House Hunting and Conformity

My husband and I are currently looking for a new house. We’ve been looking for several years now and have had no luck. Part of the problem is us, and the other part is subdivisions with restrictions or covenants. We started out looking for a lot to build on that had city water and sewer hook-ups, but all we could find were overpriced lots with tons of restrictions. Now, if that’s what people are looking for, then more power to them. Me? Fewer rules in my life would be ok. And these aren’t the laws and rules that are on record with the village, city or town government.

Where we currently live, a subdivision with covenants went up behind us. It has five pages of rules that a person would have to live by in order to build a home and live there. The most ridiculous one I think is that you cannot have garish lawn ornaments. It doesn’t say what constitutes as garish, so that part is open to interpretation. Say, for instance I want to put my 500 piece gnome collection out on my lawn. It might not be garish to me, but what if my neighbor doesn’t like them? Or what happens if you want to put a gazing mirror ball in the middle of your flower bed? What if you don’t like your neighbor’s patio furniture? The other silly one is that you cannot have your garage door open for any length of time. Ok. So, when you are cutting your grass you have to close the door? Maybe working in there and you want to have the door open so you aren’t over come with fumes? And, of course that’s followed with no cars are to be parked in your driveway overnight.

I understand that we have to have laws and rules to have a society that we can all get along in. And I feel that’s what ordinances with the village are for. If I have someone stay overnight, I will park their car in my driveway. Do I really need to build a four car garage in order to have my cars, my guest’s car and all my outdoor stuff crammed in there? We have had several Realtors try to find us houses and most of them have given up because they don’t understand our problem with these covenants. Several were on the neighborhood association for their subdivisions, so I guess they wouldn’t understand my claustrophobic feeling of living under all that restriction.

I’m not sure I understand why some people want to live under those rules, other than they get to brag about where they live. I couldn’t care less about the name of a subdivision, and I certainly am not paying money every year just to live there. Isn’t that what property taxes are for? Do I really need to fork over more cash just so I can state I live in jail like setting that won’t even let me park my car in my driveway overnight? Have we gotten so used to being told what to do all the time that we can’t even have our homes to ourselves? We’ve had several folks tell us to just get over it, it’s not a big deal and we are being too picky. My response is always the same. My husband and I do not want to live with that, trying to remember the rules every single day; what we can and cannot do. Knowing that ahead of time will save us a lot of aggravation in the long run. But that doesn’t mean other folks don’t want to. They obviously chose to live there, so they must want that. Why should we move into that, and resent it, and then get into trouble for doing something that is completely harmless. Even if we find a subdivision that doesn’t have many restrictions, that doesn’t mean the association can’t get together and make more rules.

So, our search continues. I know there’s got to be houses out there that aren’t under dictatorships and tyranny. I wonder sometimes if the associations who run the subdivisions are people who really need to be in control of not only their lives, but everyone else’s too.



Blog for the week of March 24th