I'm looking at the plat for my n'hood and I find something I never noticed before.
I had noticed the easements for walkways, and the drainage & utility easements, but just now I see the "H.O.A. easement for parking & drives"
In what way could it be an easement? Doesn't the HOA own it outright? If the HOA doesn't own it, who does? No individual owner has a lot that reaches into the parking or driving area.
As discussed ever since I've been here, the HOA owns the roads and the parking area and pays for repairs and occasional repaving.
Not sure what you mean. The plat shows the streets and has written in that area in two places, "H.O.A. easement for parking & drives".
Looking just now I notice that at the island in the middle, it slso has those same words written where the parking area is carved out of the edge of the island, but the HOA owns the island too. It owns everything that is not a specific owner's lot. So it's strange that the plat asserts they have an easement to drive and park on part of it. The HOA has an easement to use HOA land!!! I wouldn't think it would need one.
Maybe this is to prevent some group of owners, even the majority, from saying, "We don't want people parking there or driving there. We want it to be a park, a garden." That even a vote of the homeowners association can't negate its designation as a driving or parking area. That's just crazy enough to be true.
A bit of history, not long after the area was built, there was not enough parking and more of the island had to be turned into parking. Now 44 years later, I guess a bunch of families have 3 cars now and there isn't enough parking anymore. We had to create parking stickers and guest passes. (I'm doing my part. I only have one car, but I noticed this month that they also painted house numbers on the pavement in front of some of the parking places by the island, and one of them has my house number on it!! Maybe I can rent it out.)
There may be a legal distinction between the HOAs and the common ownership of the common elements. Dunno. It is probably in your state laws. In the development my wife managed there were multiple HOAs and Condo associations with one master association that owned everything. She worked for the master association where she was the CAM but each little kingdom within that was a separate corporation. They had functional control ("easement") of their patch but the master owned it.
I hope Trader won't call me racist again because I said "master". ;-)
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