HOA Detective™ | August 26, 2025: At the age of fourteen, a young HOA Detective™ was on the verge of graduating Junior High, standing nervously on the stage at the front of an auditorium. The year was 1971, and I was about to deliver a speech I had written after my teacher insisted, I enter the district-wide public speaking competition that involved students from schools throughout Ft. Worth, TX. The title of my speech was simple; looking back, the thesis was almost naïve. In 1971, I proclaimed to this audience of my teenage peers: “I Am Looking Forward.”
On that day, I was not yet the HOA Detective™: I was not a HOA due diligence expert. I was a young, yes naïve, teenager with a better-than-average command of public oratory, a stage, and a dream. Inspired by the cadence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, I adopted the great speaker’s style in my best anaphoric rhetoric.
At fourteen, “looking forward” meant New Horizons: The thrill of a new school, the promise of independence, the open road of adulthood. I had not yet encountered mortgages or property taxes, homeowner associations, and privately governed communities. I had not yet witnessed the ways the American Dream could be eroded by inflation, financial manipulation, and the slow creep of Privatopia, much less the emergence of the Private Metropolis. I stood on that stage and declared to my classmates, my teachers, and the dozens in the audience whom I had never met that I was “looking forward.” Forward to growth, to achievement, to life unfolding to the fullest.
54 Years Later: I look back while living in a nation where the typical first-time homebuyer is nearly forty years old, not twenty-eight as in the days of my parents.
I look back while living in a nation where families are shackled to thirty-year mortgages, second mortgages, and refinanced mortgages that stretch across lifetimes.
I look back while living in a nation where communities no longer public, no longer shared, but subdivided, privatized, and monetized; ruled by private homeowner associations that call themselves “villages” and “communities” while they dismantle the very idea of a village and “community.”
I look back as the American Dream of homeownership is slipping from one generation’s hands, becoming little more than a pipe dream for my grandchildren’s generation. There was a time when I was looking forward. Today, I can only look backward and retrace the long shadow from promise to decline.
Please Consider: If you are the typical first-time home buyer in the United States today, you were born in 1987. At that time, the typical American family could buy their first home before the age of 30. Today, that threshold has been pushed to 38, as the American Dream of home ownership slips further away.
If you are a member of the demographic cohort born after 1987, it might interest you to know that there was a time when things were very different in the USA:
There was a time when the typical American family could buy their first home with a 20‑year mortgage. Today, the 30‑year mortgage is the default, stretching out the burden of debt, as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when a second mortgage was a rarity, an emergency tool. Today, second mortgages and home equity loans are marketed as ordinary financial instruments – used to pay for cars, college, or household expenses – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when a family bought a home, made their monthly payments, and retired their mortgage debt in full. The “mortgage burning party” was a common occurrence in many American homes. Today, millions of Americans never pay off the original purchase mortgage, refinancing repeatedly, trapped in a cycle of perpetual debt, as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when the mortgage debt of the average family rarely exceeded twice the annual household income. Today, home prices tower above four, five, even six times the average family’s income – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when a down payment of ten percent was enough to open the door to ownership. Today, buyers are lucky if they can find a bank that will let them in at ten percent down, and many must bring twenty percent or more to the closing table – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when private mortgage insurance was a rare requirement. Today, PMI is standard operating procedure, an additional cost for families already stretched to the limit – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when buying a home in a homeowner association was the exception, not the rule. Today, seventy‑five percent of new homes are built inside the legal confines of a so-called “common interest development,” a form of privatized homeownership community with covenants, conditions, and restrictions – a place the scholar Dr. Evan McKenzie calls Privatopia, the seedling that has given birth to the Private Metropolis – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when parents and grandparents watched their children buy homes on their own. Today, family subsidies are commonplace, as down payments are pieced together from inheritances, gifts, and parental savings – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when a job with a steady paycheck could carry a family into a home of their own. Today, even two incomes are often not enough to cross the homeownership threshold – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when the American suburb was defined by public streets, public parks, and public schools. Today, whole neighborhoods are privatized, governed by volunteer boards with no qualifications other than being able to buy a home, financed by dues (another form of taxation), and regulated by private rules (another form of laws) – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when owning a home meant independence. Today, it means being subject to covenants, submitting to enforcement letters, paying ever‑rising assessments – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when property taxes funded local services. Today, HOAs levy their own fees on top of taxes, creating a second layer of governance without the same transparency or accountability – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when neighborhoods were built for families, with modest houses on modest lots. Today, speculative development pressure drives construction toward luxury townhomes and high‑density, high-price condominiums – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when a home was the foundation of security. Today, it is a leveraged asset, an investment vehicle, subject to booms and busts – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when the promise of ownership was an open road. Today, it is a toll road, with gates and guards, with rules and restrictions, with debts and obligations arranged by the HOA board of directors – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when owning a home was a dream within reach. Today, for many, it is a dream deferred, a dream denied, a dream distorted by privatized governance and financial manipulation – as the American Dream slips further away.
There was a time when this was the story of our beloved USA: a nation that once promised open doors and now offers gated communities; a people who once inherited freedom and now inherit debt; a dream that once lifted generations and now weighs them down – as the American Dream slips away.
There was a time when we didn’t need to “Make America GREAT” because the country WAS great! If we are serious about the “Make America Great Again” mantra, the United States MUST confront this ugly reality and replace the privatized, monetized, for-profit HOA industrial complex with citizen-owned family homes, not homes that are mortgaged to the hilt with no realistic chance that the “owner” will ever pay off the mortgage.
There WAS such a time when this reality existed in every Middlesex Village across the land, but that time is no more. Until we confront the forces of Privatopia and reclaim the promise of true home ownership, the American Dream will finally slip away and become your grandchildren’s pipe dream of home ownership.
Because You’re Buying More Than a Home!
