not all lots under deed restrictions

You've just described our subdivision. Same situation resulted from the Developer not knowing how to implement a HOA properly. He began selling lots for 2 years before his lawyer registered the CCR's on title for his remaining properties. He could not go back in time to apply them to our and some other properties that had already been sold as he was no longer the registered owner.

Other than the animosity from some HOA members when we refused to become part of the HOA after our lawyer informed them as a courtesy about the 'problem', life goes on. The subdivision has continued to have home resales. There has been no significant enforcement of the CCR's anyway and it doesn't seem to have had a great effect on home prices either way. The HOA member homes we've seen up for sale have never mentioned a HOA or restrictions.

You can't distinguish member homes from non-member homes by looking at them but I guess one could argue that is because of the lack of enforcement of the CCR's.

Getting to your question, there isn't much you can do to protect your home value (if you believe that a HOA achieves that in the first place...something debated at HOATALK before) when there are non-member homes not subject to your CCR's.

I could make two suggestions though,

1. There are still municipal and other rules that may apply to all owners, and these could be used if a non-member was doing something outrageous that is covered by a bylaw.

2. Don't piss off the non-members. In our case, when the asshole (because of his actions) president and some board members targeted us specifically as a result of deciding not to 'join' we were quite prepared to make a statement and paint our garage door bright pink and put plenty of pink flamingos in the front lawn! While some of these people have since sold, we have always planned to be here for 20+ years so we weren't concerned with resale values.

We are only concerned with having a pleasant neigbourly community which they made difficult.

They are not members of the association. When the developer bought lots to develope he could not secure all of the lots in the area. When we formed the HOA the developer could only tranfers his lots to us. We are not a gated or walled community. The private lots and homes are under no restrictions, just us in the HOA.

Mary--I really appreaciate your questions. By private I mean that the lots or homes are owned by private owners not included in our HOA. The developer never secured these properties from the owners, there for never incoporated into our HOA--from the developer to ours. Yes, I own my home and property,but am bound by the deed restrictions. I have neighbors that have built on property or have vacant properties next to me not in the HOA and not under our HOA deed restrictions.

It is my understanding,back in the 1950's, General Developement bought thousands of acres here in FL. They put in roads,street signs with ave. lots ---G.D. flew people down from many states in a big promotion. G.D. went bankrupt in a few years stopping any progress for decades. Many of the folks who had purchased lots kept taxes up, hoping for a brighter future. Others abandoned their property and along with G.D. property went back to county or cities--back taxes. In early 2000 and in the housing boom, a big Developer bought up areas of property from the city/county and from private owners/heirs who had held on to their purchase from the 1950's. Not all private owners of lots purchased in the 50's sold to the big Developer, The Developer, in our subdivision, built villas on the property that it owned, but could not on property it did not own. We have average lots--no acreage. The Deveoper created an Association while in the process of building. Our community took it over as our HOA after all the villas had been built and sold. It leaves a number of lots, spotted through out our subdivision never owned by the developer, thus not under our associations deed restrictions, only under city/county regulations/code for structures that can be built in our area. Us, under deed restrictions can't park boats, work trucks, rv's, hang laundry up and so on, on our property/villa --our neighbors, not in the association--can.

Dennis,

You might want to ask these property owners who are not a part of the HOA if they have deed restrictions on their property. It could be that they have the same deed restrictions (mainly the "use" restrictions, i.e., what you can and cannot do with your property) as you do since all the properties were first sold by General Development. There are many properties that have deed restrictions with no HOA. When that happens, any property owner can enforce them through small claims court. If these properties do have deed restrictions and they are the same as yours then the HOA can enforce them also. It could very well be that they are not permitted to park boats, work trucks, hand laundry, etc., etc.

DJ,

The 50's are not before my time and I can tell you there was a lot of forward thinking going on back then!

DJ,

My forefathers came here in a boat, so I think they've been around for a long, long time! Now I know you don't remember the TV show "I Love Lucy", but you've probably heard of it. Well, there was a movie made in the 50's about Lucy and Desi taking a family vacation in this big RV, so they've been round for awhile too. No, we didn't have computers and cell phones (I still don't have a cell phone!) but we got along with what we did have. Actually sometimes I think we got along much better. Oh, by the way we had a phone, a TV (just one of each!) and ----- indoor plumbing!!