Can a homeowner call a general meeting? Maybe and maybe not!

Most documents allow for a member or a group of members to call for a meeting of the general membership. Exactly what number or percentage of homeowners is required to generate such an action is different from one community to another.

What do the covenants, conditions and restrictions - CC&Rs (or deed restrictions) state? Do they have provisions for an individual member to call for a homeowners’ meeting? Are there any options for getting a special meeting of the board of directors?

I repeatedly admonish people planning to buy into a residential airpark community (or any other type situation in which there is a homeowners’ association or other entity that can enforce community rules) to make sure the CC&Rs are understood completely. And, if the rules are plain, do they meet with the lifestyle they plan to follow.

Recently I ran into a situation at which the CC&Rs were understood by all but one of the homeowners. The CC&Rs allowed that individual to call for a general meeting at which that individual explained the rules, as he understood them. The majority of the group disagreed. Lawyers were brought into the issue on both sides before a compromise was agreed to.

Who won in such a situation? The attorneys, of course! Trying to resolve the issues as clearly and simply as possible is important for the benefit of all combined. No set of rules can ever be written that will meet all circumstances and all interpretations. They must be broad enough to allow for things to change but tight enough to make sure one individual can’t disrupt the entire community.

We encourage any homeowner unhappy with the actions of their governing board, or lack of actions, to meet individually and try to resolve the issue before calling for a general meeting. Unfortunately, that type session usually ends up with comments that shouldn’t have been made and feelings that are hurt and that never heal.

Specifically, he wants to know if Living With Your Plane has information on annual home owner fees charged airpark lot owners. Residents of Indian River currently pay $900 per year and Lars is concerned that is too low.

Following is a slide (click image for larger version) from the presentation Dave Sclair made at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh this past summer.

As you can see, there is a wide range of fees.

Post your comments or current examples below. Be sure to include the airpark on which you reside.

Homeowner fees

Question - What’s the best form of organization and management for a residential airpark and how should the property be owned?Answer - I’m not sure there is a “best” form of organization and management. Virtually every fly-in community has unique situations that require individual attention. What works great for a fly-in community in one state might create overwhelming problems in another. Even airparks in the same state can have problems that mandate different modes of organization and management.

Given the above preamble, I can comment that the vast majority of residential airparks with which I have any familiarity have an incorporated homeowners association. In most cases the homeowners’ association owns the runway and related taxiways and streets. Maintenance of these items of infrastructure fall onto the association that is managed and funded by the owners of property within the fly-in community.

There are a wide variety of options to that simple outline. They vary from state to state, county to county and city to city. Laws and rules differ so dramatically around the country that no one is able to prepare a “model” document that will work everywhere. There are other forms of organizations, such as an LLC (Limited Liability Company), a developer-owned and managed facility and a through the fence agreement at a publicly owned airport.

Usually a developer or a group of people organize the fly-in community, get the required legal approvals and prepare the documents allowing them to sell the lots and operate the facility. Generally, these documents spell out when and if a homeowners association will become effective and how it will be managed.

The deed restrictions that go with the establishment of the legal entity spell out how and what the property owners can and cannot do. That’s why I always encourage would-be property purchasers to get the legal documents carefully checked by a competent attorney and explained to you in a manner you can understand. Once you’ve purchased a lot you’re going to live by the deed restrictions, Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&Rs). Changing them is difficult at best and often times virtually impossible.

Have a question? Email Dave.

Question - I’m trying to determine if I can successfully develop a residential airpark in my community. What do you think is the critical number of homesites needed for a fly-in community to work? Is there an optimum size of the lots and how many acres do I need for the runway and related taxiways, roads, etc? Answer - I’ve seen or heard of successful residential communities with as few as half a dozen homesites and there are some that failed to get off the ground with such a small number. On the other side of the equation, planned fly-in communities with a huge number of lots have been very successful, and, by the same token many haven’t gotten beyond the dreaming stage.

That’s a long way around in explaining that there isn’t any magic number of lots to make a project successful.

More critical to creating a successful project probably is taking a good look at how many airplanes there are within a 50-mile radius. What’s the condition of the airports where the panes are based? Are there lots of hangars available? In what sort of condition are the hangars? How much are hangar and tiedown fees in the area.

All these factors play a major part on whether or not there is adequate market for a fly-in community of half a dozen sites or a few hundred lots. The harder it is to find a decent hangar and the higher the rental rates for those that are available the better for someone planning a new airpark. If there aren’t hangars of decent quality available, it becomes much easier to sell the residential airpark. The same goes if the hangar or tiedown fees are high. When the rental fee for a hangar is equal to a good percentage of what a person would be paying for a lot and home, it becomes fairly easy to sell the property.

The amount of acreage needed for a fly-in community depends on a wide variety of conditions. Obviously, the length of the runway will be a primary factor. If the property is at sea level, a shorter runway can be utilized than if the property is located at 5,000 foot MSL. A market study should allow a developer to decide whether there will be buyers for lots that can support million dollar homes or small, relatively inexpensive places. That will determine whether the home lots will be small or large.

Probably a good way to determine some of these answers for any particular market is to drive around and see what type housing developments have gone up in the last couple years. Talk to the developers of those projects and find out how they sold. Get the names of the professionals who did the design and some of the contractors who built the infrastructure. You’ll get the answers to what can and can’t be accomplished - and a rough idea of the costs - pretty quick.

And let’s face it; the best project in the world won’t work if the pricing isn’t right for buyer and seller.

Have a question? Email Dave.

Explain the meaning of airpark and airport and the difference. Such as Adelanto Airpark or Adelanto Airport. Both have been used. We have a California Airport Permit. Thank you for doing LWYP.

Dave’s reply: Back when I started Living With Your Plane (while living on Shady Acres airpark) I looked for official information on residential areas attached to airports. There wasn’t any that I could find, so I created the definition.

“A Residential Airpark is an airport with two or more homes or homesites located immediately adjacent to the runway, accessible to the runway by a taxiway or can be reached by a short walk (less than 10-15 minutes.)”

What makes an airport an airpark is the co-location of homes with the intended purpose of providing access to the airport. There are many airports around the country with homes adjacent, but without official, legal access to the airport. These are not airparks.

An airpark is always also an airport, but an airport isn’t necessarily an airpark. Hope this clears things up.

We are having a problem with horses on one acre lots with homes and hangars. There is not much room for horses. A couple can have up to three horses. Any advice? Airparks with horses, how big are the lots?

Elaine Evans

Mid Valley is in the ground work process of arranging a lease with the County. Leasing the “airfield” to the county would allow us to obtain much needed funds to repave our runway.

Do you know of any Privately owned, public access airparks that have done something similar? It would be nice to see an existing lease arangement to use as a convincing tool and layout for our own paperwork. 

I’m not aware of any such relationship anywhere but it seems to make a lot of good sense for both sides.

Does anyone know of a lease of a privately-owned, public-use airport by a public entity? Posts your comments below.

Question - How do we handle concerns of homeowners living in the immediate vicinity of our residential airpark but aren’t part of our community? They are making comments about the noise, fear of airplanes crashing onto their homes and low-flying airplanes.

Answer - The simple solution to most of the problems is called “being a good neighbor.”

Make sure all your airpark residents keep the maximum safe altitude over nearby homes. Try to avoid flying over the school, church, hospital and housing developments as much as possible while still maintaining proper approach and departure practices.

Encourage everyone to operate at hours that are compatible with folks in the area. In other words, try to avoid taking off at 4 am on a Sunday morning when neighbors are normally sleeping. If you do have to depart at such an hour, try to operate as quietly as you can.

Obviously, flying aerobatics immediately over the airport or nearby isn’t a good idea. Most non-pilots look at such maneuvers as “hot-dogging” at best or dangerous activities at best. Repetitious touch and go’s for long periods of time also tend to irritate neighbors so it is best to utilize a nearby commercial airport for that type of training or currency.

As for fear of accidents, flying conservatively will help reduce those concerns among your neighbors but educating them about aviation is probably the best thing you can do.

Invite neighbors over for a potluck on a nice Sunday afternoon and offer them a flight over the area so they can see their own house from the air. Show them positive aspects of general aviation and explain the differences between your light planes and the airliners. Make sure they understand that even if an engine quit, a light plane can glide a long way; it won’t just drop straight down out of the sky.

Take every opportunity to point out your fly-in community’s safety record. It is also a good idea to let local police, fire and hospital officials know about your airpark and encourage them to use your facilities in case of an emergency. That’s being a good neighbor!

Have a question? Email Dave.

And, in the case of some real estate professionals, multiple sales were recorded on the same form. For example, one real estate professional indicated the sale of two homes and six lots during the last year. The end result is that it appears we received information on about 35 to 40 transactions.

Our survey was designed to discover whether residential airpark properties were suffering a sales slowdown like much of the residential market in many areas of the country. We also sought information on how long a property had been on the market, how the asking and selling price compared, the price range of the property and whether there were plenty of lookers for the property.At least 20 undeveloped lots were reported sold among the transactions reported. An airpark home with hangar (whether it was integrated into the house or a separate structure), came in second with at least half a dozen sales reported while homes or hangar only sales were considerably less, two in each category.

The purchase price for 28.6 percent of the properties was less than $100,000 and a like percentage reported a price of $100,001 to $200,000. Another quarter of the respondents claimed a transaction at the $200,001 to $350,000 category. Three sales were reported in the $350,001 to $500,000 class, There was one reported sale each at $500,001 to $750,000 and $750,001 to $1 million.

Survey respondents reported the property they were involved with was on the market for longer than a year in just under 40 percent of the cases. In contrast, 32 percent said their properties were listed for less than 3 months. Five properties were listed from 3 to 6 months and another three places were sold in 7 to 12 months.

The survey asked buyers how many properties they had visited before making a deal. Nearly 80 percent of the buyers reported visiting 1 to 5 properties before deciding which one to purchase. Another 16 percent reported visiting more than 10 properties in their search for the perfect residential airpark property.

Financing the purchase was primarily with cash. Eleven survey respondents (58%)reported paying cash for their purchase while almost 37 percent said they used conventional or VA financing. Only one reported the seller financed the deal.

Needless to say, with that high a percentage paying cash, the financing aspect of the deal was extremely simple for most people.

Sellers had a somewhat different view of the number of visitors to their property. Nearly 37% said their property was viewed by 1 to 5 prospects. There were 6 to 10 visitors at 45.5 percent of the airpark properties sold and over 18 percent of those completing the survey as a seller said they had more than 10 visits to study their property.

When the property was sold, there were four equal segments of reductions from the asking price. A quarter of the respondents said they cut the price less than $10,000; a second quarter had to reduce their asking price between $10,000 and $25,000 while a third quarter took a $25,000 - $50,000 markdown. The final group reported slashing the price by more than $100,000 to make the sale.

Although we have no way of knowing one way or another, we assume this larger price cut was related to a home sale at the upper end of the price schedule.

Finally, 45 percent of transactions were made utilizing a real estate professional and 55 percent claimed they did not use a real estate salesperson.

The responses came from Arizona. California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

One Florida individual said it was his opinion that seller prices in his area had dropped about 20 percent. “However, most sellers are not panicking or dropping prices and seem confident things will be moving after the election in November.”

As a result of the survey responses, it appears to us that residential airpark properties - homes with integrated hangars, stand-alone home and free standing hangars - all continue to sell at about the same rate they have been for the last few years. The amount of time on the market and the number of folks checking the properties out also seems to be about the same as previosuly reported. It doesn’t appear that the sub-prime market meltdown has had any effect on the fly-in community.

The number of properties sold and the length of time they stay on the market seems to be more a condition of the number of possible buyers in any particular section of the country rather than anything else. There just aren’t as many individuals looking to buy a home on a residential airpark as they are folks interested in living on a golf course, as a comparison.

Question: I noticed a number of fly-in communities in foreign countries. I mean places like Mexico, England, Australia, South America and places in Europe. In other words, anyplace except the United States and Canada. The photos on the Living With Your Plane website and the web pages of the airparks in these foreign places really make the facilities look great. Is it safe to buy into these properties? Are these safeguards I need to consider before buying? Are Americans treated differently when buying foreign properties?

Answer: Wow, great questions. Most of them had never come up before and they are issues that I’ve not personally considered. However, there are a few common factors that can be taken into consideration that should help you in making your personal decisions.

Like any real estate transaction it is critical that you understand the legal documents that are required to finalize the deal. It seems hard enough to understand the legal mumbo-jumbo that goes with most escrows and deeds when they are in English; having to understand them in a foreign language just ups the stress-factor by a considerable amount, in my opinion.

You need to acquire information about real estate purchases and sales in the country where you are interested in buying. Some countries I believe have restrictions against non citizens buying, for example, and you need to ascertain the facts.

I always advise people interested in purchasing fly-in community property to get the services of an attorney who knows real estate law and it helps if the person also knows something about aviation. In the case of foreign purchases, you’ve got to find someone who can help you with the language and the foreign laws and rules. This is of the utmost importance.

People in foreign countries aren’t going to take any more advantage of a foreign buyers than a local one, but you need to know what you are doing and how the rules are followed.

I agree that several of the airparks listed in foreign countries look absolutely beautiful. I’d love to visit several of them myself. Checking in with the US Embassy in that particular country might also be in line.

My final word and caution would be something like this: whatever care and precautions you would take when considering a real estate purchase within the United States, you should be even more aware of the potential problems when buying in a foreign country. Not because the people are out to “get” Americans, but simply because the laws and factors are different in different countries.

Does your airpark have issues that you’d like me to address? E-mail your question to me. Be sure to include your phone number in case I need clarification on your question.