Apple has threatened to remove Amphetamine from the App Store

Aren't HOAs widely hated?

As are dentist visits and prostate exams - but even those things ultimately add value. HOA’s arguably do so as well even if they’re often hated.

No. Certain internet communities have a culture of dunking on them, but they do not represent any kind of real majority. The housing market continues to show a preference towards communities with HOAs.

But do most people consider them as such, i.e. painful but necessary/beneficial? My understanding was that they are widely regarded as parasitic organizations full of busybodies who are there to advance their personal agenda and to feel a sense of power over people at the expense of all the reasonable people who just want to live their lives; they are considered the polar opposite of live and let live.

I personally have never dealt with an HOA, so my understanding of their popularity is shaped solely by what I have read online. I must say your comment is the only one I have ever seen that has put them in a positive light.

The HOA stereotype definitely is, but all HOAs are not the same. My HOA is generally hands off but you do need to ask permission for structural or cosmetic changes -- the neighborhood doesn't want to look like an amusement park. But, no one is going around measuring the height of your grass or other overly strict things I've read about.

However, I did just get a nasty gram to take down my political "Giant Meteor for 2020 - just end it already" yard sign.

> The housing market continues to show a preference towards communities with HOAs.

Is it the housing market as homeowners who favours HOAs, or is it the builders who favour them? Are HOAs opted in by homeowners in existing communities because of their benefits, or do builders create them force them upon new communities because it benefits them somehow?

I am asking because while I do not have any knowledge of HOAs, I have been following the saga of rental water heaters/furnaces/ACs in Ontario for a while. Long story short, construction companies sign a long-term contract with an appliance company instead of buying and installing necessary appliances like furnaces for new houses. They get a nice kickback for this. If you want to buy a new house, odds are you will be bound by a long-term contact. If you want to terminate it early, you end up paying 30k for an appliance that is worth 10k new and installed. If you keep your contact, you will pay the same over many years.

It is a deal that is very much to the benefits of the builder and very much against the interest of the homeowners. But they have been exploding in popularity. There are relatively more and more homes with rented water heaters and fewer and fewer homes with owned water heaters every year. It would still be wrong to conclude that "water heater rental is beneficial. See, the market has spoken."

> the neighborhood doesn't want to look like an amusement park.

I do think this is where a lot of the HOA problems come from - if someone wants to put something up on their front yard or lawn, then neighbors can intervene and say you can’t do that there.

Since you bought the property and it’s yours, why do others get to have a say in it? I know I don’t give two hoots about what the neighbor does to their own home.

HOA does have what feel like arbitrary busybody restrictions, but they are also the authority that makes people remove the broken washing machine from their front yard and they are the only recourse in my region (when I lived briefly in a suburban house) for someone who refuses to do anything about their dog that barks 24/7 or flings trash into your neighboring yard. HOA fixed it for me on both occasions. The police certainly don’t care.

So people aren’t going to like the HOA. But they also offer essential recourse and order.

Most people I know who have been pro-HOA are the ones who have a say in it and are on the board, or have strong opinions on how their neighbors should outfit their own house.

The ones that hates the HOA are the ones that have paid a ton of money (I’m in the Bay Area) and can’t do as they please. Who wants to pay close to a million and have others chime in and start giving you directions on what to do to your own property.

I rent, but the principe of the HOA is a big enough leech in my mind that I’d hold out for a single home, whenever that is (if at all).

Buying the property came with the HOA strings.

If you didn't want those strings, then go buy a property somewhere that doesn't have an HOA.

Same with this case, I sympathize with the author and I personally think this is a stupid thing for Apple to do, but the author (hopefully) understood the bargain they were entering into when they chose to enter the walled garden.

This feels like a case where the market will dictate what works and what doesn't.

It sounds shitty/shady to you (or at least that's how you're framing it here - apologies if I misunderstood) but if people are still buying those homes, then they must think it's an acceptable contract to enter into.

The congressional approval rating has been between 10 and 30% for the last 8 years, and over this same time the re-election rates of incumbent congressional reps is 89% or higher. People are largely happy with their own congress members, and vote to reelect them and their own HOA, and they will choose to purchase homes with an HOA, and not disband them.

The fact that people grudgingly sign a contract does not mean all the terms of the contract are fair. People sign away their right to sue or join a class action lawsuit as a prerequisite to buying goods or services from companies all the time, but I still believe it is unfair. People grudgingly sign work contracts with strong non-compete, non-disclosure, and IP assignment clauses, but I think those clauses are unfair.

I’m assuming that the long term contract also carries with it a warranty? So if your furnace fails while in the contract it is repaired/replaced free or at a pro rated price?

If so, I could see people liking it as it serves the same function as an HOA: a hedge against bad things happening.

Water heater died? Plumber comes out, no charge. Neighbor starting a junkyard on his front lawn? HOA sends a letter, no confrontation.

Some people will decline an HOA for the same reasons they decline extended warranties: they’d rather deal with situations themselves, as they arise. Others don’t want to be bothered and let someone else handle it. I think there is space for both.

No, everyone thinks they could do a better job but no one actually wants those jobs.

> I’m assuming that the long term contract also carries with it a warranty?

I believe so. But the price is so unreasonably high that you could replace the furnace literally 3 to 5 times and you would still be ahead compared to renting the furnace. How many people would purchase an extended warranty that is priced at multiples of the price of the object they are buying? More than none, but a very small number. New rentals are signed overwhelmingly by builders and not homeowners.

That's the way warranties work. Warranty providers are not offering them at a loss.

If you buy a home warranty, or an extended warranty for your car, you are (on average) going to be out of pocket more than you would be without it. You are buying it for the peace of mind that comes from not having to deal with an unlikely but major repair expense.

> That's the way warranties work

Not at this price. Usually the warranty is a percentage of the price of the goods. So for example, I expect a $1000 gadget to have extended warranty priced at $100 or so. I have never seen the warranty of a $1000 gadget to be priced at $3000 to $5000 dollars. And that is for stuff that break down more frequently, e.g. phones and laptops and cars. The odds of a furnace breaking down are even lower.

HOA for thee, not for me. That's my take.

If I want to practice drums in my garage the neighbors can go pound sand.

But when a neighbor decides to park their truck in their yard I'm all for HOAs.

The question is, are people buying these products for that peace of mind, or are they buying it because they are not a savvy consumer?

Or worse, because they are over leveraged and unable to fund a replacement without an installment plan – so they have no better option?

I’m not sure. I can see a consumer protection argument to be made.

> The housing market continues to show a preference towards communities with HOAs.

I wouldn't read too much from that. The market preferring something doesn't mean most people dealing with it like it, it means that it makes money for the people with most say in the matter.

In this case, I think the sufficient explanation for the phenomenon is that HOAs are good at protecting property values. In my experience, most of the silly / annoying rules can be explained by either protecting property value, or by most people being too busy to attend meetings, allowing a small group of bored people to take control.

I think the “party line” response to this would be that the warranties you get include preventative maintenance as well, making it a different proposition - you’re not just buying a warranty, but a full service plan after all. But I’ve never been convinced by that argument.

I just went through buying a furnace and had a few prospective installers. The first tried to sell the extended coverage: twice annual “checks and maintenance” and a 30% discount on all parts.

The second said he’d let me source the parts myself if I so desired and if I would be responsible for changing the air filter on schedule and hosing down the outside fan every summer I’d be better off putting the annual fee into a sinking fund. Or, I could pay him $200 a year to hold a hose, money he’d happily take. He got the job. ;-)

I grew up in a large neighborhood with an HOA. There were a few times where my family butted heads with the HOA (replacing fences with a non-standard style, a play swing/slide thing being a bit tall) but for the most part the HOA was nice. They managed a park and pool for the neighborhood's exclusive use. They decorated the entrance signs to the neighborhood for the holidays. They put on some holiday events like an easter egg hunt/picnic, a fourth of july bike parade, Christmas light judging/awards. People didn't have tons of clutter in their front yards, the streets weren't super crowded with cars.

These are probably just examples but I'm firmly in the no-HOA crowd. If my home owning neighbor with a yard wants to park a truck in their yard I really don't care, and I abhor any organization that punishes someone for that. They could have a perfectly good reason to park it there. I've had former neighbors yell at me for fixing my car in my own driveway which makes no sense whatsoever except perhaps to privileged elitists with no DIY skills.

> In this case, I think the sufficient explanation for the phenomenon is that HOAs are good at protecting property values.

Uh yeah, that's their defined purpose that everybody knows about and agrees upon. I've lived in several properties under HOAs, haven't had any trouble, and don't know anyone personally who's had any trouble either.

IMO, HOA problems are of those things that's extremely rare in practice, but makes for outrage-inducing stories on the internet that get upvoted heavily and widely viewed. Since this is well known and plenty of people will do anything for internet upvotes, I'd bet a significant number of the stories are either made up entirely or are highly exaggerated and misleading.

If HOAs were really that bad, you'd see a market for homes advertising the lack of them. We don't though. The better analogy is internet free speech. In theory, everybody likes free speech. But if you create a new forum specifically for the purpose of not censoring anything, it tends to get filled with the worst assholes of the internet. Similarly, you can guess who'd be itching to move in if you advertised your housing development as not having a HOA.

I think I'm with you as well.

> If you didn't want those strings, then go buy a property somewhere that doesn't have an HOA.

The HOA is becoming more and more like your American ISP. When more and more properties demand an HOA, there’s only so many choices for you.

Though I don’t like the answer of “go do it somewhere else” because the real problem is not analyzed and/or solved, I do agree on the Apple front.

> Since you bought the property and it’s yours, why do others get to have a say in it?

Because you signed on a line that said you agree to being governed by the HOA when you bought the house. It’s that simple. The sad reality though is that if you don’t like it, you have to find somewhere else (which doesn’t work well if your whole city is under the HOA)

It sounds like exactly the opposite, where the market created or allowed a situation where the majority of people get something they don't want at all.

It's ridiculous to even try to say that a home owner will not weigh 50 different factors, and have to tolerate 10 things they do NOT want because they come packaged with 40 other things they either want or absolutely need.

Why does anyone even try to pretend like they don't recognize this unless they are themselves one of the few people actually benefitting from one of these consumer-hostile deals?

> I know I don’t give two hoots about what the neighbor does to their own home.

You don't give a damn till you need to sell off your property. Once it is in the market, you don't want your neighbours attitude turning of potential buyers, or worse, bringing down the value of your property. (I hate HOA's too, but a decently run one does help increase property value).

> It's ridiculous to even try to say that a home owner will not weigh 50 different factors, and have to tolerate 10 things they do NOT want because they come packaged with 40 other things they either want or absolutely need.

You make it sound like there's a lack of options for homeowners when you say this. Where I live (Toronto) that is not the case.

Of course there is no perfect deal, there will always be things that aren't ideal but I don't know anyone (and I'm old enough to know lots of home owners) who has ever bought a house that had some kind of feature or clause they absolutely hated or didn't want.

If it's that bad, you don't buy that house, and you find one that better suits your needs.

Otherwise, you're understanding and accepting the terms, and you're willing to live with them.

I hate the argument that "people" are too stupid/naive/stuck to understand or avoid the terms of an agreement they're entering into.. except for the narrator who sees themselves as the smart person who is yelling about it from the mountaintop.