Orange County NC Website
Approved 11/2/16 <br />7 <br />physically further down the road. That probably has a tinge of bias to it… Larger over lots lead to moving 323 <br />development further and further towards the County. 324 <br /> 325 <br />Kim Piracci: If there’s a big development it requires more homeowners associations. 326 <br /> 327 <br />Patrick Mallet: Well it’s pretty rare unless you’re doing the other variation of subdivisions that we get being that are 328 <br />typically the 2 lot subdivisions and it’s The Leda’s Egg Ranch and Grandma Leda is subdividing to give the 329 <br />grandson a 2 acre lot. The vast majority of them are going to be the 5 lot subdivisions or the 4 lot subdivisions and 330 <br />because they have to maintain a private road they’ll reform a HOA to enforce the road maintenance agreement. 331 <br /> 332 <br />Kim Piracci: But that slide that you had that you showed that everybody has their own lot and the lots go to the 333 <br />creek and all of this is open land. Who owns that open land? 334 <br /> 335 <br />Patrick Mallet: It can come in different shapes but basically the property owners association would own it or at least 336 <br />control it and they would maintain it and if it’s a natural area it’s a wooded area there is no real maintenance. If 337 <br />there’s a pastural area they… 338 <br /> 339 <br />Craig Benedict: They would have a 1/12th interest in that land. 340 <br /> 341 <br />Tony Blake: Or shares in a corporation or… 342 <br /> 343 <br />Patrick Mallett: Interesting nuance is that they could theoretically be smart about it and possibly explore a 344 <br />conservation easement or they could take a rolling pasture land and work out an agreement with a farmer and then 345 <br />they can raise grass or hay and then they get some income from that and the farmer benefits from that. 346 <br /> 347 <br />Kim Piracci: So that County or the State has oversight over what HOA’s can and can’t do? 348 <br /> 349 <br />Patrick Mallett: Well part of it is the regulatory aspects of the subdivision section about ordinance. Part of it has to 350 <br />do with zoning and that part of the development and when they come in to be able to get a building permit there are 351 <br />different rules that apply. We do record in conjunction with subdivisions things that are called declarations of 352 <br />restrictions. They cannot neglect restrictive covenants but they don’t speak to things like you can’t have a purple 353 <br />door or polka dots on the mailbox. Declarations have to deal with what their setbacks are specifically. 354 <br /> 355 <br />Tony Blake: But this does bring to mind one question that I had. A lot of times subdivisions are owned by the 356 <br />developer until a sufficient amount of the houses are sold. I guess they would just be transferred? 357 <br /> 358 <br />Patrick Mallett: Yes. Your typically subdivision has some magic number. It’s quite often 20-30% of the homes get 359 <br />built. 360 <br /> 361 <br />Tony Blake: So that leads to the second half of my question which is when we worked with the second fire station 362 <br />we had had a water garden and we had to deed and access to the County so that if we went bankrupt or something 363 <br />like that you guys had access and could come in and clean it and charge us for it or charge whatever. Is that same 364 <br />sort of regulation? 365 <br /> 366 <br />Patrick Mallett: Sort of. This is kind of a better scenario because that easement that would go to those deeded 367 <br />septic systems. It has a requirement for all weather assistance and all weather access. So someone could get out 368 <br />there, through the field to get to the actual site and you could point to, if a system fails, it is definitively locked under 369 <br />the owner lot 1. The fines are directly attributed to that owner versus having the HOA responsible. 370 <br /> 371 <br />Craig Benedict: Even more importantly, when we rewrote the UDO 4 years ago now we require a meeting from the 372 <br />developer to the home owners. Some homeowners moving to a rural area don’t know what’s their responsibility or 373 <br />what’s a common responsibility and so this will be more important because they’ll be having off site septic’s, access 374 <br />areas, fencing. So these developing restrictions are going to say you can’t necessarily commercialize your open 375 <br />space but you can have certain agreements. 376