Do architectural mods survive to the new owner?

PA,

Yes, any modifications to the property pass on to new owners in perpetuity. Being a Dish for TV does not matter.

Put it in other terms. You request and are granted a variance to take out some windows and replace them with larger windows. Doing this puts larger holes in the outer walls. When that owner moves away are you going to require them to bring the property back to original condition?

Basically, the approval of the Variance is a permanent thing and attached to the property (a de facto deed restriction) and not to the owner. There is no grandfathering out when the original applicant leaves the HOA. That is my understanding according to our HOA Attorney (here in Calif).

Thanks for posting that your governing docs state:

"All questions of interpretation or construction of any of the terms or conditions herein shall be resolved by the Board, and its decision shall be final, binding and conclusive on all of the parties affected."

Taken at face value, regarding the final and binding aspect, then the modifications stand and stay with the property because, as your document states, the Board has spoken and decided the issue by granting the original variances. You can't go back on that agreement now without violating your rules.

In regards to the other non-approved Dish's. How long have they been there? Have you (meaning your board and/or ACC) given notice to these non approved Dish's at the time of installation? If no, and they have been there for more than a few years, then you may not have any recourse because the "Doctrine of Laches" may apply.

To your last sentence, if an owner has an approved Dish, I am afraid you cannot "compel" them to do anything regarding the Dish. Maybe if you are getting a group rate for the group service and that is a better deal than what the individual owner can get you may be able to convince them to drop their individual contract and join the group contract.

As a secondary issue, you may want to check with you HOA Attorney on the denial of Satellite requests after you contracted with the one provider. I am not sure, you can compel owners to use one service. Since Satellite now includes TV, pay-per-view, phone and internet services, this may be questionable under the law. I am not a lawyer and am suggesting you seek the guidance of your HOA Attorney. I live in Calif and have lived in 3 HOA's in the state and have dealt with this very issue once upon a time.

Do you take the service out for bid at contract renewal time with the Satellite company?

Hope this helps..

PA,

Not only do the previous approvals continue, I'm not sure you can deny new requests. This would be because the Association has established past precedence and, if the owner wants a different service than the one available from the dish the condo installed, it could be seen as a violation of FCC regulations.

Your statement, "the resident is not losing a federally protected access to cable TV or dish-related communication" is not exactly correct. The FCC OTARD rules permit a person to install a covered device (eg., a 1-meter diameter or smaller dish) that is necessary to receive the programming that person desires. If an individual can't receive the desired programming with the "community" dish, then the person can install his/her own. There's actually a case on file where a person had his own "dish farm" with several dishes mounted on several towers on his property. The association wanted him to take down all of them but one. The individual claimed that all of them were necessary to receive the programming he wanted. The individual filed a complaint with the FCC and the FCC ruled against the HOA.

Of course, this assumes that the individual has an exclusive use area where the dish can be installed. The OTARD rules do not apply to common elements and the HOA can require approval in that case.

Thanks for all the replies everyone!

FredO - The interpretation clause I posted was to highlight that we could grandfather someone out because it's part of the "terms or conditions" of the initial approval we issued (I don't know if the approval letters made that clear or not). At the time we granted the approval we knew all buildings were internally wired. We just didn't have the funds to get an installer to put the dishes up. We never wanted to end up with a dish farm like we have now.

With respect to the doctrine of latches - it's a good point, however we have no way of verifying when the homeowner installed the dish. They could say it's been there for 5 years even if it was there for 6 months. I have to believe that HOA's have some recourse here. We can't climb on the roof of every building and count dishes once a month.

At the time our property was built, I'm about 90% certain the FCC guidelines stated that an owner was required to **A** satellite dish signal, not necessarily *THE* satellite signal of their choice. i.e. if we put up DirecTV satellites everywhere and a person wanted Dish, they were out of luck. From reading the current FCC guidelines, that appears to have changed.

So in order to keep the property looking nice, we would have to have our installer put up the latest and greatest dishes so anyone could get ANY possible channel AND get them in strong signal quality... before we'd have *any* grounds to ask people to remove their own dishes... is that right?

It could be argue that the FCC's OTARD rules protect the ownership of a dish for single individual. In this case the HOA would be one such individual with their farm and the dish-owning resident would be a separate individual, therefor possessing separate protections.

In my opinion , the fact that the HOA's farm can receive a signal is meaningless. The resident is guaranteed their own dish and signal (the FCC guarantees the tenant's right to install, maintain, and use their own dish).