We've been looking at houses for a few months now. We have a contract in on one now as a matter of fact, but it's a short sale so we have to wait for the seller's lien holders to approve the sale. Two banks involved on their end, which likely means they took out a separate loan for their down payment. Classic case of buying stuff you can't afford, and taking it in the butt when your "low initial rate" 3/1 ARM adjusts. Our contracted price is more than $200K less than what they paid in 2005, but fair market value today, so I'll be real interested to see the banks' response. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> The wait is on. And in the mean time I have to resist the urge to choke every politician who suggests rewarding this behavior with a taxpayer-funded "bailout." <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/mrt.gif" alt="" />

But anyway, one of the first things I told the realtor when we began house hunting was "no HOAs." Houses are too damn expensive around here to be paying dues on top of the mortgage (dues that are used to pay HOA lawyers to come after you for frivolous crap) or to have somebody else tell me what I can or can't do to my own property. Your typical HOA board is populated by a mix of by senile old blue-hairs and/or stepford wives with nothing better to do than waste other folks' time, and my dealings with those boards when we owned condos in Houston, however brief they may have been, taught me that they should be avoided at all costs if you value your sanity. Yes, in some areas it can be difficult to find houses (especially brand new construction) that aren't in controlled neighborhoods, but this isn't the Soviet Union. You can choose to live elsewhere.