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‘Board needed to flex their might’: HOA only approves of one roof color, homeowner tricks them into thinking her color is the correct one, gets away with it

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    "She said 'okay,' then had the roofers install her first color choice and has never heard anything about it from the HOA ever since."
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    Board needed to flex their might I recently traveled to my father and stepmother's house, who live in an HOA. This was shortly after a hurricane came through and they had roof damage. I offered to fly my drone and take pictures of damage for preliminary assessment. My stepmother said the roof was almost twenty-five years old and she recalled the story of needing to get HOA board approval for the color of shingles.
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    She was asked to bring in three shingle samples, ranked by her choice. The board did not reach consensus on her first choice, but unanimously approved her second choice. She said okay, then had the roofers install her first color choice and has never heard anything about it from the HOA ever since. I thought this was peak uck HOA.
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    The_Elus... • 21h ago Edited 20h ago Nice move, but not one I'd agree with. Their HOA could easily come back and force them to remove the unapproved shingles with full legality to do so. I firmly believe that all HOA's are scum, and so are the companies which accept their money.
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    I think the best way to keep an HOA in check is something I call "an abundance of compliance". Follow every rule, pay every assessment, respect every choice the HOA can legally make. Deny them any ammo to fire back with. I then treat them like the dirt that they are. Beat them over the head. with the CC&R's, force them to work as much as possible, waste their time, call them on their personal phones after hours, squeeze every cent I can out of the dues I'm paying, etc etc.
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    Be an utterly unethical thorn in their side which can never be removed or retaliated against. I'm not locked in with them; they're locked in with me. I do hope it works out for your parents though. 104 Reply
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    car_raamrod . 17h ago I had a neighbor do something similar, but tricked the HOA Board into picking the shingle color he wanted. He wanted this one color and they rejected it. He was not happy about it because I don't think there was anything wrong with the color, and it wasn't too similar to his neighbors on both sides of his house
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    imo. So he came up with a ploy to trick them. When he resubmitted the packet the second time, he picked another color that he knew they wouldn't approve. The 3rd packet he submitted was for the same color as the first packet but he called it a different color, included the first two rejected colors and, changed the first rejected color to something similar but different enough, and they 10 approved it. Reply
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    donutsoft 19h ago My tactic as a board member was to do absolutely no enforcement unless a complaint was made, or lives or property was at risk. If you asked for permission, I had to respond in accordance of what the rules stated.
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    Here either the board hasn't seen it, or they don't care about it enough to make you remove it and start over. Just be careful, because just because it isn't enforced now doesn't mean it can't be enforced later. The fact that you've received clear instructions on what to do may count against you in future. ↑ 3 зд Reply
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    SaintUlvemann 17h ago • I think the best way to keep an HOA in check is something I call "an abundance of compliance". Compliance alone does not prevent the burden of compliance from exceeding the bounds of reason. Being a thorn might make them want to ease the burden of compliance... as a personal indulgence, to make their job easier. If they instead respond to your thorniness by becoming vindictive, thorniness can backfire and make them want to punish you... which
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    they might, legally, be able to do, making changes that load you with a high compliance burden. I'm not at all saying you've got a bad strategy, just, this seems like the sort of strategy that is right to use against people who are "uncommittedly judgy". When people have a sort of background, low level of entitlement to other people's time and resources, they might be willing to make new issues banning harmless things, but they won't necessarily be willing to commit time to those positions.
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    If the "uncommittedly judgy" get a few members with reactive, vindictive dominance mentalities, then the whole power landscape shifts. Uncommitted judgers often love having a domineer on their side. (On the other hand, if there are no meaningful differences between your home habits and your neighbors', if there's just nothing they can do to single you out, then it pretty much just doesn't matter how they feel... which can be an excellent lesson for a domineer to learn.) +1 3 Reply
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    • MiceAreTiny 7h ago So, you go one step further. You get shingles for approval, one in "moire black", one in "anthracite" and one in "estate grey". You like the anthracite but the HOA approves the "estate grey". You take a $100 bill, go to your roofer, and tell him to put antracite on your roof, and make sure that "estate grey" is on the bill. What are they going to do, they approved a sample, this is what you paid for. It is not your mistake that under different light conditions, it seems that

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