HOA Foreclosing On Your Property? You Better Mow Your Lawn Or Start Packing!

UPDATED 4/21/09:
Thanks to Cole Spainhour for providing more information this raw data from Harris County on HOA Foreclosures. Over 10% of the foreclosures in Harris County were on homes valued at $100,000 or less!

So what happens when your HOA tells you to move your "non luxury" truck out of the driveway and into the garage - but you refuse?

Foreclosure.

That's right - The same thing that's happening right now to folks who can't pay their mortgage.

The HOA could literally take your house from you - and there's little you can do about it.

Sounds ridiculous, right? Until I looked into the problem today in response to a client's question. My client had received a letter from a HOA lawyer, demanding payment of HOA dues to the tune of $3,000 or the HOA would foreclose. My initial reaction was to tell the HOA to 'jump into the lake' - but before I did so, I actually cracked open the law books to see what is out there.

The Texas Supreme Court held several years ago that HOA's can foreclose upon private property for non payment or non adherance to HOA covenants - normally the 'fine print' in your deed restrictions contained in or with your deed to your home. Inwood N. Homeowners’ Ass’n, Inc. v. Harris, 736 S.W.2d 632 ( 1987). These HOA covenants form a contractual lien upon your home, which trump your Texas Homestead. This was somewhat expanded by the Texas Attorney General who, in opinion, stated: "A property owner may encumber real property with a covenant running with the land, which, depending on the particular instruments and circumstances involved, may be enforced by foreclosure without violating subsequent purchasers’ constitutional and statutory homestead rights." AG Opinon here.

In plain english, the HOA wins and you don't.

Naturally, the HOA's power has now gone to its logical extreme: The Dallas Morning News recently reported that HOAs are foreclosing for non-payment of dues and for parking a F-150 in the driveway - as the vehicle "was not a luxury vehicle." DMN story here.

Luckily, your political heros in Austin are on the move to restore balance to the force. Rep. Burt Solomons has championed the cause, seeking amendment of the Texas Constitution to forbid this practice. And predictably, he's getting resistance from... the HOAs.

Which boils down to the fundamental question: If your neighbor won't move his junky '84 Caprice off the blocks in the front yard, and the HOA has threatened and threatened, what right should you as the neighbor (and assumably a member of the HOA) have against the redneck next door?

Me thinks a deal is a deal - which is surprisingly different than my normal political leaning. Normally, I'm all for private property and screw "the man." Here, the man is the HOA; but the problem comes into enforceability - what else can the HOA do to make someone live by the words they agreed to?

Neighbors have to play by the rules, or live somewhere else. That's what you signed up for when you moved in - that's what the fine print states in your Deed, etc. If you don't like it, don't sign the deed. I'm not crazy about HOA's having the power to kick people out of their homes for ticky-tack reasons, but at the same time, a deal is a deal.

When a homeowner signs on the bottom line, the homeowner agrees to all the parts of the documents - not just the ones which benefit him.

The Drunk picked a fight - then the system picked him up.

This is a real case:

So three individuals were arrested for a crime, and I represented one of those individuals. It was a silly fight where both the fighter and the fightee where drunk; the ones who won the fight were the ones who were charged with a crime - that's the way it normally works, right?

Our drunk victim, who mouthed off to the 3 and ended up gettin' his butt whipped, ended up raising quite a stink with the prosecutor's office. So much so that the prosecutor was afraid to reduce the charge against the 3. The victim got beaten up; but at the same time, he was also a dumb-ass drunk who has been in scrapes with the law himself, who picked a fight - and then lost.

The odd circumstance is that our victim claimed severe emotional distress for getting his butt whipped while drunk at a bar - so much so that he participated in therapy, when to the ER and hospitals many times, and saw shrinks. Mind you, this is a middle aged athletic man, drinking at a bar; now he's a sad-sack whiner.

Which made me think: when does a victim's lunacy outweigh a prosecutor's discretion?

In this misdemeanor, the victim "cow-towed" the prosecutor - yelling at them, demanding money from the 3 defendants, and making a good old-fashioned stink.

Drunks who get into fights should be allowed to fight, sober up, and then go home. But not today, especially in Williamson County. We get to fight a serious charge for 9 months, spend thousands of dollars on legal fees, and then get to pay the nutjob money to get out of the crime.... all because of a drunk who started a fight, but couldn't finish it.

So the almighty State of Texas gets to finish the fight for him - and they call that justice.

Blago Indicted!

Who knew this was coming? Blagojevich did something wrong?

It is rather impressive that the U.S. Attorney's office took quite some time to put together is light, 75 page indictment against Blago.

A rule of thumb: normally, when the Feds indict, you're cooked. Now it's only a matter of sentencing guidelines as to how much time/supervised release he'll do. There's no charge bargaining now, as the indictment was issued.

I wonder what effect his staunch proclamation of innocence in front of the IL House had on this indictment; one would think that his lawyers did everything they could to get him to resign as a trade to avoid federal charges, but when the client is stubborn as a mule, then this is what happens.



http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/02/illinois.blagojevich/index.html

Molotov Cocktail? Check. Black Shirt? Check. Sticks? Check.

By: Jeremiah D. Williams

What I enjoy about the criminal anarchist's mind is the full preparation they enjoy. After a nice trip to your neighborhood WalMart to buy gas cans, lighters, etc., (which I would assume this type of person would be repulsed by corporate America), these two and others evidently where being followed by the Feds. If there is one thing I know, the Feds generally don't mess around with guys who buy "terrorist" type equipment while there just happens to be a political convention in town. The Feds fire first, and then let the court/lawyers sort it out. And that is what they did, here.I do like the AP article stating that these two participated in a march "dressed in black with sticks." Sticks? Really? Don't look for these two to come home any time soon.

Austin men to fight detention in Minneapolis today

By Steven Kreytak Tuesday, September 9, 2008, 11:05 AM

The lawyer for one of two Austin men accused of building Molotov cocktails with the intent of disrupting the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., last week said he will ask a judge today to release his client pending trial.

Assistant U.S. attorneys in Minnesota are seeking to have David Guy McKay, 22, and Bradley Neil Crowder, 23, held in jail without bail. U.S. Magistrate Judge Franklin L. Noel in Minneapolis has scheduled a preliminary hearing and detention hearing on both cases for 1:30 p.m. today.
“He strikes me as a nice kid and he strikes me as a kid who everyone is kind of surprised is in the position he is in,” McKay’s lawyer, Jeff DeGree of Minneapolis, said this morning.
DeGree said that McKay’s father, who lives in Midland, has traveled to the Twin Cities and will testify that McKay can live with him pending trial.

Asked if his client is dangerous, DeGree said: “I don’t think so. There’s nothing in his history that suggests that.

“Obviously this situation raises some concern.”