Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Washington

Re: encorcement of CC & R

CC&R's are designed to manage the relationships between neighbors to enhance everyone's property values by the mechanism of a private contract to act in a certain way and to refrain from acting in other ways.

What you are saying is that at the beginning there was a breach which was tolerated. You relied on that breach (the neighbor's visible 5th wheel) as a basis to ask for your own variance, which was granted.

Four or five years later, your neighborhood has organized and decided to enforce CC&Rs.

Here's my take, and I am sure that there are attorneys who would disagree with me.

The Association can decide to enforce rules - starting now. They have to do it according to their by-laws and rules, and it has to be done even-handedly. They cannot selectively enforce rules against one resident and ignore violations by another resident simultaneously.

The idea taht the restriction is void because it was never enforced is called "latches" or "waiver". This can be a valid affirmative defense, or it can be ignored by the Board. Their response could be that now they plan to enforce the rules, and this could very well happen, as they are no longer waiving the rule and now seek to enforce it.

You can comply with the rule by storing your RV out of sight or somewhere off-site; you can sell and move to a place without CC&Rs. These are options for you. But being in the neighborhood with CC&Rs and at the same time violating the CC&Rs related to RVs could potentially turn into a giant legal headache for you.

I hope this helps. I think the opinion you received could potentially have an unintended consequence of exposing you to liability and a suit from the HOA.

Powell