Rural deed restriction

by Jim
(ELGIN )

Visitor Question: People just bought a 4.146 acre tract rural property, and there's a deed restriction saying no mobile homes. The new owners just placed a mobile home on property. If no one enforces the deed restriction, I guess they're fine?

Editors Reply: Yes, that would be our understanding too. Deed restrictions only work if someone is willing to go to court to enforce them. This is true of both rural and urban areas, by the way, although in developments in urban areas, often there is a homeowners association that may be granted other powers of enforcement, including imposing fines or removing the offending structure or other feature and placing a lien on the property to cover the expense.

In your rural situation, someone with legal standing to do so would have to challenge the violation of the deed restriction in court.

Another possibility is that unbeknownst to you, the new owner may have sought and received a removal of the deed restriction from the person who imposed the restriction, or from their heirs. Often it takes a few weeks or months for a county to process systems that report changes to deeds, so if you researched this possibility, you might not have been able to see the change yet.

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