You guys think that your city rules are bad, top this:
When I lived in BG, we lived in one of the most desirable subdivisions in the area.
In this subdivision we had all types of rules, but the most strictly enforced rule was that all homeplans, exterior materials, colors, landscaping and structures on any property had to be approved by the architectural review committee.
The architectural review committee drafted several rules:
Homes:
1) No two houses in the subdivision of 100+ homes could have the same floorplan or even a slightly modified version of the same floor plan.
2) All house plans had to be custom designs by a licensed architect.
3) All homes were to be Tudor, Colonial, Georgian, Nantucket or Transitional in style. (No contemporary homes, prairie homes, etc were allowed.)
4) One or 1.5 story homes had to be a minimum of 3000 sq. feet with a minimum of 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths.
5) Two story homes had to be a minimum of 2500 sq. ft with a minimum of 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths.
Exterior Materials:
1) No side of the house facing a street could contain any synthetic material, including trim.
2) Acceptable natural materials were brick, real stone (not cultured), wood siding/shingles and stucco.
3) On non Nantucket and Tudor style homes, 70% of the sides of the home facing the street had to be masonry.
4) Concrete walks were required from the driveway to the front door ( and they could not contain 90 degree angles ) and from the driveway to the patio.
5) Every home was to have a Ceder mailbox located to the right of the driveway.
Colors:
1) No two houses on the same street could share the same color scheme.
2) You could not share a color scheme with a house on the next street unless their address number was at least 50 more or less than a house that currently had that color scheme.
3) You could not change your color scheme after it was approved without re-approval.
Landscaping:
1) Had to be professionally designed and installed no more than 90 days after you moved in or no later than April 15th of the next year if you moved in after October.
2) Grass had to be a certain variety from the local landscaping company.
3) A 3"-4" caliper non-evergreen tree had to be planted in the front yard of every home (every street had their own tree)
Exterior Structures:
1) Only one shed per property, could not be larger than 10 x 12 and could not be visible from the road.
2) Shed had to be constructed of siding that matched your home and had to be painted in your home's approved color scheme.
The architectural review committee got to look at all of these things when a house was built. After that they got a say in anything you did on the exterior of your home.
In addition to all those rules, there were other rules.
1) No street parking, anywhere, ever.
2) No non-working cars left outside (like anyone in the neighborhood ever had a non working car)
3) Nothing left in the yard overnight
4) Garage doors kept closed when you were inside (although they were less demanding on this one)
5) Yard mowed at least once a week from April 1st until October 31st.
This is how stringent this Homeowner's association was: The president of the ARC came to our house and asked us if we intended to install the mullions in our front windows that we (the ARC and my Mother) had agreed would look better than just sheet glass. We intended to sometime, but not right away since we hadn't lived there two weeks yet. After a talk with a neighbor I installed them the next day.
Our neighbor suggested that we follow the ARCs plans for our house because the last person who didn't ended up selling his house after a lenghty legal battle with the ARC. They sued a homeowner because he put a synthetic material on the front of his house (cultured stone) and it was clearly against the rules. He bait and switched the ARC and they were pissed. They gave him two options: Fix the problem or go to court for violating the contract he signed with the Homeowner's Association. He chose court thinking that the judge would side with him. He didn't and ended up going back to court three times for the cultured stone. Eventually he replaced the stone and sold the house.
It may sound harsh, but when you want a neighborhood to look like a Norman Rockwell painting, you've got to do it. If you let one person bend the rules, then you can't stop others from breaking them and the neighborhood doesn't look like a Norman Rockwell painting anymore. Having oversight so no two houses are alike and all the houses are similarly sized and have color schemes that go together makes for a beautiful neighborhood and for exceedingly high property values compared to neighborhoods where these controls aren't in place.
Some people will not tolerate this level of control, but then you have to put up with neighbors who leave crap all over their yard on the day that a buyer is coming to look at your house. Which is exactly what happened at the house we lived in before we moved to BG.
When we went to sell the house in September 2001, the house sold in less than a month for more than the asking price, after 9/11 the housing market in BG went flat, but three houses in our subdivision sold before November while the four houses that were comparable to our homes in the very next subdivision sat on the market and didn't sell until after the new year, despite their lower prices. The only thing I can figure is that our neighborhood with all its rules was more attractive to buyers.
