Q. What do HOA fees cover?
A. Home Owner Association fees cover maintenance, replacement reserve deposits, insurance for all structures, water and sewer, trash and recycling, common area electricity, and required registration fees and tax prep for the association.
Q. How does parking work?
A. There are 22 off-street parking spaces for cars. Two of these spaces are owned by the HOA and reserved for guests. The remaining 20 spaces (12 carports and 8 uncovered) are separately deeded and owned by. Street parking is available on NE Going St., although we have committed to neighbors to limit such parking to the frontage of our property. Finally, there are ~38 bike parking spaces in common structures.
Q. Do the all the homes have solar water and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems?
A. Yep!
Q. What happened with the 2 homes that were on the property?
A. The house at 4745 NE Going St. was moved around the corner to NE 47th Ave. The small house at 4821 NE Going St., which was in poor condition and had low ceilings, was torn down, salvaging and recycling what we could along the way.
Q. Are home-based businesses allowed at Cully Grove?
A. Portland’s zoning code is fairly friendly to home businesses. Our rules place no restrictions on home business uses (including in-home child care) beyond what is covered by existing city codes. For more information on this, please review Portland’s home occupation regulations.
Q. What rules does the community have?
A. Typical covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) regulate the use and appearance of homes and common spaces, including restrictions related to signage, exterior lighting, pets, and modifications to building exteriors. These rules can be found in Section 8 of our Bylaws.
Q. Are there any restrictions on renting out units?
A. We expect this community to be predominantly owner-occupied. Allowed rental situations, consistent with our vision and allowed by our bylaws, include:
- Renting of rooms within owner-occupied homes for family members and/or lower-income renters (ie. Students, farmers…)
- Limited duration renting of homes while the owner travels, studies, and/or lives abroad. Such stints might range from 2 months to 2 years
No more than 25% of homes may be rented out at any one time. This limit should ensure that owner-occupant buyers can get owner-occupant mortgage financing.
Q. How does the community deal with conflict?
A. Conflict is a natural part of human interaction. There will be times when not every community member gets along with everyone else. The key is to have resources and tools close at hand to help the community work through break downs. We practice consensus decisionmaking as part of our commitment to the ideals of cohousing.
Q. What is the zoning for the site and how can 16 homes fit on it?
This 80,000 square foot site is zoned R5, allowing one house per 5,000sf of site area. Instead of dividing the property into multiple lots through a subdivision process, we did a Planned Development, which provides more flexibility in the site layout. This allowed us to site homes and parking on the periphery and locate indoor and outdoor common spaces towards the center of the property.
Q. What is the legal ownership structure?
A. The homes are owned as condominiums. Each residential unit is defined to include a home and a private front, back, and/or side yard, much like in a typical subdivision. Each owner has the opportunity to purchase 1-2 separately deeded off-site parking spaces. Certain residential units also come with private storage lockers. Yards and storage lockers are designated as ‘limited common elements.’ In addition, 2 craft spaces on top of the bike storage rooms are owned by residents as ‘craft space units.’ The community garden, central courtyard, pedestrian and car circulation areas, bike storage rooms, and guest parking spaces are owned and managed collectively. Legally, these are referred to as ‘general common elements.’
Q. Are there be restrictions on resales?
A. Legally, there are no barriers to re-sale on the open market. In practice, we expect to create an informal system that allows remaining residents to help recruit prospective buyers and provide input into who will purchase homes as they turn over, so long as this process does not jeopardize the seller’s ability to close the sale within a reasonable timeframe. We will also provide opportunities (such as informal pot-luck dinners) for prospective buyers to meet existing residents and vice-versa to share information, answer questions, and increase the odds that new residents become familiar with the community they are joining to foster a good match.
Cully Grove 