The Declaration of Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions is an important document for homeowners in a subdivision with a HomeOwners Association (HOA). The Declaration includes limitations on how your property can be used. The Declaration is enforced by the member-elected Board of Directors, who must follow the HOA’s internal rules as outlined in the Declaration.
Because a HOA Board has the power to enforce these rules as they see fit, it can sometimes overstep its authority, attempting to enforce the rules in an arbitrary or unfair way. In these cases, fighting the HOA might be the appropriate course of action.
As a home owner, you should be well aware of what is in your Declaration, and you should be extremely wary of any amendments. If you sign a proxy which allows the Board to use your vote at their discretion, you have just lost the power to veto any changes they may decide to make to the Declaration.
The Wood's Edge Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions was recorded in 1987. The Declaration and all its Amendments and Supplements must be recorded with the Lancaster County Recorder of Deeds. These can be searched and downloaded from their website. These are downloaded and attached here for your reference.
Four Amendments have been recorded since 1987. According to the Declaration and its first two Amendments, Amendments require approval by 90% of the Owners, although that changes in the Third Amendment, which now requires only 75% approval.
Supplemental Declarations or Supplemental Amendments are filed by the Declarant (in this case, Murry Companies/Sher-Wal) and provide the legal description of the parcel of land and specific lots. Murry has filed five supplemental declarations, which are more fully described here.
Subdivision Plans are filed by the Developer Murry Companies/ Sher-Wal, Inc. (known as Declarant in the Declarations). These are filed, and then sometimes revised by a later Subdivision Plan during the process of building. The Subdivision Plans should be referenced in the Declaration, its Amendments and Supplements, but it is clear the revisions are not referenced as they easily could be. To see all our Subdivision Plans, go here.
By law (Uniform Planned Community Act 68 Pa.C.S. § 5407), a homeowner must receive with their Resale Certificate, a copy of the Declaration (the whole thing would include all Amendments and Supplements) and the WEHOA Bylaws. The buyer must be able to review these prior to purchasing a home. However, at a closing in 2016, these were not all included in the Resale Certificate. Even in the Title search, due to a numbering error in one of the WEHOA documents, not all these documents were included in the packet from the title company.
The last Amendment to the Declaration was made in 2016. If you were not given an itemized list of proposed changes and an opportunity to comment or vote on each, you should be worried.
It appears that the WEHOA Board of Directors may be using their Proxy Votes from the Annual Meeting without giving homeowners a chance to review and comment on the actual revisions to the Declaration.
If the Board of Directors has inaccurately filed or improperly enforced HOA governing documents, homeowners can work together to take action against the HOA. http://www.wikihow.com/Fight-Your-HOA-(Homeowner-Association)