I bought my house because it checked every box for us. It had a decent garage, a little workshop in the back, enough yard to feel like we had breathing room, and best of all, it was not part of the HOA attached to the development next to us.
The listing was explicitly clear about that fact. The property bordered the neighborhood, but it was outside the association, and that was one of the primary reasons I signed the papers. I deal with rules, regulations, and statutes all day at work as a police officer. I did not want to come home and have a stranger telling me what color my mailbox should be or whether my garage door was acceptable.
Naturally, that was almost exactly what happened.
We had barely been there a week when I received my first visit. I was in the driveway unloading tools and a few boxes from my trailer when a woman marched straight across my lawn. She moved with the kind of rigid confidence you only get from never being told "no" enough times in life.
No hello. No introduction.
She stopped a few feet away, looked past me toward the garage, and said, “You cannot leave that visible.”
At first, I thought she meant the moving boxes. Then she pointed directly at my ATV inside the garage. “No. That. Recreational vehicles are not allowed to be visible from the street.”
I just stared at her for a second. It was an incredibly bizarre opening line from a complete stranger.
“This house is not in your HOA,” I replied simply.
She gave me a tight, annoyed look. “This property is part of the community.”
“It’s next to your community,” I corrected her. “Not in it.”
“I’m the HOA president.”
“Okay.”
She seemed to expect that title to carry some sort of magical weight, but it did not. She waited, likely expecting me to start apologizing and frantically rearranging my belongings to appease her. When I just stood there, she repeated herself. “That vehicle cannot be stored in view.”
“My house is not under your rules.”
That was our first interaction, and it perfectly set the stage for the next several months.