Buying Blind
- Mike Kosor
- Sep 20
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 22
We all want transparency when making major life decisions. Too often, it’s missing. But can that be changed? If you’re buying into an HOA, this post suggests — yes, it can.
The Hidden Reality of HOA Governance
Before choosing a mortgage, we read dense contracts and ask endless questions.
Before buying a car, we check its full service history, consumer reports — maybe even demand a CarFax. Even before trying a new restaurant, we scan reviews.
Yet when it comes to buying a home inside a homeowners’ association — the entity that will govern our neighborhood, collect mandatory dues, and hold quasi-governmental power over our property — we often do so blind.
More than half of all new homes in the United States are now governed by HOAs.
HOAs control daily life, shape property values, and can even foreclose on owners.
Yet their governance practices are almost entirely hidden from public view.
Unlike local governments — which must publish budgets, disclose contracts, hold open meetings, and undergo regular audits — HOAs do some of this, but in the dark.
Meeting minutes, enforcement policies, election procedures, and even board rosters are often difficult to come by because they are considered “private.”
Unless a current owner volunteers the information, buyers get no meaningful window into how a prospective communities actually runs.
This lack of visibility isn’t just inconvenient — it’s dangerous.
A dysfunctional board can mismanage budgets, ignore reserve requirements, adopt unfair enforcement rules, or allow conflicts of interest to flourish — all without outside scrutiny.
HOA’s have no ethics board and rarely any press coverage to hold them to account. It is our civil litigation system that substitutes- despite its known issues. Read more: Nevada Knows Fee-Shifting Is Dangerous — But Uses It In HOAs
And by the time new owners realize something is wrong, they’re trapped.
Hospitals were once like this. But hospitals have been forced to provide public performance data such as Care Compare on Medicare.gov and the Provider Data Catalog on data.cms.gov. They serve to provide report cards consumers can use. It is far from ideal- but it is getting better.
HOAs remain almost entirely in the dark.
What Buyers Can’t See
1. Board Behavior and Oversight
Buyers have no way to know if a board complies with open meeting laws, follows due process, or has a history of regulatory complaints. There’s no record of board turnover, conflicts of interest, or ethics complaints available to the public.
In developer-controlled communities, owners may not even control their own board for years — and have no idea when that might change.
2. Dispute and Complaint Histories
HOAs rarely disclose how they handle owner disputes.
Buyers can’t learn whether the board resolves conflicts fairly, uses aggressive enforcement tactics, or has faced repeated litigation.
This history matters — it signals whether a board governs cooperatively or adversarially.
3. Financial Stewardship Practices
While buyers may see a budget or reserve study during resale (typically only at closing and most never read it), they almost never get the context needed to judge financial health — like long-term patterns in assessments, legal spending, or vendor selection.
Think about it. You would never buy someone's liabilities without knowing what they were- but many of us do just that when we buy into an HOA.
There’s also no way to benchmark costs or compare efficiency to similar communities.
Why It Matters
Homeowners rely on boards to manage millions of dollars in collective assets and to wield powers normally reserved for governments.
Yet unlike governments, HOAs face almost no external oversight.
They are not subject to public records laws, competitive procurement rules, or any meaningful journalistic scrutiny.
Buyers can spend months researching schools, crime rates, and commute times — but have no way to evaluate the system that will control their home and property rights.
A Glimpse of What’s Possible
Solutions are beginning to emerge that could bring real transparency and comparable data to HOA governance. Regulators should seek them out.
But they don't. Read more: Are HOA Owners Dissatisfied- don't look to regulatory complaints to tell the story?
“Transparency isn’t impossible — it just takes will. Promising tools like HOADoctor could let buyers see real satisfaction data and compare HOAs like we compare schools or hospitals.”
One soon-to-launch platform, HOADoctor, promises to collect and publish standardized governance, financial, and dispute data from associations across the country — along with true and verifiable owner satisfaction ratings.
If it delivers even half of what it claims, it could be transformative: giving buyers and regulators the ability to benchmark one HOA against another and making this information publicly available to everyone.
Owners and regulators alike should demand what it represents: clear, accessible information about how communities are actually governed.
Close the Governance Information Gap
The problem isn’t that HOAs are inherently bad. It’s that buyers — and even current owners — have almost no way to evaluate how well they are governed.
This information gap undermines accountability, erodes trust, and leaves homeowners vulnerable to mismanagement — or worse.
Oh, and did I mention valuations?
Other sectors don’t work this way.
Public companies must file detailed reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission and even allow non-shareholders to attend their annual meetings — far more transparency than HOAs provide.
Local governments post budgets, agendas, and contracts online.
Even small nonprofits must make their tax returns and financials public.
HOAs do none of this for non-owners. And that can change.
(For a deeper look at why the argument that “HOAs are private” doesn’t excuse secrecy, see our companion blog: Private on Paper, Public in Practice — Why HOAs Need Transparency Rules.)
Practical Steps to Close the Governance Gap- Nevada's Regulator must take the lead
1. Public HOA Governance Profiles
Each HOA should be required to maintain a basic governance profile — posted on its own website or in a centralized database managed by the Nevada's HOA regulaor, Nevada Real Estates Divsion (NRED). Every HOA pays an annual fee to NRED
This profile should include:
Current board roster and management company
Status of developer control or turnover
Summary of board meeting compliance (number of meetings, notices, owner participation)
Any disciplinary or enforcement actions by the
This would give buyers and current owners at least a snapshot of how the board operates.
2. Complaint and Dispute Reporting
NRED should publicly disclose:
The number and type of owner complaints received annually
How many were resolved internally versus escalated to enforcement or litigation
Whether the HOA has been involved in recent lawsuits and their outcomes
This mirrors how regulatory agencies publish complaint statistics and would help buyers distinguish between well-run and high-conflict communities.
3. Standardized Pre-Sale Governance Reports
State law should require HOAs to provide a governance report alongside the standard resale package.
It would summarize:
Board structure and election processes
Dispute and complaint data
Basic financial performance trends
Whether the HOA has met statutory compliance requirements
This one a year report would give buyers the same kind of governance context they already get when evaluating corporations, local governments, or hospitals.
Why This Matters
Making governance data accessible wouldn’t just protect buyers. It would also:
Encourage boards to adopt stronger internal controls
ncentivize ethical management companies
Reduce adversarial conflict and costly litigation
Restore public trust in HOA governance
Transparency isn’t an attack on boards — it’s a safeguard for owners.
And it gives responsible boards the credit they deserve.
Coming Next: To help close this information gap, NVHOAReform will soon launch the second in this series: What Might Be Hidden in Your CC&Rs — A plain-language guide to the most impactful (and often overlooked) clauses buried in HOA governing documents.
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This post in one of many by NVHOAReform.com exploring how Nevada’s HOA system drifts further from public accountability — and how it can be fixed.
Readers may also be interested in:
Private on Paper, Public in Practice — Why HOAs Need Better Transparency RulesNevada Supreme Court Ignores the Law on HOA Disputes—Become Policy Makers In Robes
For a complete list of our posts go here.
Go here for NVHOAReoform's current list of HOA Law Changes – Remedies for Consideration.
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