No matter if you use them for decoration or actual barriers, fences are pretty much found in every HOA. As ubiquitous as they are, though, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have an effect on your neighborhood! While proper fence placement can serve as a valuable aesthetic and functional tool, improper placement can lead to a community that feels inaccessible and members who feel disconnected from one another.
Gassen, your Eden Prairie provider of property management services, is here to help your HOA get fencing right. Below, you’ll find a few quick tips on how to do just that.
Visibility Is Key
We’ve all pulled up to an intersection with tree branches obscuring its stop signs and shrubs hiding the turn beyond and wondered to ourselves, who exactly planned this? While highly wooded areas tend to be taken care of by vendors in an HOA, fences, if not placed conscientiously, can prove a much more enduring problem to your residents’ safety.
Before doing any renovation to common areas in regards to fencing, you’ll need to consider if there are security or safety reasons a resident might need to see beyond it and build accordingly, lest you waste precious funds or end up with injured residents and a lawsuit on your hands.
Consider Resident Commitment When Making Fence Rules
Just like any other exterior structure, fences can be made of a variety of materials—wood, stone, you name it—that all have varying maintenance requirements. Since HOA management tends to strictly dictate what residents can and can’t use when it comes to fences on their own property, the board will also need to consider maintenance requirements—and if residents are able and willing to handle them.
Requiring that all residents, for example, have wood fences also will require that they all keep up with staining and replace them in a relatively short time once they rot. Is this something that will go over well with residents, or should a different, more lenient rule take its place?
Keep the Neighborhood Feeling Breezy
Privacy fences are great options if your neighborhood backs up to a busy road, but too heavy a reliance on such fences can give your community the feeling of a blocked-off medieval castle! Slat or iron fences can help keep things from feeling cramped. No fence at all is always better than a fence that serves no functional or aesthetic purpose.
Online Property Management, Accounting and More: Contact Gassen Today
From online property management to accounting property management, we have the comprehensive services your HOA needs to be at its best. Give our Eden Prairie office a call today at 952-922-5575.