[barryman9000]

My wife and I own a condo and the unit is on the top floor. We want to turn the attic into a loft, but our CC&R's state we only have rights to the trap door that leads to the heater in our attic, and nothing else.

Is there anything legal that we can use to gain rights to the attic? Its not a common area, there are walls separating our attic from our neighbors.

[excon]

Hello barry:

I hate HOA's. I'll bet they'll stop you; even if you did present them with some legal argument that say's you have a right to do it. They'll probably stop you, just because they're jealous, or they want to exercise their power.

Condo boards of directors are not filled with good people. These are people who have NEVER had any power, and now they do.

excon

[ballengerb1]

You only own from the surface of the drywall in, not the drywall, not the attic and not the outside of the building. Your legal title does not include the attic so it is not your to improve.

[barryman9000]

The board gave 2 reasons we couldn't renovate the attic:
1. We're not sure that it can support living space.
2. Because the CC&R's say so.

I offered a solution: if we get a contractor to inspect it and show that it can support living space, can we do it?

They said "well, you also have to get 2/3 of the owners to sign a petition to change the CC&R's. No one has been able to do that in 20 years."

Obviously the CC&R's we set up so they would be impossible to ever change. And we can't go door to door, because probably half of these units are rentals... which is also against the CC&R's.

Ballengerb1: I know that if something goes wrong in the attic, it's our responsibility to fix it, and not the HOA's responsibility. Does that change anything?

[ballengerb1]

Barry, yes that does change my thinking. Apparently your condo CC&R are written very differently than the condos I've flipped. I don't think you will get you wish though. You need 66.6% of the owners to vote yes with you. Most HOA never have 66% even vote let alone vote yes. Good luck with your quest. PS a contractor is not qualified to make such a determination. Get an architect or building engineer to calculate the loads.

[froggy7]

The board gave 2 reasons why we couldn't renovate the attic:
1. We're not sure that it can support living space.
2. Because the CC&R's say so.

I offered a solution: if we get a contractor to inspect it and show that it can support living space, can we do it?

They said "well, you also have to get 2/3 of the owners to sign a petition to change the CC&R's. No one has been able to do that in 20 years."

Obviously the CC&R's we set up so they would be impossible to ever change. And we can't go door to door, because probably half of these units are rentals... which is also against the CC&R's.

CC&R's are difficult. They are a legal document that is set up when a deed-restricted development is made, and are the governing documents for the HOA. As such, you don't want them to be easy to change, so that trivial whims don't get made into binding rules. (Imagine if you only needed 1% of the vote to change them. One person could pass a rule saying that everyone needed to have purple drapes, etc.) The difficulty is that most require a 2/3rds majority to be changed, and unless the issue has a serious impact on everyone (say, how to pay for earthquake damage and other special assessments), it's almost impossible to get enough of the owners together to even be able to vote on the issue. Unfortunately, most people just don't care. (Presidential elections get what... 5% of the eligible population that can vote?) And that means that inertia tends to take place, and they never get changed.

[ballengerb1]

I live on a resort lake with a HOA. They have been trying to change the covents for 10 years and it has never passed. We recently switch the appraoch to avoid a vote at a specific time and now use something like a petition. Once we get 66.65 of the owners to sign we then can present it to the BOD. Bet this fails too.