re: What has your HOA done In your neighborhood that you liked?

enriched the management company. Only thing I can think of.

RE: installing a gate, you can’t simply gate off public streets in Louisiana. If your streets are public (and likely they are) and maintained by the town/parish, they were accepted by ordinance as public property when the neighborhood was created. You can’t just stick up a gate and keep others out: you literally have to purchase the streets back from the parish, which means you are also responsible for all maintenance of those streets & their attendant street lights.

My better half served time on our HOA board: 95% of his work was explaining to members why their pet idea (“lets put up a gate!”) was completely unfeasible without a giant pile of money. That and the incredibly petty people who would call to complain aboiut the color of the pansies in the landscaping, or who wanted a exception to the rules for their camper/boat/pergola/trampoline. 26 pages of covenants—you’d think people would at least read them before buying something as large as a house. LOL.

Ours has a neighborhood crawfish boil and a Halloween party each year. They also just replaced the old wooden street signs with metal ones. Overall I am happy with ours. I just wish more residents would participate in the meetings and board positions.

Put up Christmas Lights at the entrances during Christmas.

Stay on developers arse about unforeseen development shortcuts that were taken that should have clearly been on the developer vs eating into your cash immediately. Vetting vendors for upkeep is also important, especially your property management company. I would try to run all infractions through them to keep the peace of being the bad guy when at all possible. Try to find a way to work around any changes homeowners want to make to their property vs simply shutting down requests based on covenants. Most people will spend above and beyond to do their desired changes and many times you can actually improve aesthetics even if outside the covenants. When a dispute arises between two neighbors do not play favorites, even defer to an interpleader outside HOA if necessary.

Most important - Be as consistent as possible.

I cannot wait to move out of a neighborhood with a HOA. Not that ours is overbearing, I just fundamentally hate them.
Ours annual fees have nearly doubled over the past few years and all that has been done is some management company is running it (Spaces?). Literally nothing of extra value has been added.

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Ours is constantly requesting homeowners to pressure wash their driveways

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OMG

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There’s a high end neighborhood (houses from 1/2 a million and up) near mine with no HOA and a guy just built this weird looking modern California style house right between a bunch of French Country Style homes, costing all of them tens of thousands of dollars in home values.

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Umm, a modernist house is probably IMPROVING the property values of a bunch of faux "french country" style homes....those suckers are like crabgrass, all over the place. Many are ugly, near identical square boxes w/eyebrow dormers, fake shutters, gaslights, and the same barely-there cheap architectural detailing (like raised stucco trim around windows). As long as the modernist house is well landscaped & maintained, I don't think you've got an argument for it driving down property values merely on appearance.

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Umm, a modernist house is probably IMPROVING the property values of a bunch of faux "french country" style homes..

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It’s a fricking eyesore that’s been in a state of construction for 3+ years and it sticks out like a sore thumb. I have no problem with a modernist house, but it shouldn’t be where it is. And anyone who would build something like that seemingly just to spite his neighbors is a fricking a-hole of the highest order. People like that are why HOA’s are a thing.