HOAs and large families

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AClaire11

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I’ve heard that many HOAs have occupancy limits and was wondering if anyone on here has had trouble with this. We’re a few years away from buying a house and don’t know how many more kids we’ll be able to have (endometriosis), but my husband has an interview in two weeks for his dream job and that’s made me start looking into real estate stuff. I don’t see us affording anything around here that’s not subject to an HOA and definitely not anything with more than 2 or 3 bedrooms within a reasonable commute. The standard we’ve come across so far while renting in this area is no more than two to a bedroom once the children are over 1-3 years old (depending on the landlord).
 
AClaire11 said:
I’ve heard that many HOAs have occupancy limits and was wondering if anyone on here has had trouble with this. We’re a few years away from buying a house and don’t know how many more kids we’ll be able to have (endometriosis), but my husband has an interview in two weeks for his dream job and that’s made me start looking into real estate stuff. I don’t see us affording anything around here that’s not subject to an HOA and definitely not anything with more than 2 or 3 bedrooms within a reasonable commute. The standard we’ve come across so far while renting in this area is no more than two to a bedroom once the children are over 1-3 years old (depending on the landlord).
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I suspect HOAs are most concerned about non-nuclear family households.
 
Assuming you’re in the U.S., it’s complicated legally. There are laws that protect you from discrimination based on family status, which would typically include having a large family. I’m not an expert on them though.

What state are you in?
 
DarkLight said:
Assuming you’re in the U.S., it’s complicated legally. There are laws that protect you from discrimination based on family status, which would typically include having a large family. I’m not an expert on them though.

What state are you in?
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We’re in northern Virginia.
 
The Fair Housing Act does not allow HOA’s to arbitrarily limit the size of a family (parents and kids under 18), per se. Generally the only reason an HOA could place limits is if they follow a local zoning ordinance based on something like occupants per square feet or number of occupants per bedroom. They can put certain limits on say the number of cars that can be parked at a residence, but that is generally only an issue if you have multiple kids at home that drive their own cars. They might also limit access to community centers or pools, though those are generally more like number of kids per adult present.

This assumes you are talking about purchasing a home. Rental agreements can have more leeway as I understand, but I’m not a lawyer so I am not sure how the Fair Housing Act impacts rentals.
 
Usige said:
The Fair Housing Act does not allow HOA’s to arbitrarily limit the size of a family (parents and kids under 18), per se. Generally the only reason an HOA could place limits is if they follow a local zoning ordinance based on something like occupants per square feet or number of occupants per bedroom. They can put certain limits on say the number of cars that can be parked at a residence, but that is generally only an issue if you have multiple kids at home that drive their own cars. They might also limit access to community centers or pools, though those are generally more like number of kids per adult present.

This assumes you are talking about purchasing a home. Rental agreements can have more leeway as I understand, but I’m not a lawyer so I am not sure how the Fair Housing Act impacts rentals.
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Yeah, I’m concerned that if we’re able to have 5 kids, we wouldn’t be able to have a 3br townhouse, for example, because they’d limit it to six people.

I’m getting a little annoyed while looking at the available homes…$300+ is a lot to pay in property taxes each month for a small townhome where the schools aren’t even that good.
 
I think those rules are to keep 12 college students from sharing a house. As has been mentioned, fair housing laws protect direct members of a family living in the same dwelling.

Good luck…
 
AClaire11 said:
I’ve heard that many HOAs have occupancy limits and was wondering if anyone on here has had trouble with this. We’re a few years away from buying a house and don’t know how many more kids we’ll be able to have (endometriosis), but my husband has an interview in two weeks for his dream job and that’s made me start looking into real estate stuff. I don’t see us affording anything around here that’s not subject to an HOA and definitely not anything with more than 2 or 3 bedrooms within a reasonable commute. The standard we’ve come across so far while renting in this area is no more than two to a bedroom once the children are over 1-3 years old (depending on the landlord).
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Experiences vary depending on the legality of where you live. A realtor would be knowledgable of your local laws.

A city I used to live in had an occupancy law where only 3 unrelated people could share a house. This law was put in place to keep college students from stuffing tons of people in the same house and being a loud headache. In practice, the law was only enforced if you made yourself a headache for the neighbors. If you kept quiet and friendly, no one cared. There were also exceptions which could be sought for greek houses, boarding homes, etc.
 
ChurchSoldier said:
I think those rules are to keep 12 college students from sharing a house. As has been mentioned, fair housing laws protect direct members of a family living in the same dwelling.

Good luck…
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Fair Housing Act is supposed to protect families, but it’s easy enough for a landlord to decline to rent to a large family without giving a reason.
 
AClaire11, my husband is on the HOA board of our townhouse development in Fairfax County. He says that Usage is correct that HOAs are not allowed to limit the size of families of parents and minor children who live in a unit that they own. HOAs are homeowner’s associations and are concerned with homeowners, not renters. They feel that too many renter occupied properties drive down the property values, but our HOA lawyers advised us that it is not legal to try to prevent an owner from trying to rent out a unit that he owns. As other posters have pointed out, landlords can rent to whomever they want unless they can be proven to be discriminating against a legally protected group. I suspect that you are trying to rent in a low income area. There the landlords might be wary of damage by large numbers of people living in one unit. I know rents are ridiculously high in Northern Virginia. For those of you who don’t live here, the Washington Post recently had a story about how rents are higher than mortgages which is why so many young people try to buy rather than rent. If you could scrape together a little more cash, so that you could look in a better area, you might not come up against this problem.
 
Don’t go thinking that you can break the HOA’s Rules. They are written for a specific reason and they will up hold them. When I lived in the a condo (2bdrm) the rule of occupancy was 4 adults, but kids were tricky, you could have up to 3 of the same sex children and two adults, but if you were to have 2 children, they can room together up until age 10 then they would need a separate bedroom. And that was based on a State Law, that the HOA’s have to follow. So you might want to check your area laws, and anything promised by the realtor, get it in writing from the HOA Board. Because they can say a 1000 things, but doesn’t mean anything if the HOA is enforcing rules.
 
You can put as many of your children in your house as you want, as long as you own the house. HOA can’t limit it, and zoning laws don’t apply to related people.

Fairfax County has enough trouble enforcing that law against unrelated people. Landlords simply don’t rent to more people than the law allows - that takes care of it most of the time. For flagrant violations, it’s hard to prove who is actually living somewhere versus “visiting”.
 
Thank you for your replies! I am talking about when we buy, not while we are renting. I’ve seen a few articles about families suing HOAs after the HOA tried to kick them out for having too many kids. And we heard the same occupancy restrictions from apartment complexes in various parts of Alexandria City and Arlington… Money might be tight at the moment, but we don’t live in some sort of ghetto…
 
I agree with Paul about Fairfax. I work in Fairfax and live in PWC. Remarkably, our HOA is super cheap with a park and boat ramp on the Occoquan. I suppose some of the homes in the local area would be able to accommodate a large family. Our daughter used to go to a private Catholic school (traditional) and most of the families were/are large.
 
I had to google HOA to find out what it meant. We actually don’t have these in Ireland and the UK really. We would have Residents Associations but they wouldn’t have any legal power really. It amazed me how much power these HOA’s seem to have!
 
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