A homeowner has recounted a nightmare scenario of ending up in conflict with the Homeowners Association (HOA) in their area, despite not being a part of it.

The resident posted on Reddit about how they found themselves in an altercation about putting up their Christmas lights too early.

The homeowner mentioned that even though they reside in a neighborhood with an HOA, their home existed before the other houses were constructed and before the association was established.

‘Apparently they have a rule over how many lights you can put up and what the earliest date you can put them up,’ the Reddit user wrote.

They claimed that a woman came over to their house on November 30 and said that their lights were against the HOA’s policy.

“I explained to her that we’ve discussed this previously and I am not bound by their guidelines and truly don’t care,” the Reddit user shared, noting that since their nieces and nephews enjoy lights, they planned to put up quite a few.

The homeowner went on to say that the woman claimed that putting up lights early ‘bothered other members’ and urged them to honor the rules considering their location. She handed them a flyer detailing these rules, which the homeowner promptly discarded.

HOAs have long held a reputation for being overbearing about the upkeep of homes and forcing meticulous rules on their members.

The associations are also increasingly gaining a reputation for enforcing huge price hikes on homeowners — with HOAs soaring in many states. 

Houses with HOAs, however, are worth 5 to 6 percent more than similar homes outside of HOAs. 

Typical HOA membership fees for single-family homeowners across the US is around $150 to $500 per month, but can sometimes be much more.

With increasing financial pressures, social media users are no longer holding back and have been more vocal about their experiences living near HOAs.

Another homeowner narrated their ordeal on Reddit, describing how their supposed dream home became anything but. The resident purchased their house in 2019, believing it was outside the influence of an HOA.

‘We closed and eventually learned that the neighborhood does in fact have an HOA. However there’s a handful of houses that were excluded from this HOA because they were previously built by another builder that backed out of the neighborhood,’ the post creator wrote.

‘Fast forward to the neighborhood being finished and the HOA being turned over to a management company,’ they wrote, adding that the association is now pushing for the HOA exempt houses to join.

‘I told my realtor they’d be fired instantly if they even mentioned a house in an HOA,’ a commenter responded. 

‘Upon moving in several neighbors kept asking me to sign some neighborhood agreement. I just laughed on their faces,’ another person said.

‘That’s the ideal situation, not in an HOA, but in an HOA neighborhood. All of your neighbors have to keep the neighborhood looking nice, but you don’t have the dues and other hassles,’ another person wrote.

A further commenter said that if people were good neighbors and took pride in their homes, there would be less need for HOAs.

It comes as California is considering making a major change to HOAs, prohibiting the associations from charging members more than $100 per violation for breaking most rules.

While this sounds like good news for homeowners, experts on both sides of the issue are worried it could unintentionally trigger more disputes ending up in court. 

The policy was added into a large budget trailer bill, AB 130, less than a week before it passed on June 30.

‘This got plugged in, generally at the last minute, to everyone’s surprise,’ Tim Mahar, an attorney with Tinnelly Law Group who represents HOAs, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The law would also prohibit HOAs from charging late fees or interest on unpaid fines and would give homeowners more time in correcting violations before fines can be imposed.