HOA Rules concerning limiting number of renters

I have a question about adopting a rule to limit number of people in a condo or rental unit. We have experienced too many people occupying an unit. The owner was notified and didn't believe us. The problem usually occurs with rentals over 30 days. Has anyone else adopted rules like this?
Cheryle

Cheryl,

The BOD should adopt a rental policy that all property owners renting their units would have to abide by. In the policy it can be stated the number of non-related persons who can occupy a unit.

I agree. Leasing guidelines should be put into place.

Another provision to include is % of renters VS owner-occupied units. There is a tipping point for FHA loans with reference to the percentage of rented VS owner-occupied units, so that should be included in the guidelines. I can't remember what the percentage is- maybe someone on this site would know.

#1- Check your local code.
Municipalities typically have a limit on nonrelated individuals living under one roof.
The county I live in limits the number to 2 nonrelated persons. In addition, our CCRs state the entire property must be leased, this prohibits "room rentals".

Janice

I disagree with you John. If you have 10% of bad landlord/owners, then you have a mess. Tenants always get a bum rap when you generalize like that. It ain't so. It is who the landlord rents to, how he monitors his tenants, how he obeys rules himself and if he appreciated his investment.

Janice,

Are you certain the county code doesn't pertain to rentals?

For Mary,
I posted that any rental policy would have to be an amendment. I know for sure ours would as we have a rental policy in our by-laws. To add or change that would require an amendment. I am not being critical of your advice or any other, but it feels to me a "policy" would not have the weight of a by-law.

If there was nothing in our docs that address it, I still say look at some example of others that have it on the books, and tweak it from there. I would post our Rental clause but it's not near as strong as it should be. But it is due for an update, which brings up how important it is to update them once in a while, especially now.

Mary, even if it does, our local code does not ever use as a variable "relation."

In other words, it's always about number of people, square footage, gender, etc. But never (and should never) be about whether there is a legal family relationship.

Now that I think about it, my daughter would not be allowed to rent an apartment in that case.

She has 3 children. 2 by her first husband, one by her current significant other. She has not and probably will not marry him.

So that means that there are more than two unrelated people living in her house.

For a while, before they bought their home, they were sharing a 4-bedroom townhouse with one of her coworkers, 2 boys in one room, 1 boy in another, my daughter and her SO in a room, and the coworker in the last bedroom.

They lived in that configuration I think for a little over a year while they were saving up for their deposit.

Janice, I have looked at local codes. City, metro and statewide.

And the variables that come into play do not dictate whether the people living in any one unite are "related" or not.

As you mentioned, it's restricted on number of heart beats -- not whether those heart beats are blood or legally defined as "family" (related).

In fact, it doesn't matter if "related" or not, only x number of living human beings per x number of square feet is allowed.

They don't allow that number to get higher (denser) JUST because the other human being is a family member.

In fact, most of the abuse comes from family members or relations.

You can get a lot of extended family members (people who are related into one 900-square-foot apartment if one tried hard enough.

But the local codes preventing over-crowding address ONLY the fact that they are human beings, not whether they have a familial relationship.

For the record, I don't have a problem with that.

We had one home here in our subdivision that had two families living in it. There were two complete "households," including 2 sets of parents and 3 kids in one family and 5 in the other.

Guess what happened? Someone contacted our local zoning and code enforcement, they made an inspection and made them come into compliance.

They (zoning) didn't care who lived there, what their relationship to each other was, they only cared that the number of people, young and adult, conformed to their square-footage requirements (per gender).

In other words, they would not be allowed to have siblings of opposite genders reside in a single bedroom under x-number of square feet. If they were same gender, whether they were related or not, it would not be a problem.

The only thing I'm questioning in their code, which could likely be challenged, is the variable "related." Please keep in mind, I'm not questioning you.

Roger,

I agree that this should be a CCR restriction.

I took a peek at the article and it appeared to me the case has already gone through the Court of Appeals. The article was based on the WI Supreme Ct decision so it should be regarded as case law. The outcome is that the Assn had the right to include the restriction in the bylaws and also the right to adopt the restriction to prohibit rentals.