Working document
The violation file audit checklist
Pull any open covenant file, walk these four stages line by line, and you will know within ten minutes whether it would survive an owner who brings counsel to the hearing.
Free resources
Resources for covenant enforcement
Free tools and working documents for the people who write the notices, ride the inspection drive and sit through the hearing.
Everything here is aimed at one audience: volunteer boards and small community association managers who enforce covenants without a legal department behind them. The calculators price your enforcement program and the hours behind your inspection drives. The audit checklist walks a real file from first photograph to closing entry.
Alongside them, Notice and Cure carries the longer writing: how to photograph a violation so the file holds up, what belongs on the notice before it is mailed, how fine caps and notice periods differ by state, and which state laws now override yard, solar and rental restrictions in your declaration.
Free tools
Calculators for community association boards
Two free tools that put real numbers on covenant enforcement, one on what it costs the association and one on the hours it takes off a volunteer board.
Comparisons
HOACovenant compared with the other options
HOACovenant does one job, the covenant violation file from first observation to closed cure, so every comparison here is really a question of how much else your association wants living behind the same login.
Main guide
Anatomy of a Fence Violation File, First Notice to Cure
It settles the order of a covenant enforcement file, showing every document from the first complaint through the hearing decision to the re-inspection photo that closes it.
Magazine
Notice and Cure
Covenant enforcement for volunteer boards and small community managers: evidence, notices, hearings, fines and the cure that closes the file.
About
Who writes all of this
The author page covers who writes Notice and Cure, the volunteer boards and covenant files behind the guidance here, and why enforcement is treated as an evidence problem rather than a personality one.
Keep the checklist, then look at the file
The calculators and the violation file audit checklist stay free whether or not your board ever opens an account, and plenty of associations stop right there. If running that audit by hand every quarter is not realistic for the volunteers you have, a demo shows the same four stages built into the file itself, from the observation date through to the closing entry. Bring your oldest open violation and we will start with that one.