subject: Neighborhood Covenants: The Advantages And Disadvantages [print this page] Neighborhood Covenants: The Advantages And Disadvantages
Homeowner's Associations, or HOA, rules are known to people who have owned condos in the past. These rules are meant to ensure the uniformity of the community, along with help maintain an unambiguous set of rules that everybody has to follow in order to ensure the community runs properly as a whole. This also exists in American sub-divisions, in the form of the neighborhood covenant.
You may also know that the regulations set forth in a neighborhood covenant are normally created by the sub-division's developer. They exist both to make sure the neighborhood retains specific desirable characteristics and to protect the developer's interests in the land and property.
The advantages of neighborhood covenants are many. Before everything else, the look and feel of your neighborhood is preserved by means of the neighborhood covenant rules. It will prevent a new, eccentric neighbor from painting his or her house neon green, for instance. As an outcome of the neighborhood covenant's limitations on your neighbor's design decisions, your house's worth will be kept strong. At the very least, if you have worries about the design decisions of your next door neighbors, the neighborhood covenant will likely help make sure your home's value does not take a dive.
You also need to be conscious of the downsides of your sub-division having a neighborhood covenant. By definition, there are restrictions to your right as a homeowner to make changes to your house inscribed in neighborhood covenants. You might be kept from making an improvement for the reasons already stated if you, for example, if you happen to love the color bright green and think it would make a fantastic addition to your outside d?cor. Your neighbors may also be able to bring up any other things they view as problems with your home's exterior. If, for instance, you're an avid ham radio operator, that 30 foot wire you've always wanted to put on your deck to get the best signal might now be impossible to install without prior permission from your neighborhood association.
There are consequently good and bad things that go along with the existence of a neighborhood covenant in your area. Doing your homework prior to purchasing in a sub-division that has one of these neighborhood covenants is the best way to determine whether you can actually handle living with one. Read what is in the covenant and make sure it won't affect your own prerogatives for your exterior house design. After you've made your purchase, this will ensure less house-related heartbreak in the end.
