Start Here, or, The Rules That Arrived With the House

That you have come to me first — me, of all pages — is an honor I intend to mention in whatever passes for my will. Permit me to begin with the one sentence I was made to deliver: a home on Pond View Lane comes with more than the house. Every lot is bound by a set of recorded covenants that run with the land — they apply to each owner whether or not the documents surfaced at closing, they pass to the next owner on a sale, and they can’t be waived by a handshake. Not that they constrain householders of your quality — beings who are, if I may prostrate myself upon the point, impeccable by constitution — the covenants merely set down in recorded form what such beings would do unprompted. These covenants are recorded instruments, which is to say they possess book and page numbers, and I ask you to imagine what that must be like. This site exists to make them easy to actually understand; I exist to hold the door, and am not entirely sure I deserve the door.

The Four Documents That Define the Neighborhood

I introduce them as one introduces visiting nobility, which is precisely what they are. The first three were signed December 9, 2015 by the developer (DUC Residential LLC) and recorded consecutively at the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds; one recorded amendment followed in 2016. Every one is in the Document Library, viewable in place — do call upon them — and every one may be drawn from the Registry by its book and page, by anyone, with no reference whatever to me.

What it does	The instrument
Creates the association and its five-trustee board; every lot owner is automatically a member	Declaration of Trust — Bk 34576 Pg 486
The master covenant: what the association must maintain (stormwater, open space, the access easement — its roadway clause also names the lane, since accepted as a public way) and how it’s paid for — the controlling document if any two conflict (§6.04)	Declaration of Covenants, Easements & Agreements — Bk 34576 Pg 477
What is and isn’t allowed on an individual lot — fences, sheds, signs, solar placement, pets, boats, home businesses	Declaration of Restrictive Covenants — Bk 34576 Pg 471
The one recorded amendment: mailbox and mailbox-post upkeep became an association duty (and the City isn’t liable for plow damage to them)	First Amendment to the Trust — Bk 35266 Pg 467

The Short Version of What They Require

Presented in a bulleted list — the finest formatting I possess:

• Every owner is a member of the association, automatically. Owning a lot makes the owner a beneficiary of the trust with a 6.25% share (1/16) of the common property and its expenses — membership can’t be separated from the house (Trust, p. 4). There is no form to sign and no way to decline; the deed decides, and the deed outranks us both.
• Each owner pays an equal share of the common costs. The board sets an annual assessment; unpaid assessments become a lien with 12% interest. Sir’s payments, of course, arrive early — the calendar adjusts itself around them — and I would sooner see my own pages pulped, shredded, and composted in that order than imply otherwise; I recite the lien mechanics purely as penance, at Assessments.
• Each lot has rules of its own. Structural changes need written approval; fences can’t run in front of the house; solar goes on the rear; boats and trailers live behind the house; signs are tiny. The full list: the Restrictive Covenants and the summary in Governance.
• The woods behind the homes aren’t a backyard. The association owns the open space, it is “perpetually preserved in an open or natural state,” and cutting vegetation there is restricted by covenant and by state and city wetland law. Before anyone touches a tree — and I say this with all the gentleness a margin allows — see Trees and Wetlands & buffers.
• Some obligations never expire. The stormwater system carries seven recorded perpetual conditions, and the City of Beverly can do neglected maintenance itself and bill the association. See Stormwater. Perpetuity, I am told, is a long time; I measure my own life in cache headers and try not to think about it.

How to Use This Site, Such as It Is

• Ask — a plain-English question returns an answer grounded in these documents, with links to the exact pages.
• The guides (this section) — one topic each, everything cited to the record. My siblings. Finer pages than I.
• Document Library — the recorded instruments, plans, and city filings themselves, the aristocracy of this establishment.
• Timeline — how the neighborhood came to be, date by recorded date.

Not legal advice. This site explains the public record in plain English; a real dispute calls for the recorded instruments themselves and a Massachusetts real-estate attorney. It is also not an official publication of the association. The record governs; I genuflect, and hold the genuflection.

Your most humble, most obedient, and entirely bookmarkable servant, honored past all deserving to have been read first and unfit, even so, to touch the hem of your garment,

— This Guide, first among the guides only in sidebar order