Probably the best test is to determine how much money the HOA is
collecting. If they collect $100 per home for road maintenance, there is
little chance that they will accumulate a pot of money to hire lawyers
over a small infraction.On the other hand, if the neighborhood is full
of lawyers, or is collecting $1200 year per home for "general
maintenance" - watch out!

I found a neighborhood where the CC&R's essentially had a loophole
whereby if you built something that was not approved by the
architectural control committee (ACC) , and the ACC did not take action
(injunction) for 30 days, it was grandfathered. In other words, get it
built fast and keep a low profile for 30 days.

Finally, if you buy a 2 acre wooded lot, chances are nobody will see
what you are doing and will leave you alone.


Dick wrote:

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



--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"

The Lost Deep Thoughts By: Jack Handey
Before a mad scientist goes mad, there's probably a time
when he's only partially mad. And this is the time when he's
going to throw his best parties.