'That authority is... telling him what to do on his own property': Homeowner plants sign to spite nosy local HOA

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Apr 1, 2024 5:00 PM EDT

For one South Carolina homeowner, HOA rules just weren't acceptable. His case is totally understandable: why would you want an association to meddle with your property? Why is it any of their business in the first place?

HOAs, or Home Owner's Associations, are known to be meddlesome groups. They're usually run by local people who police the properties in their area heavily. They can issue fines for things like parking in one's own driveway, or having the wrong mailbox type, or painting one's home the wrong color. It seems exhausting to keep up with all of these easily breakable rules, and a lot of people try to avoid buying houses in HOA-ruled developments just for this reason. 

This person shared a story that happened to their father when he was trying to support a local business. Commenters loved the story, and some of them chimed in with their own stories of their own petty HOA victories. Nothing unites people like shared misery over silly HOA nonsense!

After you check out this dad's small victory, read about the industrial engineer who begged their boss not to run a trial with super-sticky materials… but their boss was content to break the machine, instead. 

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  • 01
    'First thing he does is pull out his copy of the neighborhood bylaw'
    via Omri D. Cohen on Unsplash
  • 02
    My Father vs. the Home Owners' Association MOC I'm a little fuzzy on exactly when this was, but for loose context, it's 2018-ish. We're living in this little two-story in a subdivision in upstate South Carolina, which my parents still own. My family just had a full run of renovations done on the house - kitchen remodel, new floors, wallpaper removed, new paint on the walls, etc. The
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 03
    folks who painted did an especially good job, and since they were a small, local business, they wanted to know if they could put a little sign in our yard for a few days as advertisement (y'know, those little plastic type yard signs, nothing big or fancy). My dad was happy to oblige, and showed them where to put it to avoid the sprinkler system. Everything's great.
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 04
    Two days later, a letter arrives in our mailbox. It's from the HOA (Home Owners' Association). According to the bylaws, no signage can be placed in a yard for more than 24 hours. We hadn't been planning to leave it up more than a few days, maybe a week at the most, but to be told that supporting a small business was an eyesore came well out of left field.
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 05
    This is the part where I tell you that my father, despite being a very considerate and respectful man, has something of a problem with authority - especially when that authority is arbitrarily telling him what to do on his own property.
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 06
    First thing he does is pull out his copy of the neighborhood bylaws. He and my mother both look over it, and lo and behold, the quoted passage does indeed state that "no signage or similar mode of advertisement is to be displayed in a yard for more than 24 hours". Not one to go down quietly, my father took to combing through the applicable section, looking for any loophole he could find. And he found it in the word "yard".
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 07
    Two or three days after that, one of the ladies who work for the HOA came down to our house to personally ask us to remove the sign. She and my dad stepped out on the front porch, and must have been out there for nearly half an hour. I don't think I heard him say anything other than the occasional "mhmm" or "yes ma'am" until the very end.
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 08
    See, the sign was no longer in our yard - it was in the flower bed. Other parts of the bylaws, even in the cited section, distinguished the flower bed as separate from the yard, and since this particular clause mentioned the yard alone, the flower bed must have been fair game. And he told this (honestly quite nice) woman as much, without so much as knitting his brows or raising his voice.
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 09
    The sign stayed in our flower bed, perhaps out of spite, for nearly another month before we finally took it down.
    via u/Ace0f_Spades
  • 10
    garaks_tailor +1. Reminds me of the guy whose HOA made him take down his sunflowers as they aren't covered in the bylaws. So he went to a lawyer to figure out how to be annoying. Lawyers looks through and mentions that whatever lawyer wrote the bylaws was clearly padding his hours because instead of putting general guidelines about plants the bylaws have a loooong liat of plants.
    via u/garaks_tailor
  • 11
    Which oddly enough doesn't include corn. So the guy bought full height corn from a farmer and replanted it in his front yard untill the HOA relented.
    via u/garaks_tailor
  • 12
    The_Riker__Maneuver. I would have gone another route I would have gotten a flood light, placed the flood light in my yard, ran the cords, and put it on a timer THEN...each night once it got dark....I would walk outside and place the Painter's sign in front of the floodlight And each morning, I would get up, take my morning deuce, and then walk out side and pull the sign up At most, the sign would be in the yard for 12 hours at a time...far less than the 24 hour rule.
    via u/The_Riker__Maneuver
  • 13
    And since there was no buffer time specified...the sign could go back up every night 4th of July it would have little flags around it Halloween it would have been spookified with bats and goblins and an orange flood light Christmas it would have been surrounded with Christmas decorations...and so on and so on until the HOA finally agreed that if you are having home renovations done, you can put the business's sign in your yard for the duration of the work and up to 2 weeks after the work has com
    via u/The_Riker__Maneuver
  • 14
    deepdiver32086 My former HOA has an issue with my "lawn" as it was very well shaded and grass just would not grow under the trees. They tried insisting on me resodding the yard which would have been $1000s and which would have all died in less than a year. Read the bylaws and found an exemption. I planted ground-cover in my entire yard except for one patch of grass that received adequate sunlight. I also used native plants and created a natural looking landscape that is by far better looking tha
    via u/deepdiver32086
  • 15
    HOA rep tried to bully me into ripping everything out and sod the yard, but I read off the bylaws and cited local county codes protecting natural planted landscaping. Want bothered by them at all for the remainder of the time we were there. No more HOAs for me!
    via u/deepdiver32086
  • 16
    JoeDaddio In the mid-late 90's I was in high school and was living with my dad and step mom in a house that was part of an HOA. When we moved in all of the mailboxes were these old 70's style boxes that were at one time likely some shade of red but had faded to this rusty orange-ish color. My dad, wanting to make the first house he bought look good, went to Home Depot and bought himself a brand new white mail box and installed it.
    via u/JoeDaddio
  • 17
    The next day he got a letter saying that he needed to re-install the old mail box and that the new one violated the HOA rules. If he didn't he'd be fined. My dad went to the HOA meeting and tried to tell them, reasonably, that the new mail box was much nicer than the old one and that it was an upgrade. That he'd just painted the house with the approved color and that the mail box matched. They told him to pound sand and that the problem was that the new mail box didn't match the rest of the comm
    via u/JoeDaddio
  • 18
    So the next day he went to Home Depot and bought all of the mail boxes they had (12 or 15 of them) that were exactly like the one he'd just bought a couple of days before. He went to the neighbors up and down our street and offered them as gifts from a new neighbor and even offered to install them right then and there. Everyone took him up on it because they didn't like their old, rust colored mail boxes and it was such a thoughtful gift from a new neighbor.
    via u/JoeDaddio
  • 19
    Next thing you know most of our street had brand new, beautiful, matching mail boxes as well as a bunch of residents who were ped at the HOA for telling them that they couldn't upgrade their own mail box with a nicer one. The HOA then approved plain white mail boxes.
    via u/JoeDaddio
  • 20
    I thought your dad was going to abide by the 24 hour rule. put it out there for 23 hours, take it down for 1, rinse and repeat.
    via r/MaliciousCompliance
  • 21
    crc8983 When I was buying a house, the very instant I heard HOA, I was out the door. No way. It my property, if I want to paint my house camo or plaid, I will. Nobody is going to tell me what I can and can't do with my own property.
    via u/crc8983

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