Georgia HOA Creation Options?

I live in Georgia in a single family home detached neighborhood. It was created in the late 1950's. Any HOA has long since expired. A POA is beyond reach, as I understand it, because we don't have a current HOA. What HOA options are available to my community for the immediate future, like a voluntary HOA, and can that effort be leveraged into a more permanent (mandatory) solution? There are about 150 properties and the neighborhood. It is not gated nor does it have any common areas. All the properties are located on a single street which has ties to the larger community of 7 neighborhood totaling about 500 properties. Some of these neighborhoods have HOA and some do not.

I'm curious too, Neil. Do you want better uniformity in appearance among properties? Or rules to prevent a lot of noise? Or?

TimB4 - I'll have to check deed. I don't know if the property ever had restrictions. The issue I'd like to address with an HOA is that even though the neighborhood doesn't have any common property that it owns there are other common areas in the neighborhood that are owned by a civic association (which comprises property owners of all 8 neighborhoods). As I said previously some of these have HOA's and some do not. They also have their own common areas to maintain. The civic association owned common areas in each neighborhood are for use exclusively by residents of each neighborhood. These areas are in sore need of attention and if a tree falls it's a tug-of-war as to who is responsible.

Thanks for replying CarolR11. Noise or appearance are not an issue. I would like a mechanism to raise funds to maybe install a community-wide video surveillance system. That might be beyond what is possible but mostly I'm concerned with some civic association owned property that abuts the neighborhood. To me more specific, these are properties located between homes that access a private lake. Each property has several boat slips which are well maintained but the land itself looks like the woods. I'd like to have the funds to maintain these properties and make them more secure.

You should go to the courthouse (or office in control of property deeds). The printed deed itself may or may not physically have the restrictions on it. The restrictions themselves may be recorded separately from the deed by linked to each other.

When you get to the courthouse explain that you are trying to determine if there are any deed restrictions on your property. The clerks should be able to assist.



I've seen this before. The Civic Association is effectively the Master Association. Those developments that had other amenities or common areas had sub associations (or are simply their own associations with no link to the civic association).

Being organized as a civic association, the fees are probably voluntary. There are probably deed restrictions for all the developments to, at least, give control of the common areas you speak about to the civic association. You may or may not have architectural guidelines or requirements to seek prior approval from the civic association for exterior changes. Your deed restrictions and the governing documents of the civic association will give you more information.

Even if you formed an HOA, you would likly need to do some legal paperwork to transfer control of those common areas from the civic association to your association.


Well, if the fees to the civic association are voluntary, they only have so much money to work with.

It could also be that if nobody from your section is active in the civic association that that association simply isn't aware of the condition of the common areas in your neighborhood.

My advice:

Check the deed so you know what, if any, restrictions there are on your property.

Since you want to create an Association to take care of the common areas in your section of the development, become involved in the civic association which already has that responsibility. It will likely lead to a quicker remedy to your issue.