Are condo declarations in Virginia online behind a paywall?

Specifically, I'm looking for the condo declaration for a condo in James City County, Virginia. The James City County official website appears very opaque and hard to navigate. I've found the property detail pages of the property and I can see the current owner of a particular parcel and the recorded deed book/record number for past sales. But I don't really care who owns it, I was hoping the deed information would lead me to the location of the recorded condo declaration itself.

The closest I've gotten is to this Clerk of the Circuit Court page. The "Secure Remote Records" link on the left of the page takes me to another page where they want $150 a quarter for access to the records and one must submit a notarized application along with the fee to gain access.

That seems like a very expensive paywall to simply search for a recorded condo declaration. Am I looking in the right place? Can anyone from Virginia advise on whether or not there's a better way to get the information?

Thanks, Tim. Dang. I'm not so much interested in the community as I am the condo declaration for its own sake. Quite by accident, last night I found this thread at another website where that particular condo association outside of Williamsburg was described as a "Landominium". It piqued my interest since the way it was described, both in that thread and on the association's website, it sounds very very close to exactly the way my HOA in Florida is set up. I had never seen the term "landominium" before. For the last several years, on and off, I've been on the lookout for a community similar to my own. I know there are none in my county and if there are any others in the entire state then I've never seen or heard of them.

We're working on amending our governing documents to bring them into the 21st century and I would love to find a declaration - even though the one in VA is a condo and we're an HOA - to see how a more modern landominium's CCRs are written. Ours are quite primitive. That VA condo association's website describes what my HOA is like to a T. We've recently encountered a potential "problem" here with the discovery that even though the homeowners are supposed to own only the land directly under their homes, the second builder back in the late 1990s built homes that did not "occupy" the entire lot. Thus, there are several dozen homes where the owner seemingly, going by the platted lots and lot boundaries, own "extra" real estate in the back of the homes. Stips of land measuring about 20' x 40'. Several new owners, armed with their surveys, have recently started to make plans for that extra land and our documents were written with the assumption that ALL the land outside of the residences' foundation slabs was common property. Now it seems that that's not really the case everywhere and the germs of trouble are brewing.

I wanted to see their condo declaration to see what details they have that we're missing. Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll try to send them an email and ask if they'd be so kind as to send me a copy of their documents. I think they'd be most illuminating.

Seconded.

If research "Landominium" term in VA come up with this site: http://www.brandonwoods.org/info.php?pnum=2

They state:

"The development was established and organized as a condominium subject to the Virginia Condominium Act with each resident owning a portion of their lot as well as the home. Thus we are more uniquely known as a set of “landominiums". The community was designed to be a low-maintenance community with condominium ownership but done so in a manner resembling a traditional neighborhood with larger lots and extensive landscaping."

Therefore, in essence this one would be subject per the statement to the Virginia Condominium Act.

However, very unusual in a Condomiinium for each resident to own a portion of any lot as well as the home.

Forgot to mention we also have a couple of tennis courts (that nobody uses). No dog park, though. 100 homes on 25 acres with private roads and a single gated entrance/exit going in and out.

Our HOA is a combination of Duplexes (side by side, single story homes) which was Phase 1. Phase 2 are single homes (as in no duplexes) consisting of both one and two story homes. Each of our homes sit on a plot of land owned by the homeowner. All outside maintenance (landscaping, exterior home shell, roofing, etc.) is done by the association and one cannot make any changes to such without HOA approval. Yes one owns their plot of land but they cannot do as they wish with it. As an example, you cannot even plant a bush in your yard without HOA approval and you would play hell getting such approval as we like to keep the look the same.

One exception is each home has a backyard enclosed by a 6ft high privacy fence. One can do as they wish in their fenced area as long as what they do does not exceed the height of the fence. Want to plan a bush there? Feel free to do so as long as the bush does not exceed the height of the fence.