A real estate agent saw a vehicle disappear within 15 to 20 minutes for a temporary parking job.
She claims to have seen the tow truck roaming the neighborhood streets at midnight, looking for illegally parked cars.
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Parking is extremely limited outside Cathy Lownie’s Virginia home.
So when her friend visited her last month, she encouraged them to temporarily park their vehicles in a spot she knew wasn’t legal.
Lownie figured they wouldn’t get towed or fined if they were fast enough.
However, as she soon discovered, they weren’t fast enough.
“A friend drove by, parked behind both of our cars for about 20 minutes, got out and the car was gone,” she wrote in a statement. Facebook post to warn other drivers.
“We were inside and we didn’t hear them or see them.”
Her friend went to get her car and encountered some obstacles – and a hefty fine.
“$180 and we can’t get the car back until they next release time 4pm,” she wrote.
The post was published just before noon – meaning her friend had to wait four hours to get her car back.
What impressed Lownie, though, was that this was the first time she had seen someone get towed to a parking lot like her friend did.
“We’ve been here for over a year and we’ve done this several times with no problems,” Lownie said.
“Be careful where you park.”
She admitted that she shouldn’t have told her friend to park there – but she planned to inform the HOA that the towing company may have been a little happy with the tow.
“I will notify the HOA on Monday that perhaps their towing company is a little aggressive,” she continued.
Can an HOA prohibit on-street parking?
According to a North Carolina lawyer, an HOA retains the legal right to park anywhere — even in a homeowner’s garage.
The trick, says HOA attorney Mike Hunter, is the deed that homeowners sign when they buy a home within a subdivision.
“If you buy a home in a deed-restricted community, you are required to comply with those restrictions,” he told Charlotte Observant.
“If restrictive covenants say you can’t park on the street, the council has a legal duty to enforce that.”
Many states are passing laws to limit the power of HOAs, although most states still grant HOAs to enforce their regulations, restrictive or otherwise, in any way they see fit.
Read more here.
“I saw them crawling around the neighborhood around midnight a few weeks ago.”
At the end of it all, it was a valuable lesson for her and her friend to never assume their vehicles are safe – even if it’s a practice they’ve done before.
“Yes we were wrong, I told him to park there as it would only be 15-20 minutes and there were no spaces anywhere,” she said.
“Lesson man.”
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
