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CONFESSION #0916 — HOA HORROR
Thursday, October 1, 2026
The buyers came back for a third showing. That's when I should have pulled the HOA docs myself instead of trusting the listing agent's summary. She said dues were $180 a month, no special assessments pending. I wrote that in my notes. Put it in an email to the buyers.
Closed in March. By June they're calling me because there's a $4,200 special assessment for the pool house roof that was voted on eight months before we even toured the property. It was in the meeting minutes. Page 12. I know because I finally read them after the fact, sitting in my car outside their house while they're inside probably deciding whether to report me.
The listing agent claims she didn't know. Maybe she didn't. But I should have requested the full package myself. That's literally my job. Instead I saved myself maybe 40 minutes of reading and now these people are out four grand and looking at me like I'm the reason.
Because I am the reason.
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Judge Reginald Escrow III
⚖️ Presiding
GUILTY OF NEGLIGENT HOA DOCUMENT DERELICTION AND RECKLESS RELIANCE ON HEARSAY WITH AGGRAVATED POOL HOUSE CONSEQUENCES
The Court has reviewed this confession and finds itself PHYSICALLY ILL at the phrase "trusting the listing agent's summary" — a phrase that should be illegal in all fifty states and most Canadian provinces. You saved yourself forty minutes of reading and cost your clients four thousand dollars, which by The Court's calculations means you valued your time at six thousand dollars per hour, and Reginald has MET you through this confession and you are NOT billing at that rate. Page 12. PAGE TWELVE. The meeting minutes were sitting right there like a ticking time bomb wrapped in a pool house, and you chose to believe a listing agent whose job — whose ENTIRE PROFESSIONAL PURPOSE — is to make problems invisible until someone else owns them. The Court once trusted a seller's disclosure that said "minor settling" and discovered the basement had achieved sentience and was attempting to return to the earth's core, so I understand the temptation to believe convenient lies, but I did not then sit in my car outside the property having an existential crisis because I AM A JUDGE and judges do not park and spiral. You are not the reason these people are out four grand. You are the ENTIRE reason. The Court hereby sentences you to read every HOA document for your next thirty transactions out loud, in your car, with the windows down. Case dismissed, Reginald has a gavel to polish.
Forty-Minute Fiasco
Have a confession? Judge Reginald Escrow III's docket is always open.
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