Re: Garage shop with restrictive covenants
What you want to do really depends on the neighbors and the HOA. Pretty much all of the covenants for HOAs are written the same and it depends on how strictly they are enforced. Most restrict any business use. However a low key ''hobby'' shop in your garage is many times acceptable, but if you have an a**hole neighbor that wants to cause trouble then you could have a problem.
I bought a property that was (I work from home now) about an hour from work just to get out of any city or HOA restrictions. I purposely bought just outside of the urban growth boundary, there won't be any housing developments built around me any time soon. It's zoned RRFF (Rural Residential Farm Forest), technically I could build a sawmill on my property and be in compliance. Rural and quiet, but only about 10 minutes from major shopping areas. The neighbors on both sides of me have heavy equipment and almost every property in the area has a shop. In fact there are 3 full commercial machine shops along my 1 mile road. We just respect our neighbours and all get along fine.
I highly recommend that you concider buying a bit farther out than you are comfortable with right now. I find restrictions to be a PITA, dealing with the county is bad enough, having to deal with a city or HOA is unacceptable to me.
Many years ago a group of floating home owners (houseboats) had a loose confederation that was sort of a HOA. We had to actually formalize it when we built a new moorage. Fortunately during that transition time I was the HOA president and I assembled a committee of like minded members to actually write the covenants. Since some of the members had hobbies and businesses we specifically allowed machine/wood shops and business use of the individual homes as long as it did not negatively impact the other members enjoyment of their homes and the common areas. There were restrictions, but not overly burdensome. Getting 70 members to agree on anything was challenging in itself, but the covenants were accepted by 2/3 majority vote at a formal meeting. But I think that this is not a normal case. In this case the HOA was acceptable to me, but I was able to write the rules.
Jim Dawson
Sandy, Oregon, USA