'Karen had made a complaint to the board': Entitled neighbor tattles to HOA about boat issue, is forced to admit defeat

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 3, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

It's not every day you hear about someone having a positive experience with their local HOA. It seems like 95% of the time, people share stories complaining about how controlling their HOAs are. 

A lot of Home Owner's Associations, or HOAs for short, have a habit of doling out fines for the pettiest little reasons. Some people have been fined for things like parking their cars in their own driveways, or for placing those little signs on their lawn that advertise the landscaper who trimmed the garden. There are a ton of tiny ways that HOAs can show off their might, and they're happy to rake in cash on the hefty fines they can assign. 

This person actually found an HOA that was reasonable. They had "genuinely a positive HOA experience," writing that they felt the HOA was reasonable and correctly advocated for keeping the neighborhood tidy. However, they had a Karen neighbor who loved tattling to the HOA over tiny issues. Instead of just minding her business, she had to get involved. 

U/Ok-One-3240 shares that their father had a great idea to get back at this neighborhood Karen without breaking a single HOA rule. Check out the full story below, then read about the person who was instructed by the internet to "let the newbie fail" at their job.

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 9915782656
    via Roberto H on Unsplash
  • 02
    Another HOA story M I've seen a bunch of HOA stories lately, and have never shared a malicious compliance before, but I've been inspired to share this story from my parents.
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 03
    This was about 10 years ago, 2010ish. My family lived in a very nice gated community with an HOA. It was during the summer, and most weekends we would bring our boat to the house on Friday nights to take out on Saturdays, and then move it back to where we stored it Saturday night. HOA had a rule where you aren't allowed to keep
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 04
    boats within view of the street, our drive way ran up beside the house and we'd intentionally position it to be as invisible as possible, for the ONE night it would be there. Basically all that was visible was a small T top over my dad's truck.
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 05
    Our HOA was actually pretty awesome, super laid back and really only did anything when there was a complaint, it was a relatively small neighborhood less than 50 houses, and the HOA was really good at throwing monthly parties where we'd shut down a cul-de-sac and everyone would bring food and music and we'd all have fun. This was kind of what an HOA is supposed to be in theory, a good thing.
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 06
    Well Karen had made a complaint to the board about our boat and had provided time stamped photos of multiple violations (mind you 1 night a week, but she'd claimed it was consistent). The president came by to tell us and it wasn't there when he was, we told him our side of the story, basically it was only there for about 12
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 07
    hours on the weekend and he said he nor anyone on the board had ever noticed it, but since they had a complaint, they had to request we remove it. (I completely doubt they'd actually fine or do anything past asking, but rules are rules.)
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 08
    Queue my fathers mastery of the art of malicious compliance. Well an important bit of information about this piece of property, when the neighborhood was built, my dad bought the house, as well as a property bordering the back of ours that was not a part of the HOA, or in the neighborhood and originally had a small chain link fence between it and the house. It was accessible through a small street with a few homes on it bordering our neighborhood. Well, My
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 09
    dad's beautiful brain started thinking about, and for the cost and inconvenience of storing it at a storage place, he could probably just build a pad for it behind the house. He had a gravel pad put in the corner of the property with a shed over it, intentionally as close to the edge of the property so it would preserve the view out the back (or be very visible from the front of the house either one).
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 10
    There wasn't any real backlash about it, apparently Karen brought it up again and the board politely informed her that they had no control over that property, and I think she admitted defeat, the board actually found it pretty funny, and never had any other issues with them. Karen moved about a year later, and my parents moved about 2 years ago.
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 11
    Loved the neighborhood though, genuinely a positive HOA experience, just an annoying Karen to make life inconvenient.
    via u/Ok-One-3240
  • 12
    missed_sla I hope someday to have you I'm building a shed to annoy you" money.
    via u/missed_sla
  • 13
    PRMan99 I bet Karen shed a lot of tears.
    via u/PRMan99
  • 14
    Comandante 380 I always find it funny when HOA rules prevent things like boats from being visible. Like, in the interest of keeping this neighborhood looking prosperous and successful, we are... preventing you from showing everyone that you can afford a boat for the weekends?
    via u/Comandante 380

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hoa housing neighbors malicious compliance house neighborhood home owners association malicious-compliance-reddit neighborhood-drama neighborhood-stories terrible neighbors boat malicious compliance reddit home
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