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> The homeowners say the developer, who owns the majority of the houses, controls the HOA.

It's a 51% attack in real life.

That's a cool hack, but of course, that's going to be legal isn't it?

Why wouldn't it be legal? Reminds me of those 'non-profit' charter schools where the 'school' entity pays huge rent and/or other admin type costs to a very much for-profit entity controlled by the same people. So they set the price at what they want and extract what they can.

At least here in Argentina the equivalent of the HOA of the apartments have a lot of governmental regulations, they can't decide to pay the administrator a million dollars per month. Most accusation are about overprice in repair work and other stuff that is harder to prove.

A few years ago a common trick was that the developer designated the initial administrator. Then add a rule that requires a super majority to change the administrator, so it was almost impossible to remove it. Now there is a law that declares that special rule void in all apartments.

Revenues are up 100%, time for a cocktail party.

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