I think there's a point to be made about single family dwellings, but it's hard to imagine how a 50 condo building would operate without one. Who takes care of the pool? Or fixes the elevator?
The governance is definitely poorly structured, though. In my (limited) experience I've seen a board that gets elected and then proceeds to abuse their power to advance their own financial positions.
I think there should be a 3rd party company that competes for the management contract and annual contracts are awarded based off democratic vote from all the owners.
My takeaway from dealing with a condo HOA is that condos shouldn't legally exist, because people owning fractional buildings is doomed to result in structural collapse. Elected residents aren't qualified to make decisions about long-term maintenance which becomes more severe and expensive over time, and they have perverse incentives to avoid spending money. Faced with a substantial enough cost, board members can opt to hide problems while they try to sell their own stake in the building.
"People owning fractional buildings" has existed for almost 150 years, at what point should we start to see NYC buildings collapsing due to structural collapse?
This is false. The first condominium in the continental US was built in 1960, the entire scheme is only 63 years old. There's some older buildings that have been converted, sure, but the legal concept isn't that old.
And buildings start needing more significant structural work after forty or fifty years. Which is to say, yes, I expect many more condos to collapse over the next couple decades.
> The first condominium in the continental US was built in 1960, the entire scheme is only 63 years old.
This is correct in the sense that it is technically correct (for residential dwellings; commercial condominiums have existed for almost a hundred years prior).
However, residential cooperatives (co-ops) have existed in the United States since the mid-1800s. These are functionally the same as a condominium with a slightly different legal structure. But the end result is identical: multiple owners jointly managing a building in which they all own a stake.
I mean, FWIW, the issue primarily relates solely with residential dwellings: Businesses generally have a better grasp on risk factors. Also, many residential cooperatives, to my knowledge, refer largely to house-sized structures, especially... in the mid-1800s. It's much more affordable to manage repairs for less floors and traditional wood frame construction.
It's also plausible the legal structure of a condominium itself is the problem that leads to, well, largely incompetent management.
Obviously I'm not sure landlords are a winning solution for anyone either. But particularly for large structures, I would prefer actual public/government management over a quasi-government entity comprised of self-centered residents.
Given the extremely similar structure in operation (residents are elected to the board, control maintenance fees, etc) and that insurance companies consider them the same for insuring purposes, what makes condos significantly worse than co-ops (which have been around for ~150 years)?
Technically a condo owner has fee simple (i.e. absolute) ownership of the airspace in their unit and tenancy in common (i.e. shared) with the other owners for the walls, floors and common areas.
I guess what you're arguing here is that groups of people shouldn't be able to own real property collectively, which would undermine a lot of the legal infrastructure that underpins business and society today; not just condos.
For example, what if one's parents die and probate leaves the family house to the adult children (who are obviously not married to each other), how would they take title?
The idea I can own my airspace, but be entirely dependent on some other idiots with no qualifications to make key decisions that determine if the floor, walls, and ceiling continue to remain stable and surrounding my property is problematic. Surfside will not be the last large condo to collapse this decade.
The legal structure makes some sense but the accountability is a joke. Structural safety should be handled at a more reputable level.
Also the definitions between your property and the common elements is... unclear in many cases, at best, and somewhat predatory in design at worst.
HOAs are the most local form of democratic government that most Americans interact with. They have an elected board, which you can run for if you're a member (owner), and an amendable constitution. In every state that I'm aware of, you have full access to the budget and all meeting minutes. I've even seen recall elections and funded campaigns. Democracy is never perfect, but for any place where I'm living in close quarters to my neighbors (e.g. not in a rural area with 20-acre lots) I'd 1000x rather an HOA than either anarchy or some builder-run "committee."
Sure let’s delegate decisions that are entirely neighborhood and building specific to a company that doesn’t even understand the local issues. Yeah HOAs can suck and aren’t needed in some cases but in my case the HOA is doing the correct thing and legal action has been taken against these places. It’s a shame airbnb won’t enforce local government policies because it will eventually blow up in their face only after people like me and my neighbors are harmed.
My HOA is primarily a collective bargaining tool for trash pickup. Over 80% of the annual fee goes to trash service. The cost of the HOA is significantly less than even the most budget-minded trash service.
Do you know how such a minimal scope had been maintained? I'm envisioning either a pretty new HOA or maybe a structure that somehow forbids scope creep.
In my experience, I've seen lots of _old_ HOAs that are similar — only there for utilities that the larger municipality is lacking (like trash, recycling, snow removal, etc). It's the new ones — those that are set up by the developer from the get go that get lambasted and become the stereotype.
Given the circumstances mentioned in GP's comment, it appears they are living in a condo, and the HOA is constructed to cover the rules for the use and maintenance of jointly-owned portions of the building. This isn't a case of "HOA is mad that next door neighbor used a wrong species of grass for their lawn."
AirBnB is itself an HOA over a distributed network of properties.
Violate its rules and you're a goner. Don't pay their "taxes", whether literal taxes or AirBnB taxing you by having you pay via your labor in changing your home, curating your listing(s) on AirBnB, writing reviews on AirBnB, being responsive above a percentile set by AirBnB, etc.
