When I Get My Own Compound There Won't Be Any Stupid HOA Fees!!

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I hate my neighborhood. No hate is too much of a sissy word. I loath my neighborhood. Despise it. If I had to choose between living in my neighborhood and living in Hiroshima right after the bomb dropped…well, I’d probably choose my neighborhood over death, but you get the gist of the intensity at which I abhor my ‘hood.

I almost wish I could say that I hate it because it is a ghetto full of crack-whores and gangstas. I wish I hated it because it was full of child molesting fiends peeping at my kids through Venetian blinds. At least then, then I would have a better justifiable cause for my hate.

No, I hate my neighborhood because:

7. The Walls.

Now last time I lived in an apartment, the walls were paper thin. I not only heard porno-worthy sex that lasted for hours, but I heard the kids yelling and screaming too. The cool thing is though that I only heard the LOUD stuff. Here in my townhouse, shoot, I hear the neighbor’s phone, the radio, the TV. If I am in the right place at the right time, I even know what bedtime story is being read!

6. The “Waste Management”

My stupid neighborhood doesn’t recycle and every time I try to bring it up to the board to get a recycling program here they completely ignore me or try to placate me by telling me that the company we use sorts the trash at the landfill. Right. By “sort,” I believe they mean “dump it in a pit and let some future generation deal with it.” Have they not seen Wall-e?

5. The Retention Pond

Not only do they insult my intelligence by calling it a “lake” but they won’t even let anyone canoe or kayak on it. It is certainly deep enough to canoe on and I’m not asking to set up a permanent mooring, but really? What’s the point of a “for decoration only” pond?

4. The Damn Feral Cats

Yes. I get that feral cats are a problem. I get that there are animal lovers in the neighbor who want to “take care” of those “poor unfortunate” animals but seriously, TNR programs are not proven to work and besides which, the neighborhood is not running the stupid program the way it was meant to be run. The cats continue to reproduce, continue to use the playground as a litter box and continue to hunt and kill the good wildlife. At a recent board meeting when asked if the cats were more important then the children having a playground, three of the board members said, “Yes.” When the neighborhood puts feral cats above the children, it is time to get rid of the cats...And the board members!

3. The HOA fees.

I could live in a two bedroom apartment for what I pay in HOA fees per month; maybe not a great apartment but a decent one in a decent area with a pool and a fitness center. And exactly what am I getting out of paying the HOA fees? Well, every other week, a guy comes to mow the sand in my “backyard.” There is a pool, so that’s okay. Ummm… yup that’s it. $500 per month gets me a pool and sand maintenance. When I asked if they could put sod down on my sand they said that I would have to pay for it even though it was not my fault sand was there in the first place. When I asked if they would remove the stump that they left after taking down a tree in my patch of sand out front they again stated that it was my responsibility to remove the stump even though they were the ones to cut the tree down without even informing me about it.

2. The Elderly

Okay, I can’t say too much about the elderly in the neighborhood except that they our number the younger 10 to 1. And if I thought my students had no manners, then my students need to the poster children for the next edition of Guide to Good Manners and Etiquette because these elderly folks could teach the younger generation a thing or two about bad manners and nasty, spiteful personalities. Living in this neighborhood, I have encounter more disrespectful, rude elderly then ever before in my life. Surely I am exaggerating you say. I’ll admit I am very good at hyperbole; however, in this case, not an ounce is stretched. For example, one man rides his scooter around the neighborhood every day, not a problem, until a car comes by at which point he starts weaving back and forth across the street preventing the car from passing him. He then screams obscenities at the driver when they make an attempt to pass.

1. The Board

I have never encountered a ruder bunch of S.O.B.s then the board. When discussing the feral cat issue, two of the board members continued to make rude, nasty comments about the people speaking, they rolled their eyes, heaved great exasperated sighs and proceeded to be the biggest bitches I’ve ever seen. The president is weak willed and cows at anything the VP or CAM says. The only information that he has is what the CAM gives him to recite. They will solicit open discourse from the few members that show up and then the board, all save one member, openly ignores the community input. I was ashamed that I voted for them. And I am now getting involved in the process to recall them.

There you have it the Top Ten Seven Reasons why I loath my neighborhood. What makes it all worse is that until the market turns, I have to tolerate it here. UGH! At this point I am not sure that I care if I have justifiable cause to loath...in fact I don't mind at all if I am a little bit irrational!

Aside from Bill Gates and a few others, who isn’t having money trouble right now?

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I know that this is a cry echoed around the country right now, but it is hard to hear the cries of others when my ears are ringing with my own cries.

I have a job. Mister W. has a job. We own a home that is worth 60k less than when we bought it. We had to take two mortgages and high interest to afford it. We shouldn’t have bought it but we were young, trusted our real estate agent and the mortgage company she recommended. At the time our toes were on the edge of a giant chasm and we held hands and leaped.

Big Mistake.

But isn’t that part of life? Making mistakes makes us stronger, wiser, more determined, right? Well, with the high interest we almost walked, but were assured that within three years we could refinance at a lower rate and all would be ok. Made sense. Mister W and I both thought and agreed that three years was doable. Throw in a HOA fee and our monthly payments topped out at $1850 per month. Twice that of what we paid in rent. But we said, we had some credit bumps and we knew we were going to take a hit.

Three years of tight living went by. It took my entire paycheck to cover the mortgages, the HOA and my student loans. Mister W’s check paid for everything else. We had no savings, no backup, nothing. We went without. But we did it.

Three years later we were ready to refinance and then the bottom of that chasm we leaped into flew up to meet us – the market collapsed, banks failed, Mister W’s commission based job went into a sharp decline. He didn’t lose he job, but the paycheck took a sizable hit. We contacted the mortgage company and asked for a refi. They laughed. Your house they said is worthless than what you owe and therefore you are ineligible for a refinance. I tried the bank. I tried third party mortgage companies.

We were like lepers. No one would touch us. Months went by and we kept paying, hoping that the market would recover. And when it became obvious that recovery was a long time coming, we talked to friends and neighbors about what we should do. On the advice of one such neighbor, we stopped paying the mortgage. They claimed that if for three months you didn’t pay the company would then work with you.

It sort-of worked. We were able to complete a temporary modification of our primary mortgage; this after a frustrating and humiliating battle with a “finance manager” who expressed disbelief at our “outrageous” grocery bill (she claimed that for a family of four we should spend no more than $400 per month on groceries. Right, because I don’t like to eat fresh food or make lunches for my kids for school). Our second mortgage would not help us and demanded that we get caught up immediately.

We ended up lowering our mortgage payment by about $150. Then the HOA fee went up from $312 to $450, an increase of $138. Great.

So what happens now? Well, for the past two years we have wanted desperately to get out of the house. Can’t sell it since it is still upside down. Can’t make improvements since we are still living paycheck to paycheck. Can’t rent it because we couldn’t get what we need to cover the expense. Can’t walk away because we don’t want the black mark of foreclosure on our record (besides, it goes against how I was raised to renege on debt).

That leaves us stuck. We fight because we are stressed out about money and the house. We are miserable because we have no money in which to do anything and we are fighting. And we are scared, because we don’t know what might happen next.

It makes a nice mix, right? Just like a good chef salad. Fights, stress, misery, scared…what is this dish missing? Oh, I know, let’s toss in with a nice vinaigrette of both cars need to be replaced. Oh, some crunchy slivers of Mister W’s dad is sick and needs us to be closer to him (he can’t move in with us as we literally don’t have the room and we cannot afford to make the place handicap accessible).

Oooo! This salad is tasty!!