Guides › Covenants
Zoning is the county's rulebook for a parcel. Covenants are a private one, written by whoever subdivided the land and recorded against every lot so it binds each later owner. On raw land they decide whether you can park a camper, set a manufactured home, keep goats or split off five acres, and they can carry an annual bill whether or not you ever build. Here is what they cover, where they hide, and how to find them before you close.
A declaration of covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) is a recorded document that limits how lots in a subdivision may be used. It runs with the land, so it applies to you even if your deed never mentions it and the seller never heard of it. A homeowners association (HOA) is the organization the declaration usually creates to enforce the rules and collect money. Deed restrictions can also exist without any association: a few lines in an old deed, or notes on the plat, enforceable by the neighbors.
| Building size and type | Minimum square footage, site-built only, exterior materials, roof pitch, a build-by deadline, or a ban on more than one dwelling. Some declarations require an architectural committee to approve plans before a permit is pulled. |
|---|---|
| Manufactured and mobile homes | The most common restriction in rural subdivisions. Many bar mobile homes, RVs used as residences and tiny homes on wheels outright, even where the county zoning allows them. |
| Livestock and animals | Horses allowed, hogs and poultry not; a cap on animals per acre; or "household pets only" on a lot zoned agricultural. The covenant is usually stricter than the zoning. |
| Fencing and setbacks | Fence height, style and material, plus building setbacks deeper than the county's. Perimeter fencing is sometimes required for livestock and sometimes prohibited for appearance. |
| Hunting, firearms and vehicles | No discharge of firearms, no hunting, no ATVs on roads, no commercial trucks or boats stored in view. On acreage sold as "recreational" this is the clause that disappoints buyers most. |
| Further subdivision | A minimum lot size or a flat ban on splitting. Plats often carry this as a note, so a county that would allow a split can still be blocked by the recorded plat. |
| Short-term rental and business use | Residential use only, no rentals under a set term, no home occupations with traffic. Associations amend these rules often, so the current version matters more than the original. |
Covenants are public, but nobody mails them to you.
If the declaration creates an assessment, it normally attaches to every lot the day the plat is recorded, improved or not. An unbuilt lot in a subdivision with a paved road, a gate, a lake or a water system pays its share of maintaining them, plus any special assessment for a road rebuild or a lawsuit. A few declarations charge unimproved lots a reduced rate or exempt them until a home is finished; most do not. Unpaid assessments become a lien on the lot in most states and can be foreclosed. North Carolina's Planned Community Act spells out the lien and foreclosure steps in § 47F-3-116, and Florida's Chapter 720 and Arizona's planned community statute (Title 33, Chapter 16) do the same with different notice periods and caps. Before closing, get an estoppel or resale certificate from the association showing the current balance on the lot; in many states the seller's unpaid dues otherwise travel with the land to you.
Rural subdivisions are full of associations that stopped meeting decades ago. Dormant does not mean dead. The covenants were recorded against the land, so any lot owner can usually still sue to enforce them whether or not an association exists to do it. A dormant association can also be revived: owners re-form the board, reinstate the corporation with the state, and start billing again. Whether the covenants themselves lapse depends on the state and the document. Many declarations carry their own term, often 20 or 30 years with automatic renewal unless a majority votes to end them. Some states add a sunset: Florida's Marketable Record Title Act extinguishes most restrictions after 30 years unless they were preserved, and then provides a revival procedure for owners who want them back. Other states have no such limit, and a 1962 restriction is as binding as a new one. Treat any recorded covenant as live until a real estate attorney in that state tells you otherwise.
Federal and state law trims covenants at the edges. The Fair Housing Act makes restrictions based on race, religion, national origin, sex, familial status or disability unenforceable; old racial covenants still appear in deed records and are void. Many states protect specific uses by statute, such as flying the U.S. flag, installing solar panels or planting drought-tolerant landscaping. These are narrow exceptions. Nothing in federal law stops a covenant from banning a mobile home, a chicken coop or a lot split.
Click a parcel and the panel includes an HOA row. Where a county or city publishes association boundaries, it reports the association the point falls inside, or "None mapped" when that jurisdiction keeps a map and the point is outside every polygon. Everywhere else it says "Unknown," because no free nationwide dataset of HOAs exists. The HOA Boundaries layer draws the same polygons so you can see the edge of a mapped community. In Maryland, where the statewide parcel data carries the subdivision name, the panel adds a Platted subdivision line as a prompt to pull the recorded covenants. What the map cannot see is the document itself. A deed restriction, a plat note or a declaration with no association behind it leaves no trace in any public GIS layer, so a parcel marked "Unknown" or "None mapped" can still be restricted. Use the hint to decide how hard to look, not whether to look.
Open the map with HOA boundaries on →
HOA boundaries on this map come from the handful of counties and cities that publish them, and the subdivision hint from state parcel data where it carries one. Neither sees private covenants or deed restrictions. The recorded documents at the county and a local real estate attorney's reading of them are what count.