HOA parking management apps such as Parking Boss.

I think you are attempting to be too controlling.
How is it a safety reason to say which vehicle can be parked outside of a garage and which can't?

I completely disagree with anonymous complaints.
If the complainant isn't willing to be identified, then it isn't that much of an issue.

Do you have any of the attached polices?
If not, you should be working on those now vs. later.

Have you done a reserve study?
If yes, have you fully funded the reserves based on that study?

What language is within your governing documents to require the Association to check vehicles for leaks?

Additionally, please read this forums posting rules (identified at the top of each page by the big smiley face that says "our posting rules")

Good luck. You have a lot to learn.

Sorry Let me clarify better what is going on in my neighborhood,

Our neighborhood is developer controlled with developer majority board, but thats about to end soon, when homeowners are finally able to take over and elect their own board. But we need to be ready for that day to come.

Our rules given by our developer is clarified to essentially require garages to be used for its intended purpose, no storage or other purpose as to prevent the owner from parking the designed number vehicles the garage is designed for. Restricted vehicles such as trailers, campers, carts, cannot be on the property except in garage but shall not inhabit the owner from parking their authorized vehicles inside. Parking outside the garage is permitted only if the above rule is complied with i.e two authorized cars already inside the garage. Guests and contractors are theoretically exempt but its not well codified.

We are looking several ways to clean up what the developer left us to fit homeowners needs. But we want better method of enforcement. The developer had the tendancy be selective on enforcing and they are pretty tight lipped and operate in a vail of secrecy in why and how they do things. They may either be totally lenient or go so far as threatening to tow. Depending on their arbitrary views on individual households. They may only decide to target houses with what they think is too many cars on driveways or cars that look unsightly. Though they never adopt/change rules properly according to the civil code nor their own CCRs. They seem to do whatever they want making up rules as they go either written or unwritten and never give us the required Notices per CCRs and CA civil code. The homeowners are planning to do a clean up of the parking rules as part of the handover and the election to a homeowner controlled board. Though the community is very divided in the proposals.

Sorry when I wrote safety I meant security as many strange vehicles in the neighborhood search for houses to break into but they blend in with the many contractors, construction, landscape workers vehicles. Not to mention residents and others who often park in driveways of vacant houses to skirt the rules. Thats the reason a vehicle identify system is proposed to let the association keep track of which address the vehicle is related to whether its resident, visitor, or contractor. Also to resolve any neighborly parking disputes quickly and diplomatically, most should resolve with words without resorting to fines.

From what I read it appears not many on HOAtalk.com has experience with such apps yet. I hope they will be soon.

referring to the student

I agree.

Why not issue parking decals for the windshield to owners, residents. Perhaps a plastic one that can be stashed when they drove off property.

Glad to finally hear someone who are familiar with the product and think that its good. Though it would be nice to know the advantage and possible drawbacks uof using the system. Everyone in my community is learning at this point it may be the first time they move into a new development with an association, and dealing with many teething problems with the management. Even for those who served on boards in the past. We have some but they lived out of state then and in an older community.

The developer keeps a vail of secrecy on how they manage the HOA and explain much to answer our questions. And since houses are already sold and moved into they have a not their problem anymore mentality. Of course when they sold them they pretty much told buyers nothing throughout the buying process of any HOA related rules just hid them in the small prints. Which even those were incompletely distributed and some were missing.

Though my theory and other resident's theory for the rules are to keep homeowners from converting garages to other uses, and thus to prevent unsightly parking situations, i.e cars parked clustered many deep on a driveway which can happen when their kids get to the stage of buying cars that may not be new(remember the oil leakage problem), or if owners rent out their homes. Subletting is officially prohibited but may be hard to control in practice some violations have already occurred. Also those with garages filled with messy storage or half parked in and half storage often have the tendency leave their door open for hours during the day time to let the light in, obviously its hard to see where things are in that condition. Requiring them to keep doors closed can be hard to enforce.

Our neighborhood actually have wide streets and no red curbs or fire lanes, so parking congestion is not an issue, though curbsides, are for theorically meant for guest parking only which I agree with but many residents with multiple cars decides to park there temporarily on a daily bases so they don't have to keep shuffling tandom parked cars, they often park in front of neighbors curbline taking up their guest parking and may leave behind oil stains there. The developer's management than decided, without providing proper notice to owners, hire an independent contractor to patrol and leave warnings but they only have time to come out at night. But this makes things difficult for legitimate guests as the patrol contractors won't know who is legit visitor and who is not, which the management decided to adopt an unwritten "permit" policy for guests. But it can be difficult as the builder's management would need find time during business hours to process them.

Some also believe these rules were made to help keep the community looking good for potential home buyers. While it made sense when the community is still half empty. The buildout is almost complete now.

I see on reviews that once their community adopted this, they didn't need to deal with independent patrol companies any more as they are costly, barely help with any real security issues, in fact some were even known to cause them, and it may be hard to communicate properly with. After the app a board member or a manager could just go around the neighborhood and keep track of all the vehicles parked in plain site, making it much easier to enforce rules in a diplomatic yet effective way as well as weed out potential troublemakers.

Residents are now brainstorming on how to overhaul the parking rules nowadays. Whether to relax them, make them more practical, stiffen them, or leave them the same. Of course they seem to be powerless until the builder transfers power. The electronic way works better as it would be easier for management to scan cars and will not get lost and need to be replaced.

Mine too Carl.

This is one of the reasons I don't live in a gated community.

J'accuse ! J'accuse !

My skin just crawled away and hid somewhere.

Just to let everyone know the homeowners in our community are looking for options to overhaul the rules. One big issue is the very bad communications between the developer's association and the owners. In fact the association hid the main governing documents from the buyers during escrow. So it wasn't available to review. But they got away with deceiving buyers by putting in document in the binder a stash of papers that resembles the CC&Rs though the big catch is inside there are only amendments to the CC&Rs. Also the full copy of the CC&RS were missing from the CD and USB which was supposed to contain them as well as all the other necessary documents. I don't think they will make such a big mistake when there are so many chances to include them. This has caused a lot of conflict worst of all even if the developer leaves owners would have an uphill battle to change what they were not disclosed of when introduced to the community.

While you are right about selective enforcement, I can prove that they are only enforcing the rules they twicked on those with too many cars on driveways, the vehicle looks too commercialized, or households that request too many guest exemptions(which was never even official that we needed an guest exemption), again very subjective. They don't care about many other families who had garages blocked by storage for more than a year and parking on driveways in violation of the rules as long as the vehicles look "nice" and not too many are parked on driveways and non are parked on the curb in the morning hours. In fact they seem to say this is their practice when we meet with the management. Though if they actually enforced the rules uniformly and by the book than all households with cars on the driveway the issue should had corrected the issue within months after move in except the rare few that are willing to continue getting warnings and paying fines.

Regarding the guest exemption issue, before they took it away completely a few months ago making it difficult for holidays gatherings for all of us, for a few months last year they wanted people to take pictures of the garage and do a bunch of paperwork to see they are using garages properly. Their excuse is that too many people are using guest exemptions for their own vehicles. Though their lawyer advised that they could not set a limit as they made that rule up in the first place and it has no legal standing. They should have just in the beginning stated that this is a park in the garage community and be consistent on the new owners after move in which would have prevented this issue all together. Apparently they don't want to upset their new owners happiness of buying their new house.
If they actually enforced the real rules as I explained above shouldn't they ask all residents who have cars on the driveway to do that procedure to prove they are using their garages properly? And not just based on some phantom guest exemption request?

Though after all this is spoken it appears they act as big developers who don't give a care about following the Civil code and the CC&Rs. They also adopted a phantom "towing" policy without given any written notice to owners as required by civil code and CC&Rs. Our official rules that we received clearly mentions administrative procedures and escalating fines for parking and other violations but not towing. Their developer board members seems to be puppets by their management company who runs the show. They make up their own rules, and changing rules without ever giving homeowners notice before and after the change, as required by state law. The management claimed they used their online portal which they in reality never did, even if they did it does not meet the CC&R's requirements for notices. Which be delivered to each address either in person or by US Mail. Though the real concern is once homeowners take control we don't want this to become a liability. If so we want the developer to take responsibility.

However in addition to developer issues. We also have a fair number of owners who are stubbornly tenacious who think any attempts to change anything would cause their property values to go down. Of course as a rule these would always shout the loudest. They flame anyone by repeatedly who proposes change saying they are advocating for a free for all which is clearly not the case. In fact we are just changing the documents to officially allow leeway for issues like short term visitors, construction, landscape work, move ins which everyone could experience. I personally think this is a non issue as there are many similar neighborhoods that don't have such restrictions or no HOA but their property values remains robust. This is the reason we want some way to persuade that we can make fair rules tailored to suit the needs of the owners in the community and enforce them in a diplomatic yet effective way and avoid selectiveness which even if it doesn't lead to litigation would cause bad homeowner and association relationships. Thats why we want to look into an app for effective and consistent enforcement so we can eliminate that useless contractor and save the money for real security improvements.

To better explain the anymouous complaint is to solve a usually infrequent but not so uncommon issue that causes headaches in communities, as if someone notices a strange vehicle in the community particularly if they parked in front of their curb they could scan it and send it to the system where only authorized board members and management can see and take appropriate action. If the vehicle is registered as a resident or under a resident's addressee as a visitor, contractor, etc a note would be given to correct the issue or a citation could result. If the vehicle don't belong here at all we could take action for the trespassing, warnings posted on the vehicle, escalating to police, and removal under the strict guidelines of VC22658 as a last resort and all board members agree.
Though we would also want to know about rewriting the document drafted by the developer. But that is for another post.

In California, its the seller's responsibility to disclose the CC&Rs and all the other necessarily documents at escrow. i.e Bylaws, agreements, design guidelines, rules and regulations, etc and in the event of a new construction builder they would also need to disclose other documents that are relevent in buying a new construction.

Having said that I recommend one should really steer clear of HOAs particularly in states that have little to no oversight of them. Even if your state has good laws on owner's rights it would only help if owners are willing to hold the responsible party accountable for their actions and work in unison.

If there are rules left by the developer that are controversial or causing issues with owners it should either be revised or repealed when the developer is leaving but one should not ignore it as it may come to bite owners sometime in the future.

Thanks Richard, this is good news it appears it’s business and profession code 11018.6 for the developer to hand this to the perspective buyer at Escrow.

Good thing some states at least do something to protect owners rights. Which is a good thing as in California one can imagine having to deal with the bureaucracy, traffic, lines if especially they are buying in someplace like Los Angeles County.

Though back to the topic it appears no matter what happens in overhauling parking rules. An app like this makes it easy to keep track of residents contractors’ and visitors’ vehicles, improves neighborhood security so we , and helps when disputes arise as well as enforce rules without resorting to removal of vehicle or tying up the association’s management.

It does not mean never removing a vehicle. Nor never having the owner remove the vehicle.
This means that we can take enforcement action on most cases electronically whether its letting the owner know to correct the situation by parking properly. And may escalate to giving fines if they repeatedly offend. This way can avoid tying up the management with administrative actions for parking violations if it is handled the same way as any other violations of the rules issue which involves paperwork.

While the app can help identify a problem, fining anyone in an HOA still requires due process.

Well said.

Right on, the keyword is “due process,” Which I strongly stand for.

That’s our goal, attempting to remove vehicles without ever giving owners due process on the what the violation is clearly a violation of due process. Removal should only be done as a last resort, that is unless the vehicle is constituting an immediate hazard such as parked in a narrow fire lane obstructing traffic. In all other situations warnings and fines should suffice. Which our association does have a standard procedure outlined for violation of the rules which involves two warnings before implementing escalating fines based on number of offenses. Parking is specifically outlined in there.

Sorry I didn’t actually mean not wanting to burden the management company. I know it’s the HOA’s responsibility.

The app is only there to help the board enforce parking rules so we don’t have a free for all which will irate some owners, but due process will need to be followed before penalties are levied.

Just to let everyone know manyin our new community are new to the system, they are either first time owners in an HOA, and even if they lived in HOAs in the past this is the first time most of them ever dealt with a developer control situation that will be transferred to homeowner control. People have lots to learn and are at the same time contending with a sorts of new community teething issues.

Is this a gated community?