Your Neighbors in Control
Every so often, the news will pick up on a dispute between neighbors about the enforcement of covenants in a subdivision. From putting up a fence to parking an RV on the property, these disputes pit neighbor against neighbor and can get pretty nasty.
Restrictive covenants are rules for a development that are typically recorded right along with the subdivision plat map. Although a surprising number of folks are truly shocked that they can be forced to follow these rules, as they are part of the recorded record for your property, the law holds that you take the property with knowledge of the restrictions. In the law, this is called “constructive knowledge.”
Most folks do not read over the covenants before buying property. This is not a good thing, as there are some pretty odd-ball restrictions floating around out there. A friend of mine lives in a nice, but older neighborhood outside of Chicago, and under a covenant that prohibits trucks and vans from being parked in front of his house over night. Obviously, this restriction was put into place long before just about everyone started driving SUV’s, minivans and pickups, but it is there, and some of his neighbors are keen on enforcing it, so he is stuck with it.
Today the Indy Star picks up a story about a couple in Mooresville who are getting sued by their housing association because they refused to follow the prohibition against above ground pools. The couple bought one of those (okay tacky) $80.00 pools with the inflated top ring (I admit it, I got one of these last year and became an instant hero to my kids. It was worth every penny). The couple is upset because they were only trying to give their kids something to do, but the housing association is not budging.
Juanita Rael said she is still surprised that disputes over things such as children’s play equipment in covenants can end up being decided in a courtroom.“I feel like they’re saying kids aren’t welcome here,” she said. “We didn’t know this could happen.”
These cases always bring up the debate about whether the enforcement of restrictive covenants is a good thing or not. Many of the arguments focus on the pettiness of the restrictions (like not being able to park an RV on the property) while other critiques focus on public policy concerns (like prohibitions against hanging out your laundry to save energy). But the courts generally favor the covenants to the extent they simply limit the use to which property can be put.
At their heart, the covenants are private agreements: The property owner made a choice to be bound by the restrictions when they purchased the property. If you do not like the rules, do not buy property in the subdivision.
The Star article also talks about the housing associations fees which can range from next to nothing, to several hundreds of dollars per year. Again, if you do not like to fees, don’t buy the property.
My biggest concern in these covenants is the ability of the existing property owners to modify the rules by majority vote. This could mean that a property owner in the minority vote would be subject to rules not in place when they originally purchased their property. That seems to be to be a bit too much, almost like the government.
February 20th, 2006 09:38
I know of at least one local subdivision that has restrictive covenants, but no one has enforced them as people have moved in and put up basketball goals, routinely parked vans, trucks, SUV’s on the street, etc. Even the mail boxes had to be provided by the subdivision and had to be painted light gray. After the cheapo mailboxes were vandalized, however, several residents of the subdivision replaced them with boxes of their own choosing–usually sturdy plastic or the fancy metal ones. As far as I know, no one has been to court about the violations of the covenants.
I don’t have a problem with voting on restrictive covenants, as long as it would be a vote to remove them altogether or make them less restrictive. As you said, it does seem unfair to allow a simple majority vote to enforce more covenants or to make the existing ones more restrictive.
April 9th, 2006 10:16
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