Can our HOA require us to help purchase unused properties in our subdivision?
<p>Our HOA held a vote to buy 3 unused parcels of land in our neighborhood. The purchase requires us to pay an additional $763 on top of our annual fee. Am I required to help purchase this property for the HOA? If so do I have any land and title rights to said property?</p>

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<p>Am I required to help purchase this property for the HOA?</p>
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<p>Your HOA (homeowner's association) can do what it governing documents permit it to do. It is highly unlikely that there is a statutory prohibition against it doing so.</p>
<p>It is quite common, for example, for an HOA to temporary take ownership of units. when the owner of the units had defaulted on their HOA assessment payment obligation, and the HOA forecloses on its lien for unpaid assessments (especially when the units is low in value, like a separately owned parking space or storage unit).</p>
<p>Typically, an HOA might want to own vacant lots so that it can control how that vacant lots are developed to prevent an undesirable use of those lots, or to reserve space for the construction of common areas such as community gardens or lawns or HOA facilities, in the future.</p>
<p>Normally, such a power would be expressly stated, or would be expressly prohibited, in the governing documents.</p>
<p>If the HOA governing documents are silent, typically one would look to the general statutes governing organizations of its type (e.g. non-profit corporations, if that is how the HOA is organized). Most general statutes of this type would permit such a purchase (and a subsequent sale of the lots) if the vote required by the governing documents to purchase (or sell as the case may be) of real property have been complied with by the board.</p>
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<p>If so do I have any land and title rights to said property?</p>
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<p>This would normally be spelled out prominently in the governing documents of the HOA.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, the HOA would be in exclusive control of the property and would have exclusive responsibility for maintaining and paying for obligations arising from the property, all of which would be paid out of HOA assessments along with any revenue that the land generates.</p>
<p>In some HOAs land and title of common areas and other real estate and property of an LLC is legally vested in the HOA entity as a corporate owner of it, and you own membership interests in the HOA. This usually increases the economic value of your membership interest, but has little other direct impact.</p>
<p>In some HOAs (which are called &quot;condominiums&quot; when using that term in the strict rather than in the colloquial or broad sense) land and title of common areas and other real estate of an LLC is held as an undivided tenancy in common interest of all HOA members in proportion to their assessment percentage, with the HOA having an irrevocable power of attorney to manage it on behalf of its members, although, in practice, the differences between these and corporate ownership of common areas and other HOA real estate is almost nil.</p>
<p>Sometimes, rather than an irrevocable power of attorney, the HOA is a trustee over the common areas and other real estate which are beneficially owned by the members as tenants in common, instead.</p>

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