Residential Private Governments: An Introductory Survey

Today many home buyers, on the purchase of an apartment in a condominium or cooperative or a house in a small subdivision or large-scale new community, become automatically subject to the authority of some type of homeowners' association.I Although based on a mix of private law concepts of contract and property, such associations are generally organized in a manner similar to the public law model of municipal government. All homeowners are bound, usually by encumbrances on their property, to abide by the dictates of the association, which is empowered to create, alter and enforce a comprehensive set of regulations governing important aspects of community life. Because homeowners' associations possess much of the power and trappings of local municipal government but arise out of private relationships, they will be described as private governments. '' The development of residential private governments has to some extent outpaced the development of the legal standards necessary to deal with them. My intention in this paper is to begin analysis of the residential private government phenomenon and eventually to suggest a legal framework to guide future regulation. The