, fighting with them over this for months! Thank you so much!’

It was a victory for the little guy. Forget HOAs and their power-tripping little sycophants. But this sort of thing should not have even been an issue in the first place. Let’s set aside for a moment that, in my experience, most HOAs are just glorified power-mad schemes designed to squeeze as much as they can from you while enforcing draconian rules. Pretend they’re in the right to make such demands of a homeowner and their satellite dish placement. Even then, this shouldn’t have been an issue since it’s incumbent upon them, as people enforcing contracts and the rules within them, to be aware of the laws as they pertain to the infraction being sanctioned. In other words, know your stuff before you open your mouth to someone. Especially so before you open your mouth to someone who likely has good reason to know more about it than you do.

That’s what incenses me so much about stuff like this. They were most likely banking on the notion that the average homeowner wouldn’t know about the OTARD rule or other specifics of some Telco Act passed by Congress years ago. They were banking on that and expecting to profit from it, and they do it because it works. The average homeowner thinks they’ve now broken the rules of the contract, and that their stability could be on the line due to the threats of fines, or worse. So now they’ve been stressed, swindled, and lost their entertainment. It’s infuriating. This wasn’t an isolated incident, it came up often enough that it was part of our training to deal with it.”

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He Fought The HOA and Won

“I don’t know what it is about these HOAs but I hate them with a passion. When I was growing up any neighbor who dared to get up in another neighbors business was treated like trash for eternity. I can still remember pelting Mr. Jordan’s car with snowballs with the other neighbor kids because he was such a busybody prick. We never got in trouble either because well… our parents despised him too. These days that moron would not pass go and be anointed HOA president for life.

Anyway, I have been plotting to destroy the HOA for quite some time but began to lose hope that it was here forever. And like the French felt about the Nazis who set up camp in their country, just would have to settle for some minor malicious undermining of the pricks. Until a week ago. A major court decision was reached in Berger v. Wyndcliff where the HOA was killed off after 30 years because the original documents failed to provide an extension provision.

Of course, the HOA just amended the documents with this provision, but the court, which I suspect might be hating these things as much as I do these days, said you can’t do that. Wow! I went into my basement where I keep these ridiculous HOA papers and started reading. My documents were 32 years old and no extension provision either!

But knowing the depths of denial these Karen and Kens are capable of, I looked up the lawyers who won that case and retained them. These guys are the top land-use lawyers in the state, hired by cities and towns to write the zoning laws appointed by the governor to do housing task forces…..the real deal kind of lawyers you want for this nonsense. He wrote the legal memorandum and opinion letter which I sent to every homeowner. A monumental victory for the value of my home, and a very satisfying petty victory for me personally.”

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Over The Hedge

“On the other side of our fence was a simply huge hedge. It protected us from the road and was on HOA property. We were told during the closing that the HOA maintained it.

After a few months, we got a nasty letter that we need to trim OUR hedge. I called the maintenance company and he was rude about it and insisted that if we didn’t do it, they would and would charge me. He wasn’t even listening to me about it being their hedge.

Finally, I told him that I understood and I would have a crew out that week to remove the entire hedge. I told him we didn’t like it that much and we’re looking forward to the view.

He was apoplectic. Insisted we couldn’t remove the hedge.

I patiently explained that if it was MY hedge, I would remove it and if it was THEIR hedge they could trim it. On both sides.

Their crew trimmed it quite nicely the next day.”

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I Guess The HOA Didn’t Like His Truck

“My dad bought a new truck back in the 70s that 30 years later became my first car. It was ugly and beat to heck but ran okay and because of its age was exempt from emissions testing so it was legally registered and everything.

I almost always parked it in the garage when not driving it to school and back but had to park in the street for a couple of days while using the garage for other stuff. A week later my parents got a letter from the HOA saying not to park outside because the truck was unsightly and brought down the neighborhood’s value. We ignored it of course because they couldn’t legally do anything about it. We saw the HOA president drive by our house multiple times taking pictures in her fancy new Range Rover and we’d get letters any time it sat outside for more than a day.

I did what any other sane person in my situation would do and started parking in the street every day. Although most of our neighbors were rich snobs and looked down on my parents for not buying me a brand new car, they never complained about my parking because they all hated the HOA nazi too and knew it ticked her off. She was recently voted out of the HOA and everybody is happier.

I still have and love the truck and would never get rid of it. It has been a part of the family for longer than I have. I occasionally take it to my parent’s house to visit just for old times’ sake.”

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If She Can’t Beat Them, Why Not Join Them?

“Okay, so my best friend, who I’ll call ‘Sam’, grew up in suburban Arizona. His family owned their home and rarely had problems with their HOA, other than it being generally fascist. It all started with some cardboard boxes. Sam and his sister, at the ripe age of around six or seven, wanted to make a fort in their front yard. Their dad, being the great guy he was, helped them build a makeshift cardboard box fort for them to play in. Being kids, they played in the fort for a couple of hours and proceeded to get distracted elsewhere. Not a day later, they received posted notices on the door and phone calls informing them they need to clean the ‘unsightly’ garbage out of their yard or be faced with fines. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it left the family a bit jaded towards their HOA.

Fast forward a handful of years later. Sam’s dad decided he wanted to paint the house. Now if you don’t know, most HOAs have strict rules on the color and send templates for you to pick off of. He said the templates ranged from tan to slightly different tan. Sam’s dad found a color he liked that was more of a greenish tan and decided to go ahead and paint the whole house that way. The HOA proceeded to have a meltdown because he painted their house outside of the allowed color spectrum. Over a color? In all honesty, a greenish tan sounds way better than their options. I mean, tan or a slightly different tan? This community must look depressing.

Sam’s dad said, ‘No way! it’s basically the same color,’ and he refused to repaint his entire house another color.

So the HOA hired a contractor to come down with a paint color tester and posted notices on their door, with a detailed analysis of how his color is yucca tan and didn’t t fit the spectrum, and if they didn’t repaint by the end of the month, they would be fined.

Instead of folding, Sam’s mom found out when the next meeting was and discovered a few things she didn’t like. First off, the same ol’ dude had been president of the HOA for way too long, and there was some shady stuff going on in terms of contracting. Enough was enough, so she walked around the neighborhood the next few weeks ‘campaigning’ and ran for president of the HOA. She won by a landslide.

It was the largest turnout for an HOA meeting since its inception. Apparently, everyone was also sick and tired of the HOA’s nonsense, but they hadn’t bothered to find a solution.

So Sam’s mom was elected president and discovered the previous regime was doing the old ‘hookup my son-in-law’ by contracting the old president’s son-in-law’s company and paying him stupid amounts of money to water a small patch of land. She quickly ended all that nonsense. Rather than change any rules, Sam’s mom just decided to refuse to enforce any of them. Sam’s mom went on for years as president. Recently she decided she was tired of it and didn’t show up to the election and someone else got elected. Now the new guy is trying to enforce the old rules, but everyone is so used to the freedom that there is a massive war going on.”

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