Rules and Regulations

Karl,

The 1 year ownership prior to the ability to rent must be in the restrictive covenants before it can go into rules and regs. It probably should not be in the R.& Rs to begin with.

Under Florida Statutes 720 (is that what you follow or are you a condo) Any change in USE must be adopted by a vote of the membership, which is what a restriction on renting is.

As for Rules and Regs, of course they can be enforced. That is why they are written but R.& R.s may not conflict with your Covenants and Bylaws. Your Board has put the cart before the horse.

The 1 year prior to renting is another way for an association to protect the association from realtors and speculators from buying up properties now that they are devalued and then renting them out en masse. Mt Florida association has a 2 year prior to renting, which we passed last year as AN AMENDMENT to the CC&Rs. (I have a rental unit there. It's a 55+ community)

Dee,

The matter that we are addressing is according to Florida Statutes, "USE of a Parcel", which is required to be in the CC&Rs and cannot be written as a Rule & Reg.

Every association has architectural issues, your being the interior alterations and use. You had posted your CC&R statement on this problem and I feel that your association needed to clarify the use allowence prior to letting anyone do or not do the changes. You need to address that IMHO.

Dee if there are no restrictions on renting in the Covenants you can't do and end run around them with a rule.

I want to thank Donna, Mary and Glen for their input. You comments are great and I see your points. Actually our association is in process of re-writing our governing docs. Our docs haven't been amended in almost 30 years. Yes we did renew them, but they have not been changed at that time.

Our R&R have been put in place about 10 or 15 years ago by a BoD who obviously didn't know what they were doing (unless laws changed in this matter since then, which they probably did).

So basically anything that has to do with the use of the owners property has to be voted and amended into the docs. If I'm wrong here, please correct me.

I just have one more question for Mary. You said that the BoD cannot make up rules which are not covered by the CC&R's. Now one of our R&R's is that you are not allowed to back your car into your assigned parking space. Our CC&R's do not say anything about how you can park your car. Does that mean this rule can not be enforced either?

I was under the impression that R&R's are supposed to regulate things like that. In Chapter 720 (we are a HOA) it even says that the BoD is allowed to make reasonable R&R's. But if I have to amend my CC&R's every time and I cover everything in my CC&R's, what do I need the R&R's for?

Thanks again.

Regards
Karl

Karl,
Figuring the differences in your HOA documents sometimes is confusing and after a while, it will all make sense if you just keep learning as you seem to be.

An example. IF your documents(CC&Rs) would say--maybe--- "PETS--Residents may own 2 dogs", The Board has the right to create a rule and regulation stating that dogs may not exceed 30 pounds or must be leashed or dogs may not leave a lot without a 10 foot leash or whatever. The docs address pets but the R.&Rs. now specifically govern pets. This might be a slight stretch but it has been done.

Because you are Florida Statutes, any change in the property's use must be approved by the membership. That would be to go to or from renting, which changes how an owner uses his property.

The Board has the right to require all cars to be front parked or rear parked as that is a stricter requirement of what is already exhisting in your having a parking space.

Mary, It could be that they want the vehicle tags in view or an I.D of the vehicle for security identification purposes.

Mary:
The docs only cover the parking so far that every homeowner has two assigned parking spaces. The docs do not give any location of those two parking spaces and do not say anything on how to park. It does limit the wait of the vehicle though. It also prohibits to park trailers on the property.
The reason why the association wants the cars to be front parked has two reasons. 1) our parking spaces are directly in front of the homes, which means if somebody has their doors or windows open, the exhaust would blow right in your house. Since your assigned parking space might be in front of somebody elses house, the association tries to prevent that a "friendly" neighbor has his car running in front of your house blowing the exhaust into your kitchen. 2) We have parking decals, which are on the rear window. If somebody would park his car in reverse, the decal would not be visible.

Donna:
As mentioned above, ID'ing a vehicle is one of the reasons why cars have to be parked front end first.

Dennis:
This rule has been in our R&R's for at least 15 years. So I can't definitely say if the board's decision to enact this rule is documented. As far as I know, these R&R's have been more or less been created by 2 members of the board only. The previous members of the board didn't really give a #$^%$#@ about laws and what the can do and what they can't. Thank God the current Board does and before they make a decision, they always contact our attorney to seek advice.

Donna again ;-)
Oh yeas I am learning every time I post a question here. It's good to have a source like HOATALK.COM. So thanks to you Donna and of course everybody else contributing to this forum. I am sure there are a lot of people appreciating your input.

Cheers
Karl

Donna,

Thx! I must have had a memory lapse -- age related of course! LOL