ignorance, judgment, neighbors
SO my wife and I bought our first MH finally! But first lets rewind. About a year and a half ago, we bought our first home, 2000 square ft absolutely beautiful in a quite dead end neighborhood. I k...
Forum Discussion
W4RLR wrote:Hikerdogs wrote:Wrong answer. Restrictive covenants "run with the land" and survive the dissolution of the HOA. Check your deed.
Check with the city/county and an attorney as to the validity of the covenants. Most are written by the developer and are under his/her control until a certain percentage of the lots in the development are sold. Once the appropriate number of lots are sold and have resident owners the developer has them form a HOA. The home owners Association then becomes the party responsible for enforcement of the covenants.
Generally the covenants have an expiration date. If there is no HOA in place to vote to extend the expiration date they cease to exist.
I already have. The covenants in our sub division expire 20 years after the initial inception unless they are extended by the HOA. The HOA can only extend them by 5 year intervals. So at least every 5 years members have to vote as to whether to extend them or let them expire. Also our HOA has no power to enforce any covenants unless the owner is in direct violation of a city, county or state ordinance.
We've had a couple encounters with the HOA. The first was about 5 months after we built the house. We were one of the first houses built in the sub division. When the plans were submitted for approval there was a chain link fence surrounding the back yard. The plans were approved and construction was completed. We (and the developer) didn't realize it but there was a covenant that only allowed wooden fences. Even though the builder had made an errant exception he wanted us to remove the fence. Luckily for us the approvals were in writing and no changes had to be made.
Later when we purchased a motorhome and parked it in the drive some busy bodies again sited the covenants that no motorhome, travel trailer, etc. could be stored at a residence more than 24 hours. The key wording they missed was that it only applied if the unit was "in front of the house". Our drive extends along side and behind the house. The motorhome is well behind the front of the house so once again we were in compliance. The best part is that we didn't have any intention of storing our motorhome in the drive. We had it there on a temporary basis to do the initial loading and have some service work done on it before using it.
What it boils down to is that there are many different iterations of Home Owners Associations. Some have legal powers to enforce covenants, some don't. Some can force membership and collect mandatory dues, others can't. Eventually our HOA fell apart because there a few members who wanted to decide what was politically correct and what wasn't. The majority of the home owners didn't like the way the organization was run so it died a natural death.
