Review building rules before buying a lot
Q. My wife and I bought property that came with covenants and restrictions regarding what could be built. We submitted our plans according to the design guidelines. To date, they have not approved our garage doors, entrance doors, type of siding and even our builder.
They have a sentence in the design guidelines that states that the final plans must be approved by the Architectural Review Committee in order to build a house on our property. I have asked them for help in sending me acceptable doors and siding to no avail. The contractors that they approved to build homes in the development are way more expensive than our contractor was and one of them just went bankrupt and still has homes unfinished.
My question is what recourse do we have on any of these issues? The board of directors in the development backed up all the decisions of the Architectural Review Committee when I asked them to review the decisions. Now, none of them will even communicate with us. We have spent thousands of dollars to get to this point.
A. The preceding is Exhibit A as to why it is crucial to review any and all documents that affect property you are proposing to purchase, particularly in the above situation, where you are purchasing vacant land with the intent to build.
Presuming the review committee continues to be uncooperative in resolving your differences, you have a few choices in what action you take. One, proceed with your construction and dare them to legally enforce their restrictions. This, of course, is not a good option as you could spend tens of thousands of dollars on construction only to learn one day that their restrictions are enforceable, you have violated the restrictions and the construction must either come down or be altered.
Another option, which may also get expensive, would be to file a Declaratory Judgment action against the association. This is a legal proceeding whereby you ask the court to make a determination as to the legality of the restrictions. You could plead that the restrictions should be determined to be unenforceable as a result of the review committee's failure to deal with you in good faith. In the event you took this action, I would not be very surprised if the association suddenly became more cooperative and your issues got resolved.
There may be other legal avenues available to you. I suggest you contact a real estate attorney to explore your options.
Q. With regard to renters whose landlords fail to pay their mortgages, what would it take to implement a solution in which the renters pay the banks rather than the landlords once a notice of foreclosure has been issued?
A. Interesting proposal. In a situation where a tenant is renting a property that is subject to foreclosure proceedings, require the mortgage company to serve notice of the proceedings on the tenant and give the tenant the option of making the mortgage payments, or the normal rental payment, through the term of the lease.
To offer this type of protection to tenants, the Illinois Mortgage Foreclosure Act would need to be amended. Call or write your state representative and suggest the change.
• Attorney Tom Resnick's column appears every other week in Homes Plus. Send your questions to Tom Resnick, 345 N. Quentin Road, Palatine IL 60067, by e-mail to tdr100@hotmail.com or call (847) 359-8983.