Bay Cove at Heron Bay: 70 Parkland homes, one-year minimum leases

Articles IX and X let Bay Cove set its own assessments and lien its own lots, which is why a Bay Cove file carries two estoppels, Bay Cove's and the master's. Chapter 720 sets how fast each must arrive and what each may cost. The buyer owes the master Heron Bay's Capital Payment on top.

• Under Article X § 1, a buyer answers jointly and severally for assessments due at the transfer, meaning together with the seller and for the full amount (p. 37).
• A late payment draws interest at 1.5% a month, plus a late charge that may reach $25.00. In the remedies clause, the space for a number of days was never filled in (Art. X §§ 1, 3, pp. 37–38).
• Owning a Bay Cove lot brings master membership with it. An entity owner names one individual to exercise its membership and may change that person once every six months at most (Art. IV §§ 1–2, p. 17).

Article XVIII § 2 requires every Bay Cove lease to be written, "for a term no less than one (1) year", and to make the tenant subject to the Homeowners Documents. Article V § 2(B) also forbids leases shorter than six months, which the one-year term already covers, and Article V § 1 makes leasing subject to the Rules and Regulations (pp. 18, 53). Bay Cove's declaration asks no landlord to pay to register, wait after buying or stay under a cap.

Bay Cove's one-year term dates from 2001, well before Chapter 720's July 2021 rule on later rental amendments. Heron Bay's master layers on one lease in any 12 months, and wants each tenant registered before moving in.

Article V § 2 lets the Board add use restrictions without recording them, so ask Bay Cove for every rule adopted since 2001. Exterior changes need the master's Architectural Review Committee, though Article XII § 1 lets it pass that job to a Bay Cove Modifications Committee (p. 43).

• The Board decides what number of household pets is reasonable, and pets stay on a leash in common areas. Barred outright are a "bull terrier (pit bull)" and any dog of violent temperament (§ 2(I), p. 20).
• Every vehicle must be capable of being garaged. Trucks, motorcycles, boats, trailers, commercial vehicles, vans over 17 feet and vehicles over 80 inches high park only inside a garage (§ 2(G)–(H), pp. 19–20).
• Exhibit D's parking rules allow no street parking. Recreational vehicles may not stay overnight, and a commercial vehicle may stay four hours a day at most, never overnight unless garaged (p. 78). Florida law protects a personal pickup in the driveway, and a boat or RV kept out of view unless a law or ordinance bars it.
• Permanent shutters need consent. Approved ones may be closed only during a storm event or when one is imminent, with winds over 20 mph or rainfall within 12 hours (§ 2(O), pp. 21–22). Statute bars the Board from denying an application that meets its hurricane specifications.
• Section 2(N) would let a Bay Cove seller post a For Sale sign "in a standard manner" (p. 21). The master's ban on For Sale signs governs instead.

The declaration's "City" is "the City of Parkland, Florida" (Art. I ¶ 14, p. 6), and the plat and the Property Appraiser's listing of all 70 lots say the same. Recorded a day before the declaration, the master supplement recites "the City of Coral Springs" (Instr 100911952, the County's instrument number, p. 3).

All of Bay Cove is master land on the face of the documents. The supplement takes in "All of Heron Bay East", "Less and except Nob Hill Road, Parcel B, Parcel U and Parcel L-1 through L-15". On plat sheets 1 and 3, Parcel B is a public road dedication listed with Nob Hill Road and Parcel U, and the exception never names Bay Cove's separately numbered buffers, B-2, B-4, B-5 and B-14.

Parcel D, Bay Cove's private road, carries a right of way in and out (an ingress and egress easement) for owners of lots in Blocks E, F and G, "and not the public". Note 30 on sheet 3 marks the Bay Cove lots with the plat's "zero lot side" symbol. That fits the declaration's easements for painting and maintaining a wall from the lot next door (Art. VII § 1, p. 28).

Sheet 1 carries a clerk's box reading "AMENDED 113899895", a number that falls between instruments recorded in August and November 2016. What it changed stays unknown until the amendment itself is read, and the Property Appraiser still describes every Bay Cove lot by plain lot and block.

WCI used this same later form for Heron Cove and Tuscany, and the master's section on Neighborhood declarations lines the three up.

• Under Article X § 2, Bay Cove's lien "shall be effective from and after the time of recordation … of this Declaration", where the master's waits for a recorded claim of lien. Only taxes and the liens of Institutional Mortgagees, the lenders the declaration defines, outrank Bay Cove's lien (p. 37).
• Article IX § 10 spares an Institutional Mortgagee that acquires a lot, and anyone whose title comes through its mortgage, any assessment that fell due before they took title (p. 37). Chapter 720 has its own rules on lien priority and lender liability, so underwriting decides which governs a given Bay Cove file. Either way, the payoff comes from Bay Cove's estoppel.
• Three passages look carried over from other WCI forms. Article VII § 3 grants a drainage easement over land "shown on the Plat Exemption of Bay Colony, approved by the City of Coral Springs" (p. 29). We have not seen that plat exemption, so the easement's location is uncertain. The by-laws' proxy form on page 77 cites a "Plat Exemption for a Portion of Parcel F and Parcel J, Heron Bay Four". Fleet National Bank's consent on page 59 calls the document a "Declaration of Neighborhood Covenants" and consents to "the Amendment". None of the three touches Exhibit A's lot description, so ask whether a corrective instrument exists.
• Owners amend with two-thirds of the total votes (Art. XVII § 2, p. 52). A mortgagee must also approve if the change materially and adversely affects its security, and before the Transfer Date the Developer must too.
• No Bay Cove lot can lose these covenants to Florida's Marketable Record Title Act (MRTA), which can cut off old covenants after 30 years unless they are preserved, before 22 March 2031. After that, each lot's own title history decides. The master's 2024 notice does not list Bay Cove's declaration, and our search turned up no Bay Cove notice of its own.

The Property Appraiser's record is our only source for the deeds dated 2006 to 2015 below. We have not read the deeds themselves.