I stared at her.
“3 in,” I said. “Per section 7, paragraph C of the Maplewood Estates parking guidelines, all personal vehicles must be parked within the boundaries of the homeowner’s designated parking area, which does not include the common easement. Your front bumper extends approximately 3 in into that space.”
I took a breath, a long, careful breath. “Sandra,” I said, “I’m in the middle of a work deadline. Can this wait?”
“HOA violations don’t wait, Daniel. They compound. If I allow one violation to persist, it sets a precedent for”
“It’s 3 in,” I said. “My bumper is 3 in over a line that’s painted on asphalt. The guidelines are”
“I heard you,” I said. I stepped outside, walked to my car, and moved it forward about a foot. Then I walked back to the door. Is that better?
She looked at the car, looked at her binder. “I’ll need to measure to confirm.”
“Sandra,” I said her name very quietly, “please measure the car, and then please go home.”
She measured the car with an actual measuring tape she produced from her binder, confirmed it was now compliant, made a note, and left.
I went back inside and sat down at my desk and stared at my screen for a full 2 minutes before I could remember what I’d been doing.
That night, I started looking into the HOA guidelines more carefully than I ever had before. Not because I was looking for violations, because I was looking for rights. Specifically, I was looking for what I, as a homeowner, was and was not permitted to do on my own property.
And that’s when I found something interesting.
According to the Maplewood Estates HOA bylaws, specifically Article 9, Section 2, homeowners were permitted to make modifications to their private structures, including garages, provided those modifications didn’t alter the external appearance of the structure and didn’t violate local building codes. The key phrase was private structures. My garage was legally a private structure attached to my home. The door faced my driveway. The interior was entirely my property.
I filed that information away and didn’t do anything with it yet.
About 3 weeks after the bumper incident, I took a business trip. A short one, 4 days in Denver for a client meeting and some onsite work. I arranged for my neighbor Tom, the retired school teacher who lived two doors down and was one of the few genuinely good people in the neighborhood, to keep an eye on my place, grab my mail, and water my one indoor plant that I’d left on the porch by mistake.
I came back from Denver on a Friday evening, pulled into my neighborhood, drove up to my house, and stopped. My garage door was open. I always closed my garage door, always. It was automatic. The moment my car cleared the sensor, it closed. But it was open and parked inside it, taking up the entire space, was a car I didn’t recognize. A silver Lexus SUV, pristine and expensive-looking, sitting in my garage like it belonged there.
