On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 16:43:06 -0400, "Percival P. Cassidy"
wrote:
It's all very well to tell people not to buy houses with CC&Rs and HOAs,
but probably anything recent (last 20 years or so) has them. I've read
that the financial institutions that fund the developments insist on
them; they may not dictate every detail, but I think there are "model
rules" around that the developers copy, and these rules just about
require an application in triplicate 3 months in advance before you can
get permission to sneeze.

Perce

CC&R's are very common today, but HOA's are far less common.
Typically, if you buy in a development by one or several builders, the
builders will create CC&R's (copied usually as you stated) primarily
to protect themselves. They don't want someone trashing the
neighborhood while they are attempting to sell new homes. It's still
very possible to buy land outside the cities where you can have a
custom home built without CC&R's. I have read CC&R's ad nauseam and
most of them are very reasonable in their requirements. In our area,
they deal primarily with things like property line setbacks, minimum
square footage, overall height, height of fences, minimum landscaping,
junk cars, etc. All things that most people would like to see some
degree of control over to protect the value of their property. If you
don't have an HOA, you are forced to sue someone to enforce the
CC&R's. Even with an HOA sometimes that becomes necessary, but then
the legal fees come out of the funds of the association, and not
directly out of your pocket.

Dick