Building Covenants

[Marcia]

Where we have moved from, we built that house ... and the convenants made us giggle

Bins have to be stored behind the front gate, except for bin day (even said you cannot leave your bin out the front for an excessive period of time on bin day).

28 degree pitch roof

Must have at least one gable in the roof

No carports, all had to have a roller door

Front garden must be completed within 12months of block settlement (go figure, we built when it was taking 12 months just to get the builder on site!)

No working on cars out the front, only in the back garden (or lounge room perhaps?!)

No cars parked on front lawns, only on designated parking areas ie. driveways ... the footpath is not a designated parking are! (and in their defence the estate was littered with additional street parking bays)

All our fences were the same, all in rivergum green

There were more, but can't remember.... but you know what - everyone stuck to them and the estate looked awesome. Once a resident pulled his 4WD apart on his driveway, it only took a day before someone complained and it was packed up.

It was nice to drive in off the main road and see nice neat and tidy homes, all looking similar, but different. It was pretty to look at.

[tryingtodecorate]

We had a few "guidelines" to follow with our DEvelopers. Most of us complied apart from my neighbour who has a fully rendered house, black decorative wrought iron on the windows and a sandstone driveway. It sticks out like you know what and most of the neighbourhood isn't happy about it. Lawyers were involved but it didn't get anywhere because it is a "guideline" and apparently cannot be inforced, beats me how a house can be approved by Counil and Developers but is not built according to the approved design

We had -

Roof Pitch
Woodland Grey Colorbond Fencing
No front fences
Mid Grey coloured driveways
Garage setback
Double storey (for our land release)
Colorbond Palette colours for render
Aerials not visible from street - most are (we hung our in our roof space)
Bins behind gates
No tap allowed in front garden
No federation/heritage facades
No mirrored windows
Nice letterboxes - not allowed the plain tin style although some still have these.
No planter boxes in front yard
Clothesline/Utilites behind a fence and not seen from street
20% render to front facade
Facade to have 2 different types of material - brick and render okay
Low profile roof tiles
Facade to be visually interesting.......
Increased ceiling heigh for single storey homes
Porch had a to be certain sqm, can't remember the min. requirement
No carports
No car wrecks out front
No caravans/trailers in view
Cannot build the same house and have same facade within 3 blocks in any direction.


Can't think of anymore at the moment.

We actually like the fact that our Estate had these guidelines in place. Unfortunately for us our neighbour broke alot of them. All the other houses look nice though and seeing as this house is next to me I don't have to look at it.

Some nearby Estates don't have any guideline and you can tell, shocking facade colours, same design built side by side using same colours etc

Another nearby Estate had a release where all windows had to be painted timber with a colorbond roof. Timber windows are expensive and they weren't even allowed to stain them. I just don't get that.

[Julie-Ann]

No taps in the front gardens. So you have to run a hose from the back all the time?
I would fail the not leaving the bins out all day rule- my gorgeous neighbour is forever wheeling mine up the driveway for me. I work from home so I don't remember it until I have to go out to visit clients.
Those are a lot of rules - I guess if you kow them before you buy and are happy with them then that's ok.

[tryingtodecorate]

No Julie-Ann, we have taps on either side of the house. One near the Hot water service for the front garden, one on the other side near the pool filter etc and our water tanks are a side rear corner that also have taps on them.

I actually love the fact that we don't have ugly taps/sticks in the middle of the garden. Meter's are still there though.

Agree with your last sentence. We weren't prepared to pay and maintain a house full of timber windows that's why we walked away from that block in that Estate. I think guidelines/Covenants are good as long as everyone follows them, but there is always that one person who wants to do it their own way.

[mjm]

yeah gee some of the rules are a little extreme, however, as one who lives across the road from a house with a half wrecked car sitting on the front lawn I can understand where the no fixing cars in the front yard may have come from....

[Milena]

The estate where we bought our land has quite strict covenants. We have never lived in one before so it will be different but we like the idea of living where covenants are in place.
During the week we went for a drive around the estate and drove around side streets just to have a look at already established homes. The streets and houses looked really pretty and some front gardens looked amazing. There was even a private residence with an automated gate which puzzled us as to who lives there. Something I have noticed is that most houses are rendered. I have to admit it did feel good that one day we will be living there but also I understand it is not everyone's type of estate.

Some of our covenants are:

Low pitched roof between 18 and 25 degrees with 600mm eaves treatments
Mainly contemporary house designs and no federation and colonial styles
No boxed looking houses ( I don't think the Vogue façade we liked at first would pass through the ARC)
In our case we need to have a corner treatment because of the corner block
With double storeys it is encouraged to have front and rear balconies, pergolas, terraces etc
No house of similar designs built within 5 lots
Roof tiles need to be non reflective concrete or teraccota with a non glazed finish with dark grey or charcoal colour range
Garage doors for the front needs to be panel lift doors and not roller doors
No metal or wooden leter boxes with posts, the ones in the estate at the moment are all different, they are mainly concrete or brick but all different styles or shapes
We will get a fence provided at the rear of the block because we are at the edge of the estate
We have 3-6 months to get our front garden established but that's what we have done in the past anyway
TV antenas need to be mounted inside the roof and not external, it sounds strange but it gives the place a nice clean look

I came across the article and the list from Herald Sun this morning Million dollar suburbs and it is estimated the house values will double within 6 years for our area.