Residential Design Guidelines

Our HOA is having a difficult enforcing some approval/declines on external alteration requests due to our CC&R's noting a 'residential design guide' that was never included with our governing documents. How do we go about obtaining, creating or going around this?

Our HOA is in King County, Washington.

Thanks Everyone!

Crystal,

My residential design guide do you mean the architectural guidelines used to establish a basis on what exterior designs will or won't be approved?

If you do, these typically would not be filed with the county but be an internal document for the Association.


You didn't specify if you were serving on the Board or Approving Committee.

If your a member wanting to make a change, you should simply request a copy from the Board. If none exist, you can volunteer to serve on a committee to make a draft.

When we wrote our architectural guideline we did the following:

1. Formed a committee of homeonwers (not board members) to write an initial draft.
They looked at what other associations had and used it as a template for ours.

2. Homeowners draft was reviewed and modified by the Approving Committee (in our case the Architectural Committee) and submitted the draft to the Board.

The committee reviewed the homeowner draft for conflicts with the governing documents, existing laws and any past precedence that was set by previous committees in their approvals then they added/subtracted as they saw the need.

Note: both documents were brought into one by showing the homeowners draft and below that the Architectural draft. Then below that were the reasons behind the recommended changes. See attached example.

3. The Board reviewed and modified and held a special membership meeting for discussion and comment.

The Board reviewed the Architectural Draft, did another review for conflicts to applicable laws and the governing documents and any potential legal issues. The Board then used the Architectural draft and made a proposed guideline resolution. This proposed resolution was then sent to every owner and a meeting of the membership was held for
review and comment.

4. The Board made a final proposal which consisted of reviewing the membership remarks and making modifications as needed. then they voted on it.

5. A Resolution titled Architectural Guidelines was adopted by the board and published to the membership

If your on the Approving Committee I would recommend considering each request on the following process:

1) Does it violate any of the Coventants, Conditions or Restrictions
2) Is the change in conflict with the guidelines
3) Is the change keeping in style of the community (example: Colonial)
4) Does precedent exist - has the association approved/disapproved similar changes in the past

If answers to 1-3 is No the answer to #4 can be used as a guide. If there is no precedent, the committee should consider this request as a precedent (i.e.- if you approve one you should approve all).

Here's a little bit of our background:

-We are an HOA of 49 homes

-The first HOA board was elected when 75% of the homes were sold (this happened in 2011). We now have all of our homes sold.

-The builder foreclosed on the addition back in 2009 so we have some homeowners who received their CC&R's and others that did not (I was one of them that did not)

-We use a third party administrator for monthly inspections, neighbor conflicts, newsletter/warning/fine notification mailings, collection of dues, etc

-We have 4 board members and no additional councils, boards or execs.

-We are looking for direction on a residential design guideline as we want to have a consistent guide that will not be misinterpreted and held as a standard for the entire community when it comes to any and all exterior alteration.