You know you’ve made it in life when you finally close on that $500,000 home in a gated South Florida community. Palm trees, stucco finishes, a driveway just big enough to make your Amazon driver hate you – the whole dream.
And then reality knocks. Or more accurately, it barks, screams, shoots foam darts at your window, and cannonballs into an above-ground pool at 3:00 in the morning.
Welcome to Biarritz, a neighborhood in Doral, Florida governed by Biarritz HOA, where the dues are high, but the standards are… let’s just say flexible.
You thought you were buying into a peaceful residential enclave. Turns out, you accidentally moved into a live-action episode of Kids Gone Wild: HOA Edition.
Instead of warm evenings on the patio, you get teenagers treating the backyard like it’s Call of Duty with Nerf blasters – and somehow, your window is the enemy target. Their pool? A club. Their parents? MIA. Their respect for property lines? Theoretical.
You assumed HOA meant structure, order, decorum. But Biarritz HOA appears to interpret “community standards” more like a choose your own adventure novel – where every path ends with barking dogs, strobe lights, and a total lack of enforcement.
You try contacting management. You get polite emails and vague acknowledgments. Meanwhile, it’s another episode of Backyard Bash Volume IV, featuring plastic beer pong tables and 12-year-olds doing cannonballs while you’re trying to have a Zoom meeting.
And here’s the punchline: you paid half a million for it. You paid for peace and got pandemonium. You moved out of the chaos just to find it waiting for you in a different zip code – only this time, with a palmlined gate and HOA fees.
So here’s the lesson: before you fall in love with crown molding and walk-in closets, spend a weekend in the neighborhood. Sit outside at night. Watch what the “community” really looks like when the sun goes down.
Because in Biarritz, the only thing louder than the neighbors is the silence from the HOA.
