HOA Karen Sold Logging Rights on My Land.. My Trees are worth $450,000! r/Prorevenge

HOA Karen Sold Logging Rights on My Land.. My Trees are worth $450,000! r/Prorevenge

Welcome to today's Ripestories Podcast! My Name is Ripe and I am bringing you the best Reddit Stories and commentary! We have funny reddit stories from r/ProRevenge, r/MaliciousCompliance and HOA KAREN stories about homeowner associations in America! We also read subreddits such as rslash justnohoa and stories about insane funny entitled Karens! We also have the best top rated Reddit Stories to fall asleep to. Our funny Reddit videos are perfect to sleep to!

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Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome back to more HOA Karen Stories from Reddit.

In today's Ripe Stories video, imagine returning from a trip

to find your neighbor has literally leveled a piece of

your property to improve her own view. She thought she

had the perfect loophole to steal from me, but here

is how she created her own downfall. Let's dive right

into the video. This story is titled HOA Karen sold

logging rights on my land, but my trees are worth $ 450, 000.

Posted on r slash tree law. So my grandpa bought

our place back when my dad was still in diapers.

It is about 60 acres and the front part has

the old farmhouse where my wife and I live, as

well as a barn and a hayfield along the county road.

The back part is about 35 acres of woods on

the far side of a big hill. You cannot see

the woods from our house and from the woods you

can barely see the house. Grandpa was a walnut guy.

When he was young, he planted black walnut back there

in rows and he babied those trees his whole life.

On Sunday afternoons, he would walk out there and just

look at them. As a kid, I thought he was nuts. Sorry.

And as an adult, I found out that a big

straight black walnut It's basically a savings account with leaves

on it. Veneer buyers pay crazy money for good ones,

and grandpa used to tell me, those trees are for

your kids, not for you. Um, okay, grandpa. I was

nine at the time. I just wanted a four-wheeler. Years

before I inherited the place, my dad sold a pasture

on the far side of the woods to a developer.

It turned into a subdivision of about 80 houses on

big lots with an HOA. My family was never in

the HOA. We were just a woods behind it. For

a long time that was fine, but then Charlene moved in.

Charlene bought one of the big houses that backs right

up to my woods, and within a year she was

HOA president. I don't know how that happened. My guess

is nobody else wanted the job and she wanted it

more than anyone has ever wanted anything. The first time

I met her, I was patching the old barbed wire

fence that runs along my property line. She came out

of her backyard in white pants and huge sunglasses and

stopped about 10 feet away from me. Are you the

owner of this forest? Yep. We need to talk about

your leaves. My leaves. According to her, my leaves were

blowing into her yard. Her yard was part of a

community with standards. You could hear the capital S. And

my leaves did not meet the so-called standards. I told

her trees drop leaves and there wasn't much I could

do about it short of gluing them back on. She

didn't laugh, though. She told me the deer from my

forest were eating her hostas. She told me the woods

attracted undesirables, which as far as I could tell meant

raccoons or H.O.A. presidents. Then she got to her real point. Honestly,

the biggest issue is the sunset. When we bought, our

agent said that we would have sunset views. Your trees

are in the way. They were here when you bought

the house. Well, obviously. That's why we need to fix it.

She wanted me to cut what she called a view

corridor through the woods behind her house about a hundred

feet wide and running all the way to the creek.

That happened to be right through the best walnut Grandpa

ever planted. I told her no, I was nice about it,

but it was a no, and a couple of weeks

later the HOA mailed me a letter. It had a

little tree logo at the top, the irony, and said

that my property was in violation of the community's vegetation standards,

and I had 30 days to remedy the overgrowth. I

called the number on the letter, and of course I

got Charlene. Hi, it's the guy with the woods. I

got your letter. I'm not in your HOA. I'm aware

of that, sweetie. So why am I getting these violation letters?

You're not in the HOA. Your trees are. I laughed

out loud, but she didn't because she actually meant it.

She said the trees affect the community and the HOA

had an interest in the view shed. I told her

the trees could be interested in whatever I wanted, but

the trees were on my land and that was the

end of all of it. Just to make it crystal clear,

I paid a surveyor to come out and mark the line,

and the line matched the old fence almost perfectly. Then

I walked Charlene out and showed her the pin right

behind her house. This is the line. Everything on that

side is mine, and the fence is basically on it.

That fence is ancient. Well, the pin isn't. He put

it in last week. She looked at the pin like

it had said something about her mom, and then she said,

we will see about that, and went back inside. A

few months later, she tried money. She caught me at

the mailbox and offered me $ 500 for her view corridor.

For reference, the walnut she wanted gone was worth a

lot more than $ 500 per tree, and I said no.

Everybody has a price, sweetie. Well, sure, but mine is

not 500 bucks. After that, she went quiet, and I

figured she had just given up. Like I said, I

am dumb sometimes. Fast forward to this past year. Our

daughter had her first baby in another state, a boy,

and my wife and I drove out to spend some

time helping, and honestly, it was one of the best

few weeks of my life. On day 12, I got

a text from a guy in the subdivision. He's one

of the good ones, and he fixes lawnmowers out of

his garage and has bought firewood from me for years.

I will just call him the garage guy. Hey man,

are you selling your timber? There's a skidder and a

log truck back behind Charlene's. Then he sent a picture.

A skidder was dragging a huge log across the strip

of HOA grass towards the street, and a log truck

was parked by the curb with a big stack already

on it. I knew right away they were my walnuts.

Nobody else around here is walnut trees that straight. The

logging outfit's name and phone number were painted on the

truck door, and my hands were shaking when I called them.

An older guy picked up. Hi, do you have a

crew cutting behind the subdivision of the Canoon T-Road? Yes, sir,

that is us. That is my land. There was a

long pause. No, sir, that is HOA Common Ground. We

got a contract with the Association President. The HOA does

not own any of these woods. The HOA owns a

strip of grass and the mailbox shelter. Did you see

the pink flagging on the pins? The pause was even

longer this time. She said those were from an old

survey that got thrown out. Thank God the surveyor had

emailed me a copy of the survey. I told the

logger that I'd sent it along with a screenshot from

the county website showing who actually owns the parcel. So

there I was in my daughter's kitchen holding my grandson

in one arm and trying to forward emails with my

other thumb. My wife took the baby before I dropped

him and about 10 minutes later the logger called back. Sir,

I'm shutting it down. I'm real sorry. I need to

call my insurance guy. He sounded sick like he might

actually throw up. At the time I didn't care much

how he felt though. Later I did. We packed up

that night and left early the next morning. It is

a long drive and we did it in one shot.

Somewhere around hour 6 though my wife said Promise me

you won't do anything stupid when we get there. Define stupid. Well,

anything you would have to explain to a judge. That's

a pretty short list of things I'm allowed to do.

Then keep it short. So we got home, and I

did not even go in the house. I walked straight

over the hill into the woods. The first thing I

noticed was the light. Those woods are supposed to be shady,

and now there was a big bright gap in the

middle of them. They had cut a strip running from

my fence to the creek right behind Charlene's house. That

is wider than the view corridor she had begged me for.

On both sides of the strip, they had picked out

the best walnut and white oak. I guess because once

you've got the equipment in there, why stop? And the

treetops were just left lying around, and the skidder ruts

were deep enough to lose a boot in. I counted

over 70 stumps. One of them was the big one

that was the biggest walnut grandpa ever planted, and when

I was little, he would have me hug it every

year to see if my arms reached around yet. They

never did, even when I was grown. Now it was

a stump with sawdust piled on top. I sat down

on it. I'm not ashamed to say that I got

choked up. Grandpa said those trees were for my kids,

and my kid just had a kid. So from that

tree stump I could see right into Charlene's backyard. There

was brand new patio furniture out there, all of it

facing west. She had bought furniture for her new view,

and about then she came out onto the patio. She

saw me and for a second I think she thought

about going back inside, but instead she walked down to

the fence. Oh good, you're back. Before you start, this

was all completely legal. You cut down my trees. The

association managed its open space. It's all documented, sweetie. Maybe

learn to read a map. She actually went inside and

came back out with a big rolled up map. It

was an early drawing from back when the developer was

planning the subdivision. At that point the developer had wanted

to buy our woods too so on this drawing our

woods were shaded green and labeled future face open space.

My dad said no so the developer never bought it

and that drawing was never recorded anywhere. It was just

a wish list. This was never approved. My dad never sold.

Go ask the county for this map. They won't have it.

It's a legal document. It's a drawing of something that

didn't even happen. Well, it's the HOA's position that... Charlene,

I walked you to the pin. You stood right there

and looked at it. She waved a hand at the

stump like she was shooing a fly. Trees grow back.

Those trees are older than you. Then you should have

taken better care of them. Half of them were a

fire hazard. You told the logger this was HOA land.

I told him they were community woods, which they are.

Everybody enjoys them. Not anymore, they don't. And right then...

A pickup pulled up on the HOA side. The logger

and his son had come to get the rest of

their equipment. The dad walked over, looked at me, looked

at Charlene and took his hat off. I didn't know

people still did that. Sir, I'm the one you talked

to on the phone. I want to say it to

your face. I'm sorry. And then he turned to her. Ma'am,

you told me you had talked to the neighbor and

he was on board. Charlene didn't even blink. I said

he'd be fine with it. Eventually. The son made a

noise like he was trying really hard not to laugh here.

His dad gave him a look and he went back

to the truck. The logger pulled up the contract on

his phone and showed it to me. And basically, Charlene

had signed it with President under her name. It gave

his company the logging rights to all merchantable timber behind

her house all the way to the creek. The price

was $ 38, 000 and the check was made out to Charlene personally.

Not even the HOA. She said the association was switching banks,

the logger said. She asked us to make it out

to her and said she would deposit it. I just

looked at him. I know, he said. I know. Looking back,

I know. Charlene said she was not going to stand

here and be ganged up on and then went inside.

The patio door slammed so hard I heard it from

the stump and the next morning I called a lawyer

in town. She grew up on a farm and does

mostly land and farm stuff, and she's the kind of

person who asks a question and then waits for you

to actually answer it. Her first instructions were simple. Don't

touch the logs on the landing, don't talk to Charlene,

and get a forester out there like right away. So

I hired a consulting forester, and he spent two days

in the woods measuring stumps and tops and doing a

bunch of math I didn't even follow. He also asked

me a lot of questions about grandpa and the trees.

That explains it, he said. Your grandpa knew exactly what

he was doing. Those were vanilla quality logs. People don't

grow walnut like that anymore. His report said the timber

that got cut was worth roughly $ 150, 000 at stumpage value

and Charlene sold it for $ 38, 000. The logger later told

me that he knew it was a steal and that

was a big part of why he didn't even ask

any more questions. He was not proud of that, but

I took the report to my lawyer. She read it,

set it down, and asked if I knew what timber

trespass was. I'm guessing it's what just happened to me. Well,

our state has a law for this. If someone cuts

your trees and they knew the trees were not theirs,

the damages can be tripled. She walked to the survey

pin with you. You have witnesses who heard her say

that she had talked to you when she hadn't, and

she had the check made out to herself. So, 150

times 3, 450,000. Congratulations, your trees are worth 150k. I

had to sit down for a minute for a second.

I almost felt grateful to Charlene. Almost. But meanwhile, the

garage guy was keeping me up to date on the

subdivision side of things. At the last HOA meeting before

I got home, Charlene had made a big announcement. For

a couple years she had been pushing a giant three-tier

fountain for the subdivision entrance. and the members had voted

it down twice because it just cost way too much.

At that meeting, she told everyone that the fountain was

now fully funded by a so-called generous anonymous donor. and

the generous anonymous donator was my walnut. Garage Guy put

me in touch with the HOA treasurer, and we met

in Garage Guy's garage, of all places, with two other

board members, everybody sitting on overturned buckets, surrounded by lawnmowers.

The treasurer had brought the meeting minutes. Over the last year,

the board had voted on exactly one thing related to

the trees. President to get quotes on storm cleanup along

the rear common area. The rear common area is that

strip of grass, and there was no vote about cutting anything,

No vote on a contract and none of them had

ever heard of a $ 38, 000 check. One of the board members,

an older guy with four arms like a lumberjack, kept

shaking his head. She told us the donor wanted to

stay anonymous. Well, I said, the donor's a tree, so

he's pretty quiet about it. Garage guy laughed so hard

he knocked a leaf blower off the shelf. The board

called a special meeting to remove her as president. I

did not go since I am not a member and

didn't want to turn it into a circus, but garage

guy gave me the play-by-play. It got loud. Charlene told

everyone that the board was jealous of her, and she

said she had done more for this community than anybody else.

She said opening up the view behind her house had

actually increased property values for the whole subdivision. One guy

raised his hand and asked how the view from her

back porch increased the value of his house. on the

other side of the subdivision, and she did not have

an answer to that. Well, they voted her out almost unanimously.

The one no vote was her, and a week after

that she showed up on my front porch. My wife

answered the door and hollered for me, and I came

out to find Charlene holding a check and a single

type page, At the top of the page it said,

Mutual Release and Neighborly Agreement. This is everything the tree

sold for, she said holding out the check. $ 38, 000, I'm

being more than generous. My forester says they were worth

about four times that. Yeah, your forester works for you. Yeah, well,

that's generally how hiring someone works. She pushed the paper

at me. Sign this and we can all move on.

Be reasonable. No jury is gonna care about some trees.

You spend more on lawyers than you will ever get.

Take the check, sweetie. I'll pass. You're gonna regret this.

I already regret a lot of things. Mostly going on

vacation in this case. She stomped back to her car.

And yeah, suffice to say, we sued Charlene, the logging company,

and the HOA, and the logging company's insurance settled pretty fast.

The logger apologized to me again in person and handed

over every text Charlene ever sent him, and those texts

were bad for her. A few of the highlights. The

owner is out of town for a week. Perfect time

to knock it out. Ignore the pink ribbons, those are

from an old survey. The HOA's insurance settled a smaller piece,

and then the HOA went after Charlene themselves for signing

a contract she had no authority to sign and pocketing

the change. Her own homeowner's insurance would not cover any

of it because apparently the insurance doesn't pay when you

do something on purpose. Her lawyer, she did eventually hire one,

told her to settle and from what I heard she

told him no jury would care about some trees. I'm

guessing that sounded familiar to him. It did not go

her way. When it was all added up, I got

the full $ 450, 000 plus my lawyer's fees. Most of it

came out of Charlene. But of course, she did not

have that kind of money lying around. Most people don't.

What she did have was a big house with a

brand new sunset view and the house had to go.

When the house went on the market, by the way,

garage guy texted me the listing and I finally felt

at peace. As for the money, well, part of it

went into fixing up the woods and the rest went

to an account for my grandson. He's too little to

know what a tree is yet, but someday he will

have a big chunk of college paid for and he

will ask why. I'm going to tell him the whole story,

starting with a stubborn old man who pruned walnut trees

every Sunday, saying they were for his kids, not for him,

and grandpa was a little off. They were not for

my kids, they were for my grandkid. It took a

crazy HOA lady with a fake map to cash them out,

but they ended up exactly where he wanted them. And

the best part is that about 20 years from now,

a row of big straight black walnuts is going to

be standing right where Charlene's sunset view used to be.

And she knows exactly who planted them. And the next

one is from r slash malicious compliance and is titled

I'm giving you a year's notice of my vacation. I

used to work for a small printing company that did

work for a local college and their choir program. The

director was a literal Karen, looked like one too, and

made our life a living hell leading up to her

annual Christmas program. Without fail, every year, she would give

us the artwork for the program at noon the Wednesday

before Thanksgiving. This meant someone from our team would need

to work the holiday or that weekend to ensure it

got out in time for her program. For four years

I took the brunt of the project as I did

not want my team to work their holiday weekend and

my family always celebrated Thanksgiving later to make scheduling easier

for everyone. Me and the team constantly complained to the

owner that this client was a nightmare and not worth

our time. It was a large order for us but

we didn't feel it was worth the headache. The owner's

anniversary typically fell along this project timing and he was

almost always out of town. The fourth year he wasn't,

so I decided to speak with him the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,

telling him we needed to fire the client. He was

reluctant and downplayed our complaints and said that she wasn't

that bad, to which I replied, well, since this project

is not that difficult, I figured I would let you

know I'm taking this week off next year. The owner's

face went pale. His gut response was, why would you

screw me over like that? To which I replied, I

don't understand, what do you mean? I'm giving you a

whole year to prepare for me to not be here.

It isn't that big of a deal and she's not

that bad, so a year should be enough time for

you to figure it out. Also at this point, mind you,

that I actually love working for the company, the owner

just got greedy sometimes. and would put sales above the team,

and one of the reasons why he specifically hired me

is because I would fight back when I thought he

was wrong. That day was the day I decided I

had enough and we went toe-to-toe arguing for about an

hour in front of the team about my early vacation notice.

He finally relented and was stubborn and ready to prove

me wrong. A year later he finally got a taste

of his own medicine and didn't like it. I ended

up working leading up to the holiday break because though

I was adamant I wasn't going to work the holiday again,

I could not leave my team hanging. Yet again, right

on time, this Karen doesn't give us the files until

Wednesday at noon before Thanksgiving. The owner went in person

to speak to her. I don't know the full conversation,

but it basically came down to her calling him a

complete idiot for not being able to manage around her

bad project management. He came back to the shop in

literal tears, stating that he had never been treated so

horribly in his life. In that moment, I asked him

if I could fire her as a client. I could

tell he wasn't excited to admit that he was wrong

a year into this argument we had, but he sheepishly

nodded yes. He ended up finishing the project of the

holiday for her. That year to not ruin our reputation

with the school as we did a ton of work

for other departments, but the next year I was the

only one who got to speak to Karen. She asked

for an estimate and I gave her the price and

told her if files came any later than X date,

I would charge her $ 3, 000 plus $ 1, 000. more for every

day she was late. She flipped out and asked for

the owner. And I got to pull the good old,

he put me in charge, I'm the manager now, card

and told her she could kick dirt if she didn't

like it. Our team had a little celebration when she

said she would go somewhere else to do the project.

It is probably one of my proudest moments as a

leader fighting for myself and my team. And the next

one is another awesome malicious compliance story. This one is titled,

We're going to add a time clock and teachers need

to start clocking in and out because too many are

leaving 5-10 minutes before the contract even ends. So this

story took place about 8 years ago. Back then I

worked at a middle school in the DC suburbs. Nice

district and super supportive parents. But higher-up admin caught wind

that teachers would periodically leave about 10 minutes prior to

the end of the so-called contract hours. Keep in mind,

this is after kids are all mostly gone for the

day and we didn't really have a negotiated contract. Because

VA was a right-to-work state with zero union protection, no

principal took it super seriously unless OT was being abused.

But for some reason, some higher-up decided... to make this

his crusade. So a district admin decided to install a

time clock because a few teachers would occasionally leave like

10 minutes early to try and beat the worst of

the bus traffic. And for those of you who know

the DC area, you know the difference between leaving at 2.50

and 3.00 can be massive. It was mostly parents with

kids of their own they had to pick up and

all of us already worked obscenely long hours So this

micromanaging does not really go over well. So then a

few of us stick around and realize the district had

language in our employee handbook about requesting reimbursement for work

beyond the so-called duties of a typical contracted school day

and figured if the contract hours are that critical, then

every other hour must be beyond the duties of a

typical contracted school day. So a few of us started

having grading parties where we would meet at the school

after a happy hour, then clock in and sit in

the bleachers grading. It turned into a nice form of

bonding and team building. Ironically, we started flooding the district

office with requests for reimbursement for these extra hours, plus

the extra hours, plus that most of us work daily

before contract hours began, and none of them were approved, obviously,

but it didn't take long for admin to remove the

time clock. And yeah guys, thank you so much for watching.

Please don't forget to subscribe and I will see you

again tomorrow.