Christmas was a blast! The food, the celebrations, the decorations...but it's over.
When you decorate for the holidays, it's easy to go a little overboard. I get it! When our children were young, we filled the house with miniature lighted villages and fresh garland on the piano and staircase. Outside, white lights lined our garden and two huge wreaths hung on the front of the house.
One year, when Marshall wasn't able to take the lights out of a tree, so we had white lights in our tree until Valentine's Day. We are far from perfect when it comes to taking down holiday decorations in a timely fashion. However, this Santa has been hanging on this house for weeks. If you cannot tell, it's next to the front door.
How do you walk past this every day and not yank it off the roof?
This is an example of why you may want to consider moving into a neighborhood that has an HOA. Some HOA's restrict the colors homeowners can choose to paint their homes. They may also have restrictions regarding what trees you can plant and where you can grow your garden. These regulations may seem to be too intrusive for some people and they opt to search for a home that is not in an HOA.
If you are not buying a home in an HOA, your neighbors can do lots of things that you might find annoying. This is one example but others include;
- leaving icicle Christmas lights hanging from the house all year long
- parking cars on the grass or in the front yard (Montgomery County Maryland has laws prohibiting this practice)
- planting vegetable gardens in the front yard with fencing
- cars up on blocks and/or cars without tags in the driveway
- excessive yard and house decorations including painted tires lining the driveway, yard swag with trolls, gnomes & other decorative yard ornaments
Questions about buying a home and the pros and cons of HOA's?
National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents
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