Sometimes HOA rules are ridiculous, and sometimes they are not thought out well enough.
One of the sometimes ridiculous rules has to do with approved paint colors.
In today’s story, one homeowner is told that he has to repaint his house, and while he ends up complying with this demand from the HOA, he doesn’t do it in the way they intended.
Let’s see how the story plays out…
I lived in this town surrounded by magnificent vistas.
There was a small development on the outskirts for upscale homes and mansions.
Below the development were a few older homes.
Many celebrities and business owners had vacation properties in the area, multi-million dollar houses they used maybe one month out of the year.
Real estate had always been at a premium.
There was one older home amongst all these giant view lots.
The owner of the biggest house owned RV dealerships.
A new buyer was a guy who owned a slew of RV dealerships and had obscene amounts of money so he bought the most prominent lot on the top of the hill as you entered the development of maybe 20 lots.
His project was a massive stucco structure with a multi-car garage and a much bigger RV storage space with a huge roll up garage door.
Think of the biggest RVs you’ve seen and he had a garage built for it with an automatic door.
Even the fence was crazy expensive!
The house was a nondescript sand color with a red tiled roof and the entire lot was tastefully landscaped with different kinds of rocks, small mounds here and there and a few shrubs to be low maintenance.
The back of the property was fenced in with an 8-foot(?) or higher block wall.
The fence itself probably cost $100k.
Another homeowner was a schoolteacher with a much more modest house.
His neighbor was a schoolteacher who had lived there before the development started and had a modest house.
He decided to take advantage of the skyrocketing land prices in the neighborhood and sell, except no one wanted his house when there were much larger empty lots available.
He decided the real issue was that the new behemoth blocked his view and that’s why no one wanted to buy his three-bedroom ranch house at mansion prices.
It was really that his home didn’t appeal to the market.
The HOA is going to pick on the RV mansion owner.
So he became the president of the HOA which included the older homes and the new development.
And then the harassment started.
The HOA had formed after the RV mansion construction had begun, but the home was so big, it took almost a year to finish.
They went to court over a paint color.
The HOA had passed a “design theme” rule that all houses must be painted in a specific color palette, with the predominant color being a taupe that was darker than this man’s standard beige stucco color house.
The palette included the taupe and a selection of trim colors in pink, teal, or tan.
It was intended to give the community a Santa Fe look and feel which just happened to be the colors of the president’s house.
The RV owner took the HOA to court and the trial dragged on for a year.
The guy never used the property claiming it was still under construction during this time.
I think Barbie would approve.
He lost in court and had to repaint his property “using only the design theme approved colors.”
So the guy brought out his contractor and had him repaint the entire property the Pepto Bismol pink trim color.
Everything was painted this color — the house, the fence, the trim, and the rocks in the yard.
Then he had the massive driveway to the garage done in the same pink stamped concrete.
Even the garage doors were pink.
There was nothing the HOA could do.
He locked up the house and never stayed there.
The HOA was in an uproar because this house could be seen at the top of the hill for miles.
None of the other lot owners broke ground.
The president’s home didn’t sell for two years.
A pink house! They should’ve left the RV owner alone.
Let’s see what Reddit thought of this story…
This reader hates HOAs more than ever now.
Another reader would love to do something like this someday.
This person wishes that HOAs were illegal.
Can we see the house?
Seriously, the house wasn’t originally part of an HOA.
It would’ve been so much better if they just left him alone!
This is honestly pretty hilarious.
If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.
