We are a well established fly in community in the Atlanta area. We have corporate bylaws, and a new set of covenants to comply with Georgia code 44-3-220. None of this is a problem.

What we need some help on is a thru the fence agreement between one of the property owners and the HOA. One of our owners owns several acres adjoining community/HOA owned property and they keep horses there. At the present, they simply access their property “thru the fence” from their property, then across HOA property, then onto their adjoining land. We’ve not had any problems, and really don’t expect to, but I suggested a Thru the Fence agreement should be drawn up to establish the rules, guidelines, restrictions, etc for this resident to access his adjoining property (which is NOT part of the subdivision at all). He is quite agreeable to this and would like to draw up something.

Does anyone have any Through the Fence agreements they might be willing to share, to help us create something?

Thanks,

Chuck Hanna
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Everyone today is aware of the slowdown in the economy and most officials lay the blame on a real estate bubble bursting. And, this came as a result of the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and the resultant decline of the construction industry.

The country as a whole has fallen into a deep, deep recession with banks and mortgage companies and Wall Street firms failing or getting propped up by the government. We all have read story after story about the stock market wiping out the savings of countless individuals and banks and businesses closing their doors.

Over the years we’ve found that the general aviation industry usually went into recession a little later than other businesses and took longer to recover.

But, what about the residential airpark movement? Our past surveys revealed a profile of airpark residents as being between 45-60 years old, children usually gone, well-established in careers or professions and financially in the upper middle-class.

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2008 obviously was not the greatest year for real estate or the stock market as everyone is aware. What the year as bad for residential airparks as it was for other real estate properties? Did airpark lots sell during the year? How about resale of existing homes? How did the market hold up dollar-wise?

How about letting us know if any lots or houses on your airpark sold during 2008. And, if you have an idea of the price range, fill us in on that, too. We’ll compile the information and share it as soon as we’ve had a sufficient response.

The short survey below should only take a few minutes to complete. It also allows you to leave comments and we encourage you to do so.
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We received a note from Lars de Jounge at Indian River Aerodrome (Vero Beach, Florida – Click here for directory details – subscription required) asking about annual fees.

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.

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The Living With Your Plane survey on buying and selling residential airpark properties didn’t bring as many individual responses as we had hoped for but several of the ones we received apparently included both a purchase and sale.

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. Read the full story

Editor’s note: here’s another in our planned series of stories describing state by state the airparks listed in the Living With Your Plane Directory. We started with Alaska and will tackle one state per issue unless there are a particularly low number of airparks in that particular state. In that case, we’ll try to do several states in the same story.

As always, we welcome your comments and ideas and of course, if your residential airpark isn’t listed or if you have information about other fly-in communities in the state for which we’re reporting, or any other state, let us know by filling in this form with the appropriate infomration.

Georgia counts 27 airparks with three of them currently in planning or under construction. The earliest state facility, Pinewood Airpark, opened in 1967 at Douglasville, GA.

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This is the first in a planned series of stories describing state by state the airparks listed in the Living With Your Plane Directory. We’re starting with Alaska and will tackle one state per issue unless there is a particularly low number of airparks in that particular state. In that case, we’ll try to do several states in the same story.

As always, we welcome your comments and ideas and of course, if you have information about other residential airparks in Alaska or any other state, we urge you to contact us.

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Here’s the third – and final – installment of results from the recent Living With Your Plane survey of subscribers informing us how much their airpark is affected by different problems that have cropped up around the country.

As we noted in first two articles, the responses came from 53 individuals representing 23 different states. Even better, none of the respondents came from the same fly-in community so that means we received a broad response.

In our first installment we discussed problems with airpark rules, animals running loose and people on the runway – taxiway. The second article covered attendance at homeowner association meetings, use of the runway by non-residents and noise complaints.

For this final report we’ll provide responses to our questions about non-aviation folks buying airpark lots, enforcement of architectural rules, allowing junk to accumulate on lots and commercial operations from residential airparks.

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Here’s the second installment of results from the recent Living With Your Plane survey of subscribers informing us how much their airpark is affected by different problems that have cropped up around the country.

As we noted in our first piece, the responses came from 53 individuals representing 23 different states. Even better, none of the respondents came from the same fly-in community so that means we received a broad response.

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Recently we asked Living With Your Plane subscribers to tell us how much their airpark is affected by problems that have cropped up around the country. We received responses from 53 individuals representing 23 different states. Even better, none of the respondents came from the same fly-in community so that means we received a broad response.

Rather than burying everyone with the answers and comments I received for all of the questions at once, I’m going to break it down into a few questions at a time.

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