"No business shall be conducted from said dwelling unit"

It is the INTENT of what the rule is about. It has never been about having a home office or selling Tupperware. The rule is in regards to opening up a "Dentist" office and having parking/traffic to the home. It's basic referencing "Putting a shingle up" terms. So no need in rushing to change this rule because you have to work from home. The rule has nothing to do with that. Your not generating noise, traffic, and/or have a sign up on your door.

We already have gone down this rabbit hole already. Let's keep it as it is. Working from home is not the same as having your home as your work.

The OPs CCRs state:

"Use, Size and Height of Dwelling Structure. All Building Lots shall be used exclusively for single-family residential purposes. No Building Lot shall be improved except with a single-family dwelling unit or structure. No business or home occupation shall be conducted from said dwelling unit or structure. " (bolded emphasis is mine)

The last sentence really screws things up.

The courts would likely be happy to throw out an amendment that read like the above. But the courts would not so readily throw out an original covenant... unless (wait for the rationalization)... the covenant is vague, ambiguous, conflicts with another section, and so on.

Your HOA needs a darn good rationalization for not enforcing this last sentence. Why? So owners do not go off the deep end and start making up all manner of interpretations of other covenants. What HOATalk is trying to do here is promote people being on the same page,* and this is often meant literally. I think the most frequent refrain from all directors, officers and employees should be, "Owner Zuckerman, please show me where in the governing documents it says what you claim. Please check and quote the state statutes as well."

I say if and when this comes up at a board meeting, the board unanimously squeals out one of those "Weee...llllll's... ". Then the President states, "The Board has thought about this a lot. We directors think the covenant is too vague and ambiguous to be enforceable. What is a 'business'? What is a 'home occupation'? If Evan here is sending his bid on behalf of his business over email from his home computer, do you want us to try to enforce this? Come on. The cost of enforcing this throughout the HOA would kill the HOA. And I just do not like our chances in court if we did try to enforce this, because of, wait for it, pandemic rules. But tell you what. Look at the nuisance clause in the covenants. It says, 'No nuisances allowed at the Bayside HOA.' If anything, business or otherwise, becomes a nuisance, you all just send a complaint to the manager. I promise this Board will investigate it and issue a violation where needed. [pause] Oh and by the way is what our attorney told the Board to say."

* Yes I just made this up.

OK, so I think I'd like to better define "home office"...I'm not talking about the regular W2 person that's been transitioned to zoom work-remote. I'm talking about a photographer or a seamstress or a CPA that has their entire business pegged to their residential address, aka an actual office in their home.

@Melissa, yea, its all about INTENT, but court cases are make-or-break on the wording exactly of CCR's. I strongly feel its poor advice to interpret this as anything other than what it says. "No business or home occupation shall be conducted..."

I think Augustin's comment is the same as my sentiment....the CCR's are to be read exactly as they are.

Anyway, I'm just highlighting this issue as another example of potential CCR language that either needs to be enforced as it is written, or purged or more clearly defined.

to me, I can't start a wedding photography business and sit at my computer editing photographs in my house.... this is a crappy CCR that needs amending...

AdamL1 : Respectfully, BEFORE considering "textual wordings" maybe a more effective re-starting point may be successfully getting as close to unanimous consensus as possible from your owners / stakeholders.

It's about how much visible, potentially enforcible business indicators your stakeholders genuinely can be shown to now want entrenched. And paid for to ( try to ) enforce.

Doing that may be impossible or may take a long time. But without a renewed consensus what's the point ?

It's respectfully usually futile to set up unenforcible prohibitions.

That's particularly where a jurisdiction may also legislatively purport to impose duties to use reasonable efforts to obtain compliance with restrictions etc ( as with my jurisdiction's statutory condo legislation ). And/or prohibits interference with election signage etc and/or site-specifically withholds private ownership of building exteriors, balconies etc

Less obvious in communities like mine, may be what's flying on private flagpoles like "United Farmers of XXX". Or semi-cult identifiers with commercial roots like "John Deere" or "Kubota". Or "I love my ZZZ Truck". Or commercial decals on what's parked. Or For Sale signs on one-off private vehicle selling.

It's possible that your municipality's Building Standards criteria are also worth considering for text definitions or indicators of what might be feasible to try to enforce albeit with difference in authority.

( Prohibited by my own cross-covenants on our 3 to 5 acre private lots - unchallenged at all and with exceptions - have been visible commercial identification or presence or potential solicitation. With the prohibitions dealing only with externalities, the covenant-compliant expressed exceptions are owner surnames. Or pretentious domain indicators like "Inglenook" or "The Looney Bin" . . . )