I don’t know the laws in Colorado but this type of thing happens all the time in Florida.
My wife and I also own two residences, our primary house and vacation condominium, both in the state of Florida.
In Florida, each condo complex has a written set of rules that each owner is entitled to have a copy of, when the Condos were built the developer produces the documentation on the rules for the condo complex, once a certain number of condos are sold the developer turns over the documents to the HOA.
Things like length and terms of rentals will be contained in the condo documents.
In Florida the laws governing condos would prevent the board of directors from changing the founding documents on their own.
In addition, with regards to rentals, if the condos allowed short term rentals when a person buys into the complex, it’s against the law to change the documents to disallow short terms rentals after that point, unless you get 100% approval of the owners, which will never happen because one person can stop the change if they rent short term and don’t want to stop.
In Florida the laws would not allow what happened in Colorado to happen, if a Board tried to do that, some owner or group of owners would have to hire an Attorney and send the Board a letter advising them of their illegal action, if it went to court and the owners won, they would be entitled to attorney fees.
However, remember if you hire an attorney and file a lawsuit, you would be in effect suing yourself, because the Board would be using owner fees to fight the lawsuit and paying attorney fees if the owners won.
My wife and I at one time were involved in 3 separate HOAs and each one was the same, eventually it pits people against each other and end up causing people to hate each other.
I hate HOAs because of this.
Exactly.....sounds like this author may have not completely read, or, had his attorney read, the HOA docs, before he inked his deal.
The opposite problem can occur, too.
Older HOA docs probably don’t even cover short term rentals (a thing pretty much unheard of, decades ago.)
So, areas that were once primarily owned by single use owners, are now being turned into STR communities.
With no recourse available to long time owners.
Thanks for pointing this out. I was wondering whether the HOA in the article was running rampant over Colorado law since I knew here in Florida there are restrictions on HOAs.
I understand why the HOA would want to have some control over short term rentals but there are ways to go about that which balance the community way of life with a property owner’s use of their property. In my opinion one way would be to clearly define short term rental to require a minimum 1 week rental. Another way would be for the town (not the HOA) discuss whether such rentals should be subject to impact fees. Simply punishing the property owner is the wrong (and possibly illegal) solution.
I don’t feel too sorry for the author he probably should have bothered to find out if the HOA had violated any laws or covenants.
It always goes back to the governing documents (convenants and by-laws), state laws, state and federal constitutions. One wants a board that knows their documents inside and out, and some institutional memory so some of the potential legal issues an be passed on, unless it is necessary to have the HOA attorney or property manager to come in to make a presentation.
For example, my past HOA neighborhood had restriction on satellite dishes, which when the covenants were written were huge in size compared to today. With the so-called deregulation of cable television and some court cases, that covenant could no longer be enforced. And as good fortune would have it, the size of the dishes were getting smaller. Therefore, placement of the dishes to preserve required architectural standards needed to be developed, written, presented and discussed publicly, modified, re-presented and avote of the board. Then once passed making sure the VOLUNTARY architectural review board was able to respond quickly enough to resident applications for satellite installation review.
I made further comment in #91 above this post. Including most people don’t read the covenants / by-laws .... before they buy, and many don’t read them after they buy. Like many good Americans, they don’t care, just give them what they want now ... except they’ll be the first to call the HOA president on Friday at 10 pm because of something their neighbor is doing.