Please help !!! Need sample letter if anyone has one...

Started by KristaB • 5 replies • 2723 views

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KristaB (Georgia)
Posts: 1

Posted:

Hello! My name is Krista Brown and I am Pres. of my HOA. We live in a VERY antiquated 20 year old sub. We currently have 4 (yes four!!!) different sets of covenants. We have paid a lawyer to condense them and come up w. one unified set . BIG challenge before us is to get 2/3 neighborhood approval to pass. No room for error here in presenting them! Anyone been through this? If so, do you have a sample cover letter that accompanied the new covenants???

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Krista Brown
[email protected]

LanceT (Alabama)
Posts: 121

Posted:

Are you sure you have 4 different copies? You may have different versions out there but there should only be 1 on file. You can find the right version at the county courthouse records office. Get that copy and then work from there.
There are other posts on here about this very subject. My experience it took me about 2 years to change/update our CC&R's and By-laws. It was a required 90% for the CC&R's and a 75% for By-laws. Both don't have to be changed at the same time but it's not a good idea NOT to do it. CC&R's override any descrepencies between the CC&R's and by-laws.
Expect to have court filing costs and copy fees. It cost us about $700 in court filing fees. We got a board member with copier access to make copies. You can also make electronic versions. (PDF file for NO modification ability). Make sure the signatures are NOT renter's. Only the homeowner can sign the paperwork.
A good hint is that if you can't have a special meeting to change the rules (as required in some CC&R's to change) you can have another petition signed giving up the right to one. Essentially, this allows you to go door to door to get your votes. One petition will be for agreeing NOT to meet in a special meeting and the other petition is for the actual change. Ask your lawyer about this. It may help.
Review a few other posts on here and you will find additonal help. Good luck! It was one of the worst things I ever had to do besides remove dog doo-doo from the swimming pool as president!

Recovering Ex-President of a HOA

JoeW1 (New York)
Posts: 728

Posted:

KristaB - are the 4 sets noticeably different or are they developer amendments from the original. if not, can you provide a little history, how 4 sets were developed. Yes you are right the big challenge is to get 2/3 of the neighborhood approval to pass. wonderful to see you understand and appreciate that threshold of community approval. IMO, you stand a good chance of getting approval by developing a by-law/covenants committee and letting the community in on the development from the get go, rather than put the cart before the horse by using an attorney that may delete something important

RogerB (Colorado)
Posts: 5,067

Posted:

Posted By JoeW1 on 02/27/2007 5:27 AM
IMO, you stand a good chance of getting approval by developing a by-law/covenants committee and letting the community in on the development from the get go, rather than put the cart before the horse by using an attorney that may delete something important

Excellent advise Joe. Many Boards hire an attorney first and then fail to get the level of approval by owners which is required to file the amended Declaration. The difficult part is getting sufficient homeowner's approval. For me, writing and filing an amendment, including an amendment which totally replaces all previous documents, is usually easy.

JM2 (Oregon)
Posts: 439

Posted:

Hi Krista:

Be sure to check the dates on the four versions. It could be that the builder amended the covenants as he went and did not inform homeowners of the amendments...then check what's on file with the county (a title company might be able to help you get that done since they do it all the time). If it's the case that the developer amended it along the way, then the copy on file with the county could be valid for everybody - but check it out. If there are amendments tagged onto it, it may be worth having the lawyer do an "Amended & Restated Declaration" that can then be registerd with the county. If all the amendments were done properly then you wouldn't need the community's vote.

If you truly do have 4 different sets of documents (that aren't successive amendments of the original), check to see what properties are bound by them.

Best of luck to you and your community.

J. Patrick Moore, CMCA

DwightT (Idaho)
Posts: 664

Posted:

FWIW: My HOA has 9 "versions" of the CC&Rs - one for each phase of development. The only real difference between the versions is in the legal descriptions of the common areas within that particular phase. We will probably try to get them all combined into one master document at some point. I'm not really sure what the implications are of having these 9 versions when we try to ammend something that doesn't pertain to one of these common areas. Will we have to hold 9 separate votes? What happens if it passes in some phases, and not the others?

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