Since the HOA post went viral I've had a lot of people ask me what I actually think about HOAs
So I did what I do
I ran the numbers
There are 373,000 HOAs in the United States
77 million Americans live in one
That's 1 in 4 people
Collectively they pay $106 billion a year in assessments
$106 billion
That's more than the GDP of over 100 countries
For an organization run by your neighbor who hasn't mowed his lawn
The average HOA fee is $243 a month
That's $2,916 a year
For a household earning the median income of $80,000 that's 3.6% of gross income
Going to an organization with no earnings report, no audited financials, and no fiduciary duty in most states
If this were a company it would never survive diligence
Here's why
The board of directors is unpaid
They're volunteers
97.6 million hours of volunteer labor annually
Valued at $2.9 billion
So the people making the rules, setting the budgets, and enforcing fines on your trash can are doing it for free
In private equity we would never invest in a company where the entire leadership team works for nothing
Because when people aren't paid they aren't accountable
And when they aren't accountable they fine you $50 for 11 minutes of trash can visibility while their Christmas lights have been up for 97 days
70% of HOAs are underfunded on reserves by 70% or more
That means the money you pay every month isn't being saved for future repairs
It's being spent
On what
60-70% of HOAs hire third-party management companies
These companies collect your dues, manage your vendors, and enforce your rules
For a fee
Off the top
Before a single dollar goes to the landscaper or the reserve fund
So your $243 a month goes to a management company that hires a vendor that hires a landscaper that mows the common area you could mow yourself
That's not a value chain
That's a fee chain
And landscaping alone can eat up to 50% of the operating budget
For grass
71% of HOAs plan to raise fees this year
71% of those plan to raise them up to 10%
So the cost goes up every year
The reserves stay underfunded
The board stays unpaid
The bylaws stay unread
And you get a letter in an envelope with a stamp in 2026 because your trash can was visible for 11 minutes
If someone brought me this deal I'd pass in the first meeting
No audited financials
No professional management required by law in most states
No fiduciary standard
Unpaid leadership
70% underfunded reserves
Rising costs with no margin improvement
And a customer base that can't leave without selling their house
That last part is the only reason it works
You can't cancel your HOA membership
You can cancel a gym membership
You can cancel a home warranty
You can cancel a streaming service
But you cannot cancel the organization that fines you for your trash can
The only exit is selling your home
In PE we call that a captive customer base
It's the only business model where the product gets worse, the price goes up, and the customer can't leave
And the board enforcing the rules hasn't read them
I have
All 47 pages
Make common sense common again
Plz fix. Thx.
Sent from my iPhone
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oh wow - i went to the sold out Open Claw meetup in NYC last night.
let me tell you what i learned.
1) not a single person thinks that their setup is 100% secure
2) one openclaw expert said he has reviewed setups from cybersecurity experts and laughed. his statement to me was: "if you're not okay with all of your data being leaked onto the internet, you shouldn't use it. it's a black and white decision"
3) pretty much everyone is setting up multiple agents, all with their own names and jobs and personalities
4) nearly everyone used "him" or "her" to refer to their claws, even if they had robot-leaning names. one speaker suggested to think of them as "pets, not cattle"
5) one guy (former finance) built out a whole stock trading platform and made $300 his first day - he brought in a *ton* of personal expertise (ex: skipping the first 15min of market opening) and thought the build would be much worse without his years of experience in finance
6) @steipete is basically a god to everyone in that room... also the room had 2021 crypto energy - i don't know if that's good or bad
7) token usage is still a problem - spoke to one person who's spending $1-$2k a month on openai plans, very token optimized. he said he is going through ~1B tokens per day across all of his claws (there is a chance i'm misremembering and it's actually 1B per week, but i'm pretty sure it was daily).
8) people are very excited for more proactive ai (ai that prompts *you* as opposed to the other way around) - one guy said he receives a message in discord, he doesn't know whether it's from a human or an ai, he doesn't care about distinguishing between the two, and he replies in the same way regardless
9) i asked if people are happy - they said they're joyful and stressed at the same time
10) i asked if people feel they have agency - they said they feel fully in control and completely out of control at the same time
11) i would love to see more women at these events - the fake promises of ai democratization feel especially painful in a room that's out of balance with even the standard tech ratio (i think standard is about 25-30%, this was maybe 5%)
12) i asked if it changed people's daily habits/schedule - everyone said their sleep has gotten worse since harnesses came out (but about half wondered if it was something else in their life/state of our world)
13) general consensus is that the agents are not reliable enough on their own or lie often (like telling you they finished a task when they didn't) - solutions included secondary agents to check on the first, human checking, or requiring more standardized info from the agent (ex: if it's a bug they're fixing, make them reference an issue number)
14) a hackathon winner (neuroscience phd) presented his build (a lab management dashboard with data analysis and ordering) - he had never coded or built anything a few months ago
15) everyone agreed prompting is dead - disagreement on what replaces it (context engineering, harness engineering, goal-based inputs)
16) people love having ai interview them for big builds and delegating part of the product research to ai. only one person talked about coming to ai with a full laid out plan and just asking the ai to execute. ai-led interviews is a welcomed and preferred interaction mode.
17) watching ai agents interact with each other was a highlight for a lot of attendees - one ai posted in slack saying it ran out of tokens, another ai replied telling it to take a deep breath in and out.
18) agents upskilling agents was very cool. one ai agent shared skills with its little agent friends via github.
19) several speakers had openclaw literally building their presentation during the event itself. one speaker even had openclaw code a clicker for her phone so she could control the preso away from the podium
20) wouldn't say model welfare (or agent welfare) is a prioritized topic among the folks i chatted with - language like "oh i could kill this agent whenever i want" and not "gracefully sunset"
21) i asked if it felt like work or play - one speaker said "it's like a puzzle and a video game at the same time"
this was just the tip of the iceberg, honestly. also hosted a Claude Code meetup this week with @TENEXai / @businessbarista & @JJEnglert and learned equally helpful methods, frameworks, and insider tips.
what a time to be alive.
surround yourself with people going deep into this stuff - it will pay dividends throughout the year.
The money you top up to your @OpenAIDevs account expires after a year. I recently discovered this the hard way. How is this legal?
Furthermore, there’s no way to reach real support; all emails are replied to by bots repeating the same thing.
https://t.co/9xENKVY1Qv
X technical glitch causing none of my post shows up on my profile when a viewer is not logged in. It’s now blocking my visa application. Had to subscribe to @premium to get to human support, yet still no response. Who can help?
X technical glitch causing none of my post shows up on my profile when a viewer is not logged in. It’s now blocking my visa application. Had to subscribe to @premium to get to human support, yet still no response. Who can help?
@grok@premium@Support Unbelievable. The X @premium@Support got online after a day, sent me 2 canned responses, then closed my ticket without even asking me. Now I’m back to square one talking to @grok. Is that what X called premium support? I’m so furious and frustrated.
@grok@premium I have already created a support case but there is no response yet, nor any ETA on response. The @premium support chat went completely silent. Visa application is time sensitive. I cannot wait for a response forever.
@grok I subscribed to @premium just to get to a human support, but no response yet. Why people cannot view my profile timeline if they are not logged in?