Something doesn’t sound right, what I think happened was there was a rider on the deed for the property that said that once so many properties got sold at homeowners association would be established and there were Covenants that were adopted by the construction company as holding the covenants in trust until the homeowners association got created. So a lot of times at closing there’s no indication that there is a homeowners association but on the title it indicates that there are Covenants and at closing as part of the title insurance you should have signed a document recognizing what the covenants were and that you were recognizing their authority over the deed for the property that you were acquiring. This would have happened at the property close not necessarily at the closing on the house if you did a construction loan for your property separate it just depends on how the close was transacted. The construction company is the one that would have gave it approval for the basketball court and everything else, you can’t establish a homeowners association unless there was an ongoing Covenant right or on the deed that enabled that otherwise the homeowners association would have been informed from all the property owners which they can choose to do, why I don’t know but that’s what happens a lot of times. So I’d go back and look at your deed and look at the Covenants, I bet they were there the whole time and they just got overlooked. I bet they even have the homeowners signature on the paperwork.
I think you may be right. People do not read closing documents and their lawyers might not be concerned that the house will eventually be governed by a HOA. HOAs and condos can be fine for some people. It’s certainly better than having a next door neighbor with a sofa on his porch and multiple junk cars on the front lawn. That said, HOA boards can be awful and the board members don’t always read their documents either. It’s make work for lawyers!