This morning, a coworker came up to me to tell me about her neverending saga with her condo board.  Long story short, she lives in a large condo complex, and her building is one of the last buildings in the back of the property.  The plus side to this is added privacy.  The negative side is that for some reason, that part of the complex gets ignored – they have the worst yard, the ugliest bushes, etc.  This isn’t the first time she’s had issues with them either.

So today’s post is about home buying and something that people don’t always look out for – neighborhood associations.  When you buy a condo, you’re typically aware that there’s a condo board and a condo fee.  But don’t forget that those things can happen in other types of homes as well.  And there are good and bad things to neighborhood associations.

The first step is to find out if your property is part of an association and if there are any required fees.  If so, what do those fees cover?

Next, find out the rules.  What can and can’t you do to your home as part of the association rules?  Frequently, there are certain maintenance standards and major changes to the house must be approved.  Some associations have restrictions on holiday decorations, colors you can paint your house, etc.

Then you have to decide how you feel about the rules.  So your association says you have to get approval before you paint the door to your house.  That’s annoying.  But it also means you probably won’t have a neighbor with a neon green house and a bright purple door.  And maybe you can only have white Christmas lights on your house.  Knowing how much you love colored lights, that’s a bummer.  But it also means you won’t have Clark Griswold living next door, creating light pollution and crazy traffic every December.

Personally, I chose to live in a neighborhood with no such association.  I do, however, live in a city small enough to have various codes.  My house must be well maintained.  I need to get permission to put up a fence or cut down a tree (and I probably won’t get permission for the tree).   But I can paint my front door whatever color I want and if I want my house to look like Clark Griswold’s, I can.  But that means my neighbors can do whatever they want as well.  It’s a risk, but one I decided to take.

You just have to decide what is right for you.

Now that the weather is nice… well, mostly nice, anyway, I’ve been thinking about putting up a clothesline in my backyard.  I love the smell of clothes that have dried out in the sun.

I haven’t quite figured out how to go about putting up a clothesline though.  I like the idea of something portable – or at least semi-portable.   Rather than sinking a base into concrete in the ground, I’m thinking I would like to find a weighted base, like the ones used under patio umbrellas.  I’m not sure if this actually makes sense or if the whole thing will just tip over.  So far, I haven’t found anything I like in a reasonable price range.

Of course, this also means more doing laundry on the weekend.  I just don’t have time during the week to do a load of laundry and then hang it up before I head off to work.

Also, while I live in a nice neighborhood, it’s a neighborhood filled with kids who perhaps aren’t as well behaved as I would like them to be.  Even though my backyard is fenced off, I don’t know that I trust them to stay out of my laundry if I happen to be gone while it’s out drying.  And I really don’t need the neighbor kids using my bedsheets as capes.

I’m just going to keep my eyes out for a clothesline that fits my pick requirements.  And I should probably check the city regulations and make sure they’re allowed.  I live in a very green, crunchy, earthy city, so I can’t imagine it would be a problem.  Any city that gives out free compost bins has to be pro-clothesline, right?