Can My California HOA Ban Christmas Lights, Holiday Decorations, or Religious Items?
Overview Putting up holiday decorations is a tradition that families across America look forward to every year, whether they’re carving pumpkins for Halloween, stringing lights for Christmas, lighting a menorah for Hanukkah, hanging shamrocks in March, or putting up...
What Happens If I Can’t Afford My California HOA’s Special Assessment?
Overview Imagine the shock of opening a notice from your HOA telling you that you owe a special assessment of $26,000. Or $49,000. Your first payment is due in 30 days, and it doesn’t matter whether you write one check, split it into two payments, or tack an extra...
Can I Sue My California HOA for Defamation? The Anti-SLAPP Trap for Homeowners
Overview Homeowners get angry at their HOAs for good reasons. A director says something false and offensive about you at a board meeting or in posting to the members. The manager tells your neighbors that you're delinquent when you're not. The HOA sends out a...
Can My California HOA Call My Truck an RV and Fine Me for Parking in My Driveway?
Overview California HOAs routinely restrict recreational vehicles (RVs), boats, trailers, oversized vehicles, and commercial vehicles, and most of those restrictions are enforceable. Trouble starts when officious HOA boards stretch recreational vehicle restrictions to...
New Fannie Mae Condo Loan Rules: Can My California HOA Make My Unit Unsellable?
Overview California condo owners spent the past couple of years absorbing record-high special assessments and dues increases that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Some of that traces back to California’s insurance crisis, the balcony law (SB 326), and deferred...
Can My California HOA Charge a Special Assessment for Rising Insurance Costs?
Overview California is in the middle of an insurance crisis, and both good and bad HOAs are caught in it alongside the homeowners who live in them. Large carriers have pulled out of the state entirely or sharply limited what they’ll cover, and coverage that used to be...
Can My California HOA Foreclose on My Home for Unpaid Dues?
Overview California HOAs can foreclose on a home over unpaid assessments, and they can do it without ever setting foot in a courtroom. The Davis-Stirling Act lets an HOA record a lien against a homeowner’s property and then sell that property through a trustee, the...
Can You Win a California HOA Board Seat as a Write-In Candidate?
Overview I’ve received several questions recently from homeowners about write-in candidates in California HOA elections. One homeowner wrote to tell me that his HOA had just announced its election results, and that a woman who wrote her own name in took a board seat...
Can My California HOA Make Me Pay or Fix the Previous Owner’s Violations?
Overview Buying into a California HOA doesn’t make new homeowners responsible for the previous owner’s unpaid fines, but it can leave them responsible for the previous owner’s unfinished work. The Davis-Stirling Act splits the question by the kind of problem. Money...
Can My California HOA Stop Homeowners From Meeting Together in the Common Area?
Overview California homeowners can gather with their neighbors in the clubhouse, the recreation hall, or anywhere else in the common area to talk about what their HOAs are doing, and their HOA boards can’t stop them or charge them for the privilege. Civil Code 4515...
Can My California HOA Share My License Plate Data With the Police?
Overview Many California homeowners who discover an automated license plate reader (“ALPR”) at their community entrance assume that the cameras exist to catch package thieves and car burglars. What many homeowners don’t know is that the Flock cameras their HOAs...
What Can My California HOA Legally Spend Reserve Funds On?
Overview Reserve funds sit in a separate account for a reason. Homeowners pay into that account every month through their regular assessments (or through special assessments aimed at funding reserves), and the money accumulates over years to cover the expensive work...
Can My California HOA Start Enforcing a Rule It Ignored for Years?
Overview So many homeowners across California open violation notices for conduct their HOAs ignored for a decade. The paint color, the fence height, the boat in the driveway, the tree in the side yard. Half the neighborhood does the same thing, nobody received a...
Can My California HOA Spray Pesticides Near My Home?
Overview A cluster of rare childhood cancers in Ladera Ranch, a large master-planned community in South Orange County, has forced a question thousands of California HOA homeowners never thought to ask. Residents there suspect that years of pesticide and herbicide...
Can My California HOA Replace a Board Member Who Sold Their House?
Overview The Davis-Stirling Act requires board members to be members of their HOAs, and membership depends entirely on recorded ownership. Once escrow closes on the sale of a director’s property, that director is no longer a member of the HOA, and thus is no longer...
Who Do I Report My California HOA To When It Breaks the Law?
Overview Homeowners who discover that their HOAs broke the law frequently look for the state agency that they can complain to. Some look for a state office that licenses HOAs or a hotline that takes complaints, and others might look for the state regulator that audits...
Can I Serve on the Board of a California 55+ HOA If I’m Under 55?
Overview A trending issue in California HOA law involves senior citizens leaving their adult children or grandchildren title to properties inside senior citizen communities (e.g., a 55+ community). California’s senior citizen housing statutes let 55+ communities...
Can My California HOA Fine Me for Criticizing It on Social Media?
Overview Homeowners frustrated with their HOAs increasingly take their complaints online. Unfortunately, a steady stream of really ignorant and really bad advice has told many to shut up or pay the price. The latest example comes from an article that sought the...
Can My California HOA Suspend My Pool, Gym, and Other Privileges?
Overview Most homeowners picture HOA discipline in terms of monetary fines, which is understandable. Most discipline does take that form. But HOAs in California hold a second, less familiar, and far narrower, power to suspend members’ privileges as a penalty. Many...
Will California HOA Fee Increases Be Capped at 8%? Inside SB 1007
Overview As I’ve written and podcasted about on several occasions, under the Davis-Stirling Act, California HOAs can raise regular assessments up to 20% every year without requiring consent from the homeowners. A new law currently wending its way through the...
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