• Summary
• Effect of the recorded documents on our homes
• What can be done about the recorded documents?

Sometime during the summer of 2009 Robert Cottrell started collecting email addresses from the neighborhood and attempting to create a "voluntary" Homeowners Association. There has never been a general meeting or vote of the neighborhood in relation to this attempt to create an HOA.

Here is a summary of what we know of Robert Cottrell's actions to create an HOA for the subdivision:

1. Cottrell met with several other people in the neighborhood on several occasions and listed some of them as the "interim board of directors" for the HOA.
2. On September 22, 2009, Cottrell filed The Heights At Jackson Creek Home Owners Association with the Colorado Secretary of State.
3. On September 24, 2009, Cottrell also recorded a document with El Paso County stating that the HOA was active and that a transfer fee of $150 was to be collected upon sale of any home in the subdivision.
4. During the month of October 2009, Cottrell sent out three emails to the neighborhood email list he compiled. The last of those emails listed the website for his HOA as being http://www.hjchoa.org .
5. At this point we reviewed the covenants and the documents Cottrell had posted to his website. We contacted him with our concerns. He was able to alleviate some but not all of our concerns. We met with him and another homeowner on October 27, 2009 to discuss our concern that without a modification to the covenants the HOA had to be 100% voluntary with no enforcement powers whatsoever. It was at that meeting that we learned about the transfer fee document he had recorded with El Paso County. The next day we had a title company pull title to our house and found out that the Cottrell document was associated with title to our house and each of the homes in the subdivision.
6. On November 2, 2009, Cottrell recorded a document with El Paso County purporting to cancel the transfer fee letter and stating that the transfer fees would not be collected.

The following two documents are now included in the chain of title for each of our homes:

We are concerned about how title companies will treat these documents. Each title company could treat it differently. A title company will likely have to disclose these documents to a new buyer. We still do not know if these documents will create a legal uncertainty sufficient to give any potential homebuyer the right to legitimately right to break his or her contract, but it seems likely that they it could.

The documents can not be removed or 'unrecorded'. They will always come up when title to your house is searched by a title company or potential buyer. As far as we can determine, the 11/2/09 Rescission Document is not legally sufficient to nullify the 9/24/09 Transfer Fee Document. It is our understanding that it will take a court order to fully rescind this document and remove any harm that has been done to the neighborhood.

It is our understanding of the law that when a person takes an action affecting title to real estate, without the legal authority to do so, he is liable for the attorney's fees and costs to undo that action.

As we stated above the only way we have found to fully rescind these documents is by a court order. If we take action, we would only seek to have a court nullify the documents and enter a judgment for our costs and attorney fees to do so.

We do not feel that we can sit back and allow someone to infringe on our property rights. We do not stand to gain anything from taking action, and in fact it would cost us time and energy which can't be recovered.