Warning to Prospective Homeowners

Back in May I became a homeowner for the first time, moving into a condo building in Hollywood. A few weeks later, it was announced that two positions on the five member Homeowners Association Board were becoming temporarily available, and that if anybody was interested in joining, to express interest. Eager to get involved in the goings-on of my new building and meet my neighbors, I did just that.

Big mistake.

As it turned out, only me and one other guy chose to be on the HOA board. I now understand why. I am bombarded by emails daily about every possible boring issue pertaining to the building - sometimes they come so rapidly, one after another, that my Blackberry vibrates nonstop for minutes on end. I get anxious looking at them all sitting there, piled on top of each other, waiting for me to read them and chime in my required approval for some resident I've never met to install a ceiling fan in his unit.

I also have to attend meetings. Usually they are just once a month, and the first two I participated in weren't so bad. But we had one last week that lasted three hours. It was like seeing The Watchmen again, only ten times as tedious. I won't bore you recapping why it took as long as it did (I actually started to, but then decided better of it when I began nodding off at the memory), but at least know this: there was only one building resident in attendance, and he had no complaints to make during the portion allotted for homeowners to talk about their issues. If there had been a sizeable turnout of residents there with things to talk about, the meeting could have easily been over four hours long, in which case I would have shot myself in front of everyone like the kid does in the "Jeremy" video. Come to think of it, I don't even know why that one homeowner voluntarily sat through that whole meeting. He really must have no life.

Anyway, part of the reason I joined the board was because the position was temporary - my seat and two others were to be up for re-election after two months. Because I don't say much at the meetings, I was peer pressured by the rest of the board to run for re-election, a process that basically involved writing down my name on a list. So I did (this was before the three hour fiasco). Last night the election results were announced down in the pool area. I sat there, praying I had been voted out and replaced by one of the three nutjobs who were actually running against the incumbents. Alas, it was not meant to be. I am simply too popular for my own good. I was re-elected. I now face a two year sentence of being Member-at-Large on the Hollywood Regis HOA board.

Sigh. At least I'm not President. That guy really suffers.

So, for anyone who is considering joining the HOA board in their building: I do not recommend it.