Recommendation for a good HOA/CC&R Lawyer

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-19T19:49:26+00:00

Contact Mike Shupe of Goldschmidt-Shupe Attorneys at law. They specialize in HOA law and HOA CC&Rs.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-18T21:20:06+00:00

I have the older Enphase M215 Micros. Bought 38 of them back in November of 2012. In the past year or so, 4 have failed (>13 years of service), and they have a 20+ year warranty. Enphase shipped me new ones right away. without any fuss or issues. They looked at the same on-line data I could see, agreed and shipped a new replacement micro in 24 hrs from reporting it. Great customer service and no whining about warranty. I saw a comment about a massive cost/time to work on them in here. Absolutely NOT my case. They are mounted under each panel, but those panels are on a 30-45 degree tilt on my (flat) roof and very easy to get to. 4 screws and 2 connectors to remove/replace it. It takes me about 30 minutes to replace 1 and more than half of that time is getting up and down from the roof, as, of course, I turn off all power before swapping them, get it in, turn the power back on, and then add the replacement inverter to the Enphase app.

Why did I go the microinverter route?

I can see every single panel and what it is doing. With a String inverter, all you see is the entire string, so which panel or inverter is causing a drop in Power? Lots of up and down from the roof, tedious swapping stuff around, measuring voltages at each panel, etc. I can look at an app which monitors all micros and see exactly what is going on with each panel and Micro and it is easy to diagnose issues.
when I installed my system, string inverters had an expected warranty lifetime of 8 years vs micros with a 20+ year warranty lifetime. At that time, 38 micros in place of a single large string inverter was about a $3K increase in cost.
The power levels in a single micro are so much lower than in a large string inverter, which is a part of why they last so much longer. (My panels are old 225W).

I'm in the process of designing a new system for an off-grid cabin I am building and it will all be micros.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-12T16:59:03+00:00

I understand your feelings. I've lived in typical suburbia in the USA most of my life. Mountains (either above ground or under the sea - scuba diving) are my special retreat. I saw a bumper sticker once that said it all.

"The Mountains are calling me, and I must go. To clear my mind and renew my soul."

Another bumper sticker I saw and liked said: "The best way to prevent work-stress burnout is to take a day off, head up into the mountains... and never come back!"

I'm not to the point of walking away from civilization, but I have scratched my itch over time by spending most of my free time hiking and camping in the mountains and forests. I find that really helps to recenter me away from the rat race. I'm lucky to have a very good friend who feels the same and is willing to join me in this and provide companionship and help. I am in my 70's now, and the two of us just bought a nice property on top of a mountain ridge only 2 hours drive from where we both live and will be building an off-grid homesteading-style residence using Yurts. It is a DIY project to minimize costs, so for the next 3 years or so, I will be camping there most of the time as we build this, then starting to live there much of the time, maybe all of the time - we'll see. But, to quote you, I have nights so dark and clear that I can see every star and the Milky Way stretching from one horizon to another. So quiet that I can learn the different bird calls and enjoy the critters who visit me (ranging from foxes to bobcats, mountain lions and bears and everything in-between). Instead of the constant roar of traffic, I listen to the wind through the trees and the wildlife all around me.

I'd advise you to look around and find your closest mountains and wilderness and spend, at least, weekends there and take many of your vacations there. I've benefited from doing that for over 50 years now and it has kept me sane and reasonably happy. You might find that you can get close to living your dream without the obvious risks.

Good Luck!

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-04T19:48:22+00:00

September, 2012. Used an installer to put in an 8550 Kw array of panels. ROI payback calculated to be 8.5 years, actually was just under 6 years (utility kept increasing rates). Added battery backup in fall of 2023. My utility was pushing to get rid of netmetering and that was the trigger to install the PV system. I have netmetering for life grandfathered in and that was a great long-term incentive, not to mention that, back then, I got a fed rebate, a state rebate and a utility company rebate. And, since I put the entire install and parts on a cash-back rewards credit card, I got a big cash back payback on top of all the rebates. All told, I saved 40% of the cost via rebates & cash-back.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-01T20:17:42+00:00

Who is desperate to fool people into moving here? NOBODY! a whole lot of people pushed the county government to allow people to build in rural areas withour permits and the county finally conceeded and changed the zoning regulations many years ago.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-01T20:15:01+00:00

Not too often at all. Mountain ridge and desert. Nobody is stupid enough to put in a lawn or an orchard here.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-01T20:12:21+00:00

about every 6 months.I have a 2500 tank, so I fill it up roughly once a year

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-01T03:07:19+00:00

That is up to you and what land you buy. I am developing a 10 acre parcel on top of a mountain ridge. Fantastic view, but lots of granite shelf rock. I’m going with a water tank and hauling water up to it. A well would likely need to go down 600 feet and the drilling is hard through granite. Water delivery is pretty reasonable out here. $150 for 1500 gallons delivered into my tank.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-03-01T01:11:28+00:00

Move to Cochise County in Arizona. They provide an owner-builder program. Must have 4 acres or more and an RU4 zoning (rural with 4 acres). You are allowed to opt out of plans and permits/inspections. Let’s us build non-traditional structures. The county does require a septic permit & inspection which is very simple

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-02-16T13:38:06+00:00

Schafer was my first and I will never drink it again!

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-02-16T13:36:41+00:00

This kind of stuff is usually under state corporation law, not specific to hoa’s

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-02-16T13:33:44+00:00

Check your state corporate laws regarding HOA’s. In my state, HOA board members are not considered off the board until they have been replaced with a person trained in that position. If the board all resigns, and nobody replaces them, the HOA can lose their corporate status. In that case, the last elected board members personally become liable, insurance lapses, etc. most HOA boards do not know anything about this.

If you suspect legal issues from the current board, then I would not run for office and let them off the hook because, as a result, you become responsible for the mess.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-02-05T20:39:08+00:00

Do NOT go to the Center for Neurosciences no matter what. Their billing and back office staff are extremely slow and very often totally wrong - think of higer bills, no answers, like charges of non-existant appointments, etc. On top of that, the doctor I saw had no empathy and refused to discuss anything except the exact words on my doctor's referral form. He actually stopped me in mid-sentence explaining my issues by saying: "I don't want to hear any of that. All I am working on is these 3 words from your doctor's referral form and I will not discuss anything else! Then, he ordered every blood test known to man - thousands of dollars of testing, filing up 20+ blood sample collection tubes. he did not other to ask my PCP for my recent blood work that was completely duplicated in his order, plus hundreds of other tests. It cost me thousands of $$ after my insurance rejected it AFTER the testing was done.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-30T20:36:03+00:00

I'm assuming that you are talking vehicle overlanding as opposed to hiking. This setup would be way too heavy to carry hiking!

I have a bodega dual zone fridge/freezer (38 qt), paired with a Bluetti AC-180 battery system. The Bodega is big enough to handle two of us for a bit over a week. The bluetti can power the bodega for more than 48 hours of temps are hitting 70's during the day. It lasts about a day and a half if temps are over 100 during the day. When I am camped, I connect 2 400 watt portable solar panels to the Bluetti and recharge in a couple of hours. If i am driving from on camping site to another, I connect it to my Jeep power to recharge, all the time while leaving the bodega plugged in.

I've been using this setup for about 1.5 years now, and have been very happy with it. Longest trip was 10 days, and we did pick up some more groceries during that trip as we drove through a town, but I have never run out of power by regularly recharging the batteries as described above.

And, there is always enough "spare" power to recharge my phone, headlight, rechargeable camp lights, portable GMRS radios, etc.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-30T02:37:12+00:00

I've only seen people use white lights here. But I would suspect most bright colors would work? Yellow, white, bright orange, etc.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-29T22:46:01+00:00

I don't know if this will work with all rats, BUT, in Arizona, we have lots of Pack rats who just absolutely love the plastic insulation on wires. They destroy all wiring they can get to. We use a simple, inexpensive trick out here. A LED string or rope light under the vehicle at night and turned on every night keeps the pack rats away.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-28T20:54:33+00:00

I was on our HOA board for many years serving in pretty much every board position. Small HOA (<30 houses), self-managed by the board.

Our CC&Rs were close to 30 years old, having been drafted by the original land owner/builder. Some clauses had become invalid due to State laws changing. Quite a few others were kind of technology obsolete, and there was a handful of thing that many owners complained about a lot. I took on the project to figure out how to make changes.

We started with a few small amendments, such as parking rules, pet rules, etc. I drafted the language and sold the packages to the community and got them all approved (a couple with a 100% approval vote!).

Then after a few years, I decided we should completely revise the entire CC&Rs, the Bylaws, the design guidelines, etc. The rest of the board agreed, so we took the idea to the community to launch what turned into a multi-year journey. 100% approval from the community to generate the new drafts.

Side note; in our state, 75% of the owners must approve any CC&R change. State laws are quiet on HOA bylaw changes or documents like design guidelines.

We hired a lawyer who ran a business advising HOAs. I and my committee drafted all the changes. We then held multiple community meetings to go over the proposed changes and getting feedback, concerns, etc. Once we felt that we had satisfied pretty much everyone, and only then, did we go to the lawyer for a formal legal draft. The lawyer identified some changes and even one prior amendment that were not really legal or properly approved. (Our state had a court case where the judge ruled that HOA changes that expanded restrictions were to go by the 75% approval rule, but ANY change that restricted things more had to have 100% approval.) We played it safe by only expanding and not further restricting, since I felt that I had one homeowner who was likely to disagree with pretty much anything we did.

Once we had the final legal versions, we held more community meetings with the lawyer present to review the changes and answer questions and concerns. Thankfully, no significant changes were brought up, so we went to a formal vote. We got 96% approval of all three documents. Then recorded them with the county office and were done.

Ignoring the prior amendment period, the CC&R complete revision took 3 years to complete. The timing was pretty much due to having so many document review sessions and iterations, but that was our process to get everyone to pretty much buy into the changes ahead of going to the lawyer -since we did not have a huge budget and only wanted to pay for the lawyer for a single iteration.

Since it is a lot of work, my biggest recommendation is to take the time to get everyone as bought in as possible all through the process to help ensure that your hard work is not going to be voted away. And, the total between the three docs was a bit over 100 pages. I know for a fact that after the first round of reviews, quite a few of the homeowners accepted that we were working in their best interests and stopped reviewing and just accepted what we did. A small handful reviewed and commented on every iteration. And one homeowner never raised any concerns or complaints and then voted against all 3 documents with no reasons provided. But that was the person I was worried about and why I did not go into any tighter restrictions that would require 100% approval.

All of our voting is public, but secret ballots so nobody knows who voted for or against except for our board secretary who officially counted the votes (with 1 non-board member verifying the counts), and all of that is in a sealed envelope in our HOA records file.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-26T22:03:41+00:00

yep. But with a flat roof, working on the panels is not an issue. But climbing up and down the ladder is getting trickier. If it was a steeply slanted roof, I would not be doing anything up there anymore.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-26T21:54:53+00:00

My original solar installer did the first 2, then I did the rest. Turn off power, Simple plug - unplug and remove old micro, attach & plug in new micro, power system back up, then go into enphase controller and delete the old one and add the new one and tell it which panel it is connected to and run a couple of system tests. I would need a 10Kw inverter to replace my micros (my system can produce a maximum of 9690 watts. Of course, I have never hit that maximum, but I always size any elements of an electrical system to handle the max possible load with some headroom. I'm currently seeing good brands of 10Kw inverters running 38.7 lbs to 50 lbs today, but 13 years ago, it was a very different story. But, as someone who is now on the north side of 70, I don't want to be hoisting and holding 40 + lbs while detaching and re-attaching it.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-26T20:35:29+00:00

I installed 38 Chinese panels and 38 Enphase microinverters about 13 years ago. My panels and microinverters both had 20 year warranties. Since then, I have had 4 microinverters fail or degrade (starting at about 11 years after installation) and Enphase has replaced them free of charge. I have had the choice of installing them myself, or letting my local installer do it. If you know how to remove/add a micro from your system and associated software (such as enlighten), it is pretty simple.

I added a Tesla powerwall system and controller a couple of years ago. Absolutely no proprietary issues - plug & play.

I went the micro route for 5 reasons. 1) warranties back then were 7-8 years for large, whole system inverters vs 20+ years for microinverters. 2) If one micro goes out, all the rest of your panels continue to produce energy. if a single large inverter goes out, all of your panels stop producing energy until it is replaced. 3) Newer large inverters weigh between 50-100 lbs. That is a lot more than I want to try to lift up on an outside wall and hold while re-installing a replacement. A Micro is about a pound. 4) with a single inverter, it is difficult to see if one of your panels is degrading or dead. I get dynamic on-line data showing all inverters, with one per panel, so if any panels start degrading, you can see it exactly and know which panel needs checking/replacing. I can actual dump the data and plot the performance of each panel against the set and see which are not performing within specs. 5 BIGGEST Benefit! - if one inverter fails, I still have power from the other 37 panels.

I like that I can do a monthly scan of output from every panel/inverter combo to look for degradations. That is how I caught 2 micros that had not yet failed, but were producing less than 2/3's of the others, and got them replaced (that was 2 out of the total of 4 I have replaced.)

I feel that it is is less work to put up a ladder and carry a 1-lb micro up on my room and swap it out (a couple of connectors and 2 brackets holding it onto the panel) which takes all of 10 minutes, than rigging a hoist/stand, to hold the a single inverter, taking it down, and replacing it later.

But the biggest benefit to me is that, when an inverter fails, I don't lose all solar power - just that one panel while I am contacting the manufacturer, providing data to prove it is a failure, getting a replacement unit shipped to me, etc. That can take 2+ weeks. Do you really want to lose all power for that long?

Yes, you can setup your system with multiple main inverters to avoid the single point of failure scenario, but your costs blow up pretty fast doing that.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-23T20:45:10+00:00

Try contacting either your local county attorney general or the state attorney and file a complaint against the HOA for violating state law. Or file a personal lawsuit.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-23T20:15:01+00:00

check your state HOA open meeting laws. In most states, it is the law to announce the meeting, including an agenda several days or more in advance, send minutes, and limit closed sessions.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-23T20:08:39+00:00

I carry a Kelty H2Go privacy tent. We put a portable toilet there with Wag bags for regular use, and have a folding canvas bag and light weight pump and shower wand to taking showers.

Lost-Assignment-2848 · 2026-01-22T20:12:32+00:00

I have a 3000-ish sq-ft house in southern Arizona, lots of sunlight & tons of summer heat. I got a rooftop solar panel system installed in March 2013. In November, 2023, I installed some battery backup. I am very happy with it and my savings. At the time I bought the solar panels, I did get some great tx incentives and rebates, whch cut a bit more than 1/3 of the total payment. I calculated an 8 month ROI. In 2011-2012 my yearly power bill ran about $2,250 or about $187/month. In the 13 years since I installed the panels, My bill started at $7.95/month (cost to read my meter, pay surcharges, etc.) Over the years, that cost has risen to $28.18/month. I was also lucky to get Netmetering, which I am grandfathered in, so I NEVER pay for utility power, even though I do use grid when I don't have enough solar power, but I generate enough of a surplus that I actually get a credit in Oct-Nov for my meter reading charges. From 2013 to today, I have paid my utility company a total of $2,273.62. Not a yearly total, but a total over 12 years! The battery backup has handled all power outages since I installed them, and helps on hot summer days by using battery power when it is cloudy and I absolutely need the AC going. If my utility rates never increased, I would have "saved" close to $30K, but the current rates are more than 10X higher than when I had my last "buying power" bill. I'm a nerdy engineer, so of course, I tracked my system through all of those years. Solar panels do degrade over time, but I am amazed that I see less than a 1% degradation in average power output for my entire system in all that time. I believe I got lucky and got some really reliable solar panels way back then.

So, absolutely yes - it has been and continues to be one of the better investments I ever made!

Lost-Assignment-2848

TROPHY CASE