HOA fee goes from $158 to $2,500 a month — and the board says it backed off $7,500

Five years ago, homeowners in Magnolia Cove, a small neighborhood in Sherrills Ford, Catawba County, N.C., paid $158 a month in HOA fees. This summer it jumped past $1,200 plus a $10,000 assessment. Then the board told owners 2027 dues would be $7,500 a month — $90,000 a year per lot — before “backing off” on Monday night and voting for $2,500 a month instead, in a meeting held over Zoom.

“Nobody is helping us,” homeowner Jill Menson told WSOC-TV Channel 9; she and her husband bought the house thinking it would be their last. Homeowners say the developer, who owns most of the lots, controls the board. And the North Carolina Attorney General’s office told Channel 9 there are no statutes limiting how much an HOA can charge, as long as the board follows its own documents.

The HOA’s side: in a public statement the board says the dues are driven by legal costs from lawsuits more than 20 owners filed and lost — a Catawba County jury found some of them liable for defamation — plus years of unpaid assessments, and that fees can come down once those costs end. Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) posted the story Wednesday with a two-minute video that’s already past 890,000 views. The video is embedded above.