eliminate rental properties

I would also mention to you that you need to assure that your plan does not "backfire" on your intent. I lived in condo which had same (or same family) owners of multiple units. When it came downt to voting in the board, the "investors" always seemed to have more votes than the owners (combination of either owner occupied units, and other "owners" - where the unit was owned by a single person for additional income, or an estate on behalf of...).

Make inquiries into what is an appropriate percentage of rental units - for your area. If you are dead set on totally removing the "rentals" (I am not sure that this would be legal or even enforceable), but seems that you would need a major overhaul of your governing documents. I have read it here, that for such a "dramatic" (i.e. changing the status of entire community, with standards which were not originally imposed), would (should) require 100% owner acceptance.

MikeF2 - Anytime I hear an Owner's Assoc. Board member state the attorney is in support of this or that, my gut reaction is who cares what the attorney says. 100% honest. you pay someone, especially an attorney to tell you yes, they'll tell you yes. But it won't guarantee a backlash or serious repercussion.

What you are seeking is experienced spin so as to make something regarding rental restrictions (not previously contemplated) desireable/palatable. Tisk tisk.

Prior to reinventing the wheel, what is your Association's policy regarding the non-compliance of the CC&R's, and enforcement thereof? Second, force owners to sell in a down market rather than rent may be the outcome if restriction occurs.

Melissa, forgive me if I off-base here, but the question was regarding rental caps or elimination of rental properties. I do believe that rental caps or elimination (with the proper changes and approval criteria) are allowed. Towards the end of your post I think that you are referring to an HOA's ability to "control" a renter's behavior - which I fully support your statements - it is the the owner's responsibility, not the HOA's. However I believe that the poster wanted to either establish caps or outright elimination of the renters from community.

To the original poster, another method towards either end mentioned above (eliminating renters, or establishing caps) is to have your HOA board draft resolutions which make certain requirements of the owner's who rent, and those at are tenants. This can be called a "lease addendum" or "lease agreement" - it is still between the HOA and the owner, but it includes specific language, terms and conditions, that both the owner and the tenant must agree to follow.

Can you make the HOA fees higher for rentals? House insurance goes up if you rent so why shouldn't an HOA fee? If rental property adds risk to homeowners, reduces property values and has the capacity to diminish the quality of life for the residents, then why can't it cost a landlord more money to conduct business within a subdivision?
Even if rental property is maintained, it hardly is ever improved upon, so it never really adds any value to the existing homes in the area. For example, what tenant plants a tree? The goals and assets of homeowners and renters in a community are not the same.
We have a real problem with rentals within our subdivision of 1200 homes. As our community was built, many landlords bought houses and nothing was done by the developer to stop the practice. Some landlords own as many as ten or more houses! Now we are told that there may be as many as 30% of the homes rented out and that we'll have to grandfather them all in! Everyone in town knows that we have section 8 and HUD housing as well as gangs, so now we've been labelled as a bad place to buy a home. Even our elementary school is a place no decent parent wants to send their kid. Crime has sky rocketed. And now the county has had to step in and stop development from running rampant in order to save the sanctity of this town. Can you believe this garbage?
How do we dismantle this disaster, step by step?

... a "rebel" bucks the system from the outside... a "reform" effects change from the inside.

In every state, there are different laws/statutes regarding what an HOA can or cannot do.

In every HOA, there are different sets of "law/rules/regulations" (found in governing documents) regarding what a board/community can and cannot do.

In both of the above - ENFORCEMENT, or the one component which involve humans, is often the part that is lacking.

I agree with certain points made above, and disagree with the direction of others (but understand the "frustration" which created them).

I do not mean anything "harsh" by this but if 30% of the poster's community, is effectively "ruling" the 70%, there is an underlying problemt that is much greater than rental caps, renters, drugs, crime, etc. For whatever reasons the 70% of owners/residents, are allowing the minority to change the composition and personality of their community - not to mention to thave adverse impacts on their investments. This is a societal issue in general, and a "personal" one with HOA's in general. It is called "community apathy" and it really is an issue for most HOA's. Some of the obvious "symptoms" reside with a general social idea that "me" trumps "community."

Now enter the world of HOA's - communities which are a little different than our standard "Civil" class structures. We each have a vested interest in "community" which we have applied our hard-earned money. We elect representation to manage our communities - which is often folks who like abuse (smile). When a community gets into "disrepair" we like to "blame" them for the condition, never looking inward into what role(s) we played in the situation.

There are, will continue to be, many "solutions" to the above and similar themed questions/issues in HOA's, and the common "cure" is just like the one for losing weight - get off your butt and get involved (workout). That means knocking on doors and getting more of the 70% involved, in the culture of your community. When residents see you put forth the effort, and that you get them involved, things changes. They, residents take notice, the police take notice, your local/state officials take notice - and most importantly, those who are "de-valuing" the community's investments - take notice. It is not going to happen tomorrow, or the week after, it will take time, just as the issues created/confronted, didn't happen overnight, or last week, and they took time for the residents/owners to "notice."

Think of it like this... you signed up for a thirty year "lease" (mortgage) so your "community service" sentence is for that period of time. Do you want to sit in your "cell" (home) and watch the world catch up, pass and outpace you, in a direction by which you have no voice, or direction? Or do you want to get involve and max out your "time spent," to better yourself, and the culture that you "agreed" to live? And that will impact upon your "lifestyle" culture until you are either freed, or paroled (which in most cases means six little numbers on a colorful weekly card, which leads you to a large check, that the government takes 28%, and is called "ball" of some sorts - Lotto, Power, etc).

I believe there is a great deal can be done to prevent a subdivsion from becoming over rented but unless things were in place in the CCR's to begin with then you have to figure out how to change the current situation.
Just like you can demand an age limit (55 and over) you should be able to demand that a subdivision consist of homeowners.
Years ago subdivisions didn't exist. You either had good neighborhoods or bad ones. Now, subdivisions, what I call mini-neighborhoods can become bad ones because of greedy business people.
This is a new situation which is becoming more and more prevalent. Builders rarely build a few houses on one street here in Atlanta. It all consists of one subdivision after another.
It is up to our lawmakers to come up with a way to deal with the fair housing act and the quality of life that we all want for our families.
If one house on one block is a problem, that's not a big deal. But when an entire subdivision of 1200 homes fail, that affects and entire town. Big difference. The stakes are higher these days. And the law has not kept up with the way communities are being structured today.
We need to stop talking about what we can and cannot be done, but how it SHOULD be done. That's why I'm getting my local and state politicians involved.
For example, in Atlanta, the mayor wanted to clean up the city. So they issued vouchers so all these people in low income housing can move elsewhere and have a better life and not congregate in one area of the city. That's nice. They moved into our county and then many congregated in our subdivision. Is this the Fair Housing Act at work? I suggest the mayor of Atlanta come live here next to the house that was vandalized by the citizens whose lives she's trying improve.

You know you can drive from the East Coast to West Coast staying on one road....? But it is those intersecting roads, overpasses, detours, and exits that are tricky.

While I do sympathize with bad situations in HOA's, they did not start (nor OBVIOUSLY) will they end with an HOA. Societal issues, gentrification, move from agricultural, to manufacture, to now information age in growth in a capitalism system, means changes. You are not going to solve much by point finger mid-way, at a cause of a previous affect.

If I a presumptous and overstating here, please accept my sincere apologies. However, the comments and advise from this forum is SUPPOSED to tell you what you can and cannot do based on the poster's question. Often the thread/advice to check your governing documents is the first suggestion that folks here offer. More often than not, your immediate answers can be found there, by what is either there, or not there.

Comparing "section 8" housing, vouchers, etc to "AA's" (Active Adult) communities, to general HOA's, is not like comparing apples to green peppers then to a tomato, all have seeds inside, but are no way similar. The "movement" of human capital, has existed since the dawn of time. Folks first went to where the food was, now they go to where work is, better schools, where they can afford to live, etc.

If the community's CC&R's are effectively managed and ENFORCED, it is my belief that any owner "investor" who rents to Paris Hilton, or a section 8 voucher holder - will control their resident, WHEN the fines, or other actions - impact on their profit margins.

Let's get back to discussing HOA's issues and leave the societal stuff to those guys in "red and blue" ties, stumping from now until sometime next year....

Hello MikeF2: I also am in Ohio and have been there and done that. The number of rentals (percent to total)in the complex directly effects the value of the property. HUD,VA and other lenders may charge a higher rate or not even lend in the complex if there are a large percentage of rentals. This is a fact. Protecting property values is the reason you want to change to no renting. Sell it that way to all the owners. Stopping rentals depends on a lot of things but it can be done, we did it. Frist your Documents: Bylaws can be changed by the majority vote by the owners, get your owners that are against rentals lined up, do you have a majority? If so, have your attorney draw up an amendment, get the amendment passed by whatever majority that is needed, then record the amendment with the recorders office and you are in. Owners will play games with you if you do not put in a clause stating that if a unit is sold on a land contract IT MUST BE RECORDED! The owner is going to tell you that the unit is not rented it is sold on a land contract with option to buy when it really is still just rented. MAKE SURE THE VOTING IS DONE IN THE PROPER MANOR! We even had the attorney at the meeting. Make sure you follow the bylaws on voting. That will be the first thing the judge will look at when you are challenged and you will be. The judge will zero in on your meetings. He will ask you questions like,why do you want this change, was this amendment the BBOARD's idea, Has there been any complaints on the renters. You should be prepaired to answer with back up to show the court. Make sure you state that it is not the HOA plan to disrupt the current renter but when the lease is up that is it, no more renting. By the time we got done it cost us $3000 but it was worth it. We have no reantal unit in the complex!

Tom, excellent story!!! Bravo! to you and your fellow residents for diligently working to change the official document to ensure future property values for your community.

It is true that we, sad to say, want someone else to tell us:
what our documents say, what the state documents say, what the attorney says, anybody else to tell us rather than getting off our duffs to personally investigate and arrive at a solution.

The problem can be rental units, or something else, but it behooves us, personally, to investigate, read, explore, network and be continually pro-active in dealing with HOA issues. No one can take care of our investment better than us.

I am amazed that any state allows you to affect the property rights of owners as much as declaring "no rentals" with only 50% of the vote.

Vacation property rentals aside (a different animal altogether), I would encourage people to look at whether they are just singling out renters as the problems when it is more an enforcement and changing values issue. Some of our best owners have been landlords in my association. If their renters go astray we contact the landlord directly. Of course there are exceptions, but there are also lousy owners. It is a real mistake to be dealing with the renters on either assessment or other convenant violations, in my opinion. It is the owner's responsibility, and I would imagine your documents would say that.

Here we have trouble with extended families pooling their money and buying a home, packing it with people. They play some sort of ownership game. One home changed ownership (vis a vis mortgage companies, titles, etc.)4 times and the people never moved out. Same group lived there through it all, and the owner was onsite -- just changed which one.

Although the answer isn't immediate, I do agree that part of the solution to problems that HOAs face is political action.

We have never enforced the provision that we must have a copy of the lease either. It would be very difficult to track. I know we used to try to welcome renters but probably only got a small percentage of them -- I even sent out a letter to the owners telling them we wanted to do that and suggesting they put the form I sent them in their folder so next time they rented they would remember to inform us. I got lots of responses about the current tenants, but no more.

What has happened, though (back to the leasing agreement) is that if we started having trouble with a particular rental property the attorney said he would write the owner asking for the rental agreement as a first step. It does put the owner on notice that there is a problem and the board is stirring on the subject. (About all we do is stir, and sometimes not even that!) I have never thought the agreement would show us much, as someone would have to be very stupid to put the names of all the tenants on it if it was illegal to have that many in the house. I think usually there is a front person. The attorney did say, due to the nature of this area, that we should probably limit the length of the leases -- i.e. no short term leases. Then looking at the lease agreement would show you whether they were following that prohibition. Anyhow, I think having the attorney write asking for the lease probably would shake up a few owners if there are problems with that unit.

Jadedone4,
Absolutely, it is the place to start.
What infuriates me is the turnover of owners and Board members that believe they can ignore the problems because they don't want to believe they exist. They refuse to devote the time and energy necessary to understand. If the board has this attitude toward enforcement then the manager is likely to reflect this attitude. It's been said over and over the manager works for the Board and in the next breath proclaim that the manager does not serve as a policeman, You lead by example, especially if the Board is absentee. When they are on site and they make no effort to enforce this sends a message. Then they leave and have a teleconference Board Meeting and proclaim the first step to Rule Enforcement is, "To let it go." No lie, absolute truth. The next step is to call Island Security. How does one cope with this or a similar version year after year. We have 65 units, more than forty rentals now, and over my tenure of 17 years, the board has levied a total of 0000 fines, that's 0000. In a 1000 years if they ever dig up any of our records the researchers will believe this place must have been the only spot on the world that never had any law or rule breakers. We are just this year getting around to talking about a fine structure.
And I bitch too much....sorry!

Jadedone,
I think your last paragraph is at the root of our problem. Our complex has no "will". They have no reason to, someone will do it, even if costs them money. They also see their property values soar and when they reach "a deal they can't refuse", they will sell out. We have "flippers", no doc mortgages, interest only mortgages, but damn few are "Homeowners". A precarious situation and after my long tenure I will be unable to live here and will leave my home. That is life and I'll do what becomes necessary, as we all do, some with noise and some without. I just want to be able to decide for my self.

BW, you are grandfathering the current owner but no future owner. That owner has the right to vote against the amendment to the Declaration. If you are concerned about a law suit check your proposal with a good HOA attorney prior to putting it to a vote. If it passes you can not stop anyone from suing but can be assured of your chances of winning.