Homeowners Association Spends $300,000 In Legal Fees Over A Pick-Up Truck - The Consumerist

Homeowners Association Spends $300,000 In Legal Fees Over A Pick-Up Truck - The ConsumeristA homeowner in Florida was awarded $187,000 in legal fees from a years-long court battle over the right to park a pick-up truck in his driveway. Now the homeowners association is going to have to pick up the tab for $300,000 in fees.
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How do you react to a story like this? Do you cheer for the owner who won? Or do you lament the fact that every owner in the development now has to pay for the folly of their governing board? In any event, thanks to Mystery Reader for sending it along.

HOA Foreclosures; Necessary Tool or Extortion Racket? - Real Estate Channel Global News Center

HOA Foreclosures; Necessary Tool or Extortion Racket? - Real Estate Channel Global News CenterAlthough the HOA foreclosure crisis is clearly concentrated in the states of Texas, Florida, Arizona and California, the problem is not limited to these states. Some 33 states permit a nonjudicial HOA foreclosure. Unfortunately, we have no reliable statistics on how many of these HOA foreclosure filings actually lead to seizure and sale of the home. The CAI claims that the percentage is very small. Perhaps.

The fact that HOAs are able to file the foreclosure as a threat and then collect several thousand dollars in late fees, interest, fines and attorney fees for a delinquency that may total only $300-$600 has led critics to describe the situation as nothing more than a "shakedown racket."
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Thanks to Fred Pilot for the link to this detailed piece on HOA foreclosures.

Nevada's Economic Misery May Be America's Future

Nevada's Economic Misery May Be America's FutureNevada has a greater concentration of economic misery than any other state. The state's unemployment rate, which in June edged up to 14.2 percent, has risen faster during the past year than it has anywhere else, and nearly six percent of all homes across the state's desert landscape received a foreclosure filing in the first six months of the year.

While the concentration of misery may be greater in Nevada, it was caused by the same unchecked housing bubble and unregulated financial gambling that brought pain to the rest of the country. If present trends go unchecked, Nevada is America's future.
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Now that's a scary thought.

I looked at President Obama's latest job approval numbers and maybe he ought to be scared, too. An average of seven different polls shows that he is currently at 45.7% approval and 49% disapproval. The election is just over three months away.

Home Vacancies Rise as U.S. Ownership Falls to Lowest in Decade - Bloomberg

Home Vacancies Rise as U.S. Ownership Falls to Lowest in Decade - BloombergAbout 18.9 million homes in the U.S. stood empty during the second quarter as surging foreclosures helped push ownership to the lowest level in a decade.

The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, rose from 18.6 million in the year-earlier quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The ownership rate, meaning households that own their own residence, was 66.9 percent, the lowest since 1999.
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And yet people keep saying the economy is out of recession--with the housing market still in a trash can and government budgets gushing red ink from the federal government down to the local school districts.

Homesteads and Other Sources of Tax Income - NYTimes.com

Homesteads and Other Sources of Tax Income - NYTimes.comAround the nation, cities and towns facing grim budget circumstances are grasping at unlikely — some would say desperate — means to bolster their shrunken tax bases. Like Beatrice, places like Dayton, Ohio, and Grafton, Ill., are giving away land for nominal fees or for nothing in the hope that it will boost the tax rolls and cut the lawn-mowing bills.

In Boca Raton, Fla., which faces a budget gap of more than $7 million, leaders are thinking about expanding the city’s size and annexing neighborhoods as an antidote. Sure, more residents would cost more in services, but officials hope the added tax revenues will more than make up for it.

And leaders in Manchester, N.H., and Concord, Mass., are taking an approach that might have once seemed politically unthinkable. They are re-examining whether their communities’ nonprofit organizations really deserve to be tax-free.
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Municipal promotion of CIDs is about money, and now cities are getting even more desperate. Soon they will be selling the right to rename the city. BP-Ville! Microsoftburg!

The 18 States Facing The Most Brutal Austerity Cuts

The 18 States Facing The Most Brutal Austerity Cuts
They have Illinois as the third worst, exceeded only by New Jersey and Nevada. I hear the talking heads referring to the "recovery" we are supposedly in, and then I look at the condition of state and local governments and think, "no way, baby."

Professor returns from vacation to find office covered in aluminum foil

News from The Associated PressST. PETER, Minn. (AP) -- A science professor at Gustavus Adolphus College left for a week's vacation this summer and returned to a shiny office. Very shiny. Professor Scott Bur's students had covered his office in aluminum foil. Computer screen, chairs, the ceiling, the floor - all covered in foil. Books and pens were individually wrapped, so was the phone, a ball cap, a bottle and the coffee maker.
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Usually I stick to an aluminum foil hat. Keeps the mind control rays out, you know. Thanks to Fred Pilot for the link.

Amid Washington Heat Wave, Senator Talks 'Global Cooling'

His Al Gore igloo melted, Sen. Jim Inhofe Not Convinced of Warming Trend

Back in February, when Washington D.C. was buried under record-breaking snowfall and the capital was paralyzed, the nation's chief climate change doubter made much of a small igloo down the street from the Capitol building as he took to the Senate floor to refute climate change.

With municipal pay like this, who needs Privatopia?

BELL, Calif. – Residents in this modest blue-collar Los Angeles suburb where one in six lives in poverty were angry: Their city manager was getting paid more than President Barack Obama and the police chief more than the commander of the nearly 13,000-member LAPD.

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Their mayor and three of their four council members, people they see every day at the grocery store or church, approved the contracts, and put an obscure measure on the ballot that allowed council members to pay themselves any amount of money.

And they did: collecting between $90,000 and $100,000 a year as part-time officials.

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What a deal for counties and cities: not only do they shift the cost of providing services onto privately governed HOAs, they get volunteers to run them as well who are paid zip for doing so.

Real estate deflation hits most large California counties

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Assessed property values in California are likely to decline for the second year running, according to a Bond Buyer review of data from the state’s larger counties.

Even though the state’s tax assessment system has the effect of muting the volatility of property assessments, 11 of the state’s 12 largest counties experienced a decline in their property tax roll this year.

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Even the center of the Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County, was unable to avoid a shrinking roll.

“This is far worse than anyone had expected,” County Assessor Larry Stone said in the news release announcing the tax roll. The roll dropped 2.44%, by $7.4 billion.

“This county has not experienced such a devastating drop in property values since the Great Depression,” he said.

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The data show this isn't a typical real estate correction cycle in which prices fall back to earth following a boom. They're actually falling into a deflationary hole in much of California, which along with Nevada has suffered some of the steepest declines in real estate value in the nation.

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently wrote that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who studied the Depression of the 1930s for his doctoral dissertation, so fears deflation that he reportedly said he'd toss sacks of $100 bills out helicopters to prevent it. Memo to the Chairman: deploy a squadron of black helicopters bearing bags of Benjamins to California, starting in my ZIP Code.

Credit card contracts unreadable for most Americans

Credit card contracts unreadable for 80% of Americans"Credit card contracts and other such documents are written in dense prose for a reason: So that the customer will NOT be able to understand it," notes Roy Peter Clark, a national expert on writing and a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "I may be cynical, but I don't think their writing strategies are accidental, the collateral damage of a bureaucratic mindset. I think those writers know exactly what they are doing."
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Yes. And one might say the same thing about CC&Rs.

Alligator makes a meal of Tempe Town Lake fish | Phoenix News | Arizona News | azfamily.com | Phoenix News

Alligator makes a meal of Tempe Town Lake fish | Phoenix News | Arizona News | azfamily.com | Phoenix NewsTEMPE, Ariz. -- Since the dam at Tempe Town Lake broke and the lake drained earlier this week, one of the big questions has been what will happen to the fish left behind in the drying lake bed.

Well, let's just say an alligator named Tuesday is getting one heck of a meal.
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And he (or she) has a nice smile, no doubt as the result of a full tummy.

Ohio.com - Judge: Ohio man can't form own Indian reservation

Ohio.com - Judge: Ohio man can't form own Indian reservationLIMA, OHIO: An Ohio man who claimed that his American Indian ancestry makes him exempt from city nuisance laws has been ordered to clean up two homes that have fallen into disrepair.

A judge told William Bowersock on Thursday that he has 30 days to take care of the properties in Lima (LY'-muh).

The judge rejected Bowersock's argument that he had seceded from the local government and formed his own Indian reservation, thereby making him exempt from the city's property code.
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Obviously he should have formed a one-man HOA instead.

Man Pulled Gun On Condo Tenant In Shower

A Boynton Beach homeowner's association member was arrested after pulling a gun on someone in the shower Wednesday, police said.

"He had the gun within 12 inches from my face, shaking his hand," tenant James Korienek said.

Korienek said he came face to face with an armed man inside the Boynton Beach condominium where he lives early Wednesday.

Boynton Beach police said Virgil Wilkinson, a homeowner's association board member, broke into the unit.

"I was locked in the bathroom," Korienek said. "I come out, open the door and the gun is pulled on me like this, and he had the Boynton (Beach) police on the phone. He said, 'Just stand back. Stand back.' And I'm like, 'Virgil, it's me, Jim.'"

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Sounds like a scene out of a Hitchcock movie, doesn't it?

Should Condos have access to privately owned units? Is this an invitation for abuse?

Johnson battles homeowner's association in court

A homeowner's association in Kettering is suing Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) and his wife for allegedly failing to pay assessments to the HOA.

In court papers filed in Prince George's County District Court, the Kettering Community Association is asking for about $1,500 in late assessments and legal fees.

"We had this house for 30 years, paid our dues consistently for 30 years," Johnson said in an interview Friday. "They claim we didn't pay. ... It's only $150 (per year). The next thing I know I get a bill for $1,800 or more ... and [got a notice] they are going to foreclose on my house [from] some lawyer. I got pretty mad. I hired a lawyer representing me. ...

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Mr Johnson says: "There's a pattern that's been really frustrating for us," he said. "You have these developers that come in and they build condominium associations and homeowners associations, but the way the bylaws are drafted, the citizens of Prince George's County never take control over their own communities."

Oh, Mr Johnson, I think the problem is much bigger than that!

Two bodies found in S.W. Reno house that burned after reported explosion

Investigators have found two bodies in the burned-out rubble of a home in an exclusive southwest Reno neighborhood. They have been unable to identify the victims who died in the blaze, which began shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Deputies with the Washoe County Sheriff's Office had attempted to serve an eviction at the home, which was under foreclosure, on Tuesday at about 10:40 a.m. They said they knocked and identified themselves, then heard what sounded like gunfire or an explosion and took cover.
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Thanks to a a friend who alerted me to the story.

No word on whether this was a bank or an HOA foreclosure. Regardless, this is not the first time a homeowner has has self immolated in a burning house they were about to be evicted from. I sometimes think we are a little too cavalier about kicking people out of their own homes in this country.

Petition seeks to have wolves howl across US

Petition seeks to have wolves howl across U.S.

Those wild canines better not howl too close to any exurban HOAs or they may find the HOA will send out the exterminators.

Money missing from St. James HOA leads to embezzlement charge for employee

St. James | Brunswick County Sheriff's Office investigators arrested a Wilmington woman in an embezzlement scheme that siphoned more than $12,000 from the St. James Property Owners' Association.

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Another embezzlement story from Cynthia Stephens.

Carolina Beach woman charged with embezzling $30,000A Carolina Beach woman has been charged with embezzling about $30,000 from homeowners associations

A Carolina Beach woman has been charged with embezzling about $30,000 from homeowners associations whose money she managed.

Michelle Lynn Bowman, 42, of 300 The Cape Boulevard, was arrested June 28 after turning herself in to Carolina Beach police. She is still being held in New Hanover County jail in lieu of $40,100 bond, according to jail officials.

She is accused of using identification numbers from four homeowners associations to get bank cards and withdraw cash, said Lt. Bill Goodson of the Carolina Beach Police Department.

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Thanks to Cynthia Stephens for this story. I wonder how much money is missing from communal coffers in America's hundreds of thousands of residental associations?

California political paradox unveils underlying tension between voters, interest groups

The Los Angeles Times has highlighted a political paradox that's playing out in California and certainly other states and the nation as a whole. While anti-incumbent sentiment remains high (last month, California voters nearly elected an unknown state worker who spent less than $5,000 on his campaign over an incumbent Assemblymember as the GOP nominee for insurance commissioner), it is incumbents whose campaigns are getting funded and not their challengers.

Voters in effect are saying we want new blood and someone not beholden to special interest groups, but we'll elect incumbents over non-incumbents since special interest groups get the incumbents' name out there more than their relatively unknown challengers. The real fight isn't over who gets elected, but between the voters and special interest groups.

The explosion of the Internet, which is already blowing a huge hole in the business models of the mass media, could change the equation. Folks running for office -- particularly in large, populous states like California -- have to raise gobs of money in order to buy political ads from mass media outlets. However, if more voters already sick of junior high school level attack ads decide to ignore them and visit candidates' websites instead, the balance of power is shifted between them and the special interest groups that fund candidates' high priced TV spots.