Loving The HOA

Living in an HOA has both positives, and negative aspects at times.  Everyone that is part of an HOA can probably relate.  Most of the time we love the HOA as it helps to protect the values of our home, and neighborhood.  The downside to the HOA are the fees, the meetings, and when they tell you that you are in violation.

 

The Last HOA Meeting

During our last HOA meeting, it was brought up that our HOA is considering re-striping the parking lot next to our tennis court in our local neighborhood park.   They were asking if anyone in the neighborhood had connections with someone in the business.  I don’t know the first thing about this business but when we met and they presented the budget and talked about who the best company to use was immediately thought of my friend John, because in high school he worked for a company that did parking lot striping.  I have not talked to John in a while, so I looked him up on facebook real quick, and found him right away.  I sent him a quick friend request, and in a matter of minutes he was now my “new found” friend again.

After a quick message to him I found out that not only did he still work there, he had actually purchased the company a few years back, and was working hard building up his business making the company stronger than it had ever been.   I sent him the address, and he was able to pull up the google map of the parking lot and send me a quote right away.   Talk about being impressed, I had forwarded it to our HOA leaders before the meeting was even over.

I am only telling you this as a reminder to keep your ears open for opportunities that you can help other small businesses in your local community.   It would have been very easy to simply go to any company that stripes parking lots, but by me being present, and listening to the need, I was able to think of someone I knew and provide him with an easy opportunity to help grow his business.   Not only did that help him, but he did a wonderful job on the parking lot in our neighborhood park area.

Funny Story

I personally have fallen victim of being in violation once due to a piece of trash that had blown up against my fence.   It was actually my neighbor’s  empty beer carton that had somehow blown out of his trash into my fence.  Maybe it never made it in his trash, I have no idea, but it somehow made it’s way onto the back of my fence.

I actually never did even see the beer carton in person, only in a picture that was sent to me by the HOA representative.   Along with the picture was a note that stated if I did not pick up the trash within the next 72 hours I would be fined.  WOW, really?  Did someone actually drive by while the wind was blowing and see a piece of trash that had blown into my fence?  I don’t even drink beer.   The sad thing is that if the representative would have stayed long enough they would have seen the wind blow it down to the next fence.   Heck, why not take the time to get out of the car and simply throw the trash into one of the bins instead of taking a picture of it?  lol    So things like this annoy me.  Not only did my HOA funds go to pay for someone to drive around, and take pictures, they actually bought an envelope, and stamp to send me the picture of this now non-existent trash.  Oh well, that is my funny HOA story.