Change in Architecture Guidelines

Greetings! A couple months ago our BOD revised the HOA architecture guidelines. The previous guidelines were fairly generic and contained the standard items. For example, noise guidelines, no changes done to the exterior without board approval, white backing on all curtains, etc. Well a new set of revised guidelines were just distributed and they are much more restrictive. Now there are items that do not allow such things as bird houses, bird baths, outdoor speakers, trellises, an 18" height restriction for garden ornaments, etc. None of these items were specifically identified as being prohibited in the prior guidelines.

The problem is that because none of these items were previously restricted, many homeowners had these items in their gardens and rear patios/decks. Now they are being told that they have to remove them or face fines for a violation of the new rules. Can the BOD actually make these types of changes and force the homeowners to remove items that were previously never restricted or never previously required BOD approval.

Any advice would be most helpful.

Thanks

Anthony,

First of all, you did a right thing by spelling out what is and is not allowed in your guidelines but you really have opened up a box of wasps by wanting to ban all of the items that are already in the yards with the statutes, birdbaths andbirdhouses, etc.

Common folks!! You have banned items that everyone has already in place. You cannot grandfather that amount of items due to any person wanting to put up a new birdbath and gets denied despite the fact that there are 50 of them already in the neighborhood.

Maybe height restrictions and placement only on the side and rear yards but the entire banning of all items is overkill.

Check your CCRs for information on changing the Rules and Regs. For many communities,new rules like this can be revoked by the homeowners with a certain percentage vote. It's often a smaller percentage required than for amending the CCRs and may not require official recording.

For example, my CCRs require 662/3 vote to amend, but our rules and regs only require 50%.

"Any such regulation or amendment may be revoked at any time by the
affirmative vote of more than fifty percent (50%) of all Co-owners, except that the Co-owners may not revoke any regulation or amendment prior to said First Annual Meeting of the entire Association."

It would be unfortunate for a board to make such sweeping changes without the support of homeowner polling, surveys, etc.

They should have been more specific on the types of statues and items restricted--like NO HALF BATHTUBS WITH STATUTES IN THEM OR NAKED PEOPLE OR PLANTED TOILET SEATS.