Welcome and Home Sales

This section of our website is devoted to our newest members (or soon-to-be newest members) and those that are leaving our community.

All homes are individually owned in Leewood and thus home sales are arranged in the normal manner between the seller and purchaser. However, because each property includes an automatic mandatory membership in Leewood Homeowners Association, the association is involved during each property transfer. The mandatory membership puts us under the control of the Property Owner's Association Act .

When a home in Leewood is sold, the seller is obligated to provide the purchaser with a Disclosure packet. This packet will provide important information to the purchaser concerning:

• Status of the home with respect to violation of the rules and assessments
• Financial condition of the Association
• Association Governing Documents and Rules and Regulations

This packet can cost no more than $100, and may be obtained from our POAA representative

The association is responsible that the information in the packet is accurate as of the date of the packet. The buyer should ask for an update to the packet if some time has elapsed since it was originally written. Sometimes sellers incur Architectural Violations between when the packet was written and when the house is sold.

The POAA was written to protect buyers. It is unclear how successful it has been at this purpose, but before it was put into effect people were buying into communities with mandatory membership and not realizing that they were subject to assessments and the rules and regulations of that community. Now, in theory, everyone buys into homeowner associations fully aware of the conditions of ownership.

Another obligation of homeownership in our community is to let the association know how to reach you. If you are moving before your house is sold, or any time you move out of the community while still owning your property, please give us your forwarding address. Similarly if you are buying a house here and will not be occupying it -- start off on the right foot and give us your offsite address. Our covenants require that you give this to the association, and it definitely makes life simpler and cheaper for all if you do.

For those new to our community, we would like to be one of the first to welcome you. You should be greeted by a welcome representative shortly after you move in and they will have a packet of information for you. If you have not heard from them, email our welcome representative and arrange a time that the two of you can meet. One thing that is in the packet that you will not want to miss is our Leewood Directory. That will help you learn the names of your neighbors and contact them. Between the schedules of our new arrivals and our welcome representative, sometimes they miss each other for quite a while -- do email!

You may have noticed that this website is jam-packed with information. We thought it might be a good idea to provide you with a roadmap of what would probably be the handiest sections to hit at first.

1. The FAQs section contains information that all new homeowners should find useful. They will help you get off on the right foot in Leewood. In the parking FAQs you will learn about parking in Leewood. Please be sure not to park in someone else's reserved place. Also if you have many cars, consider parking some outside Leewood. We really only have 2.1 parking places per unit (mathematically) and if you decide to take up all the parking places near your unit, you definitely will not be a well-loved neighbor.

   Trash is another huge issue in Leewood and consequently we have the trash faqs just to cover issues concerning trash. Our trash days are Tuesdays and Fridays, and if you want your neighbors to welcome you heartily, please follow our restrictions and do not put the trash out until after dark of the day before trash day.

   All of the FAQs are elemental to live here in Leewood -- the only possible exception is the snow FAQ if it is summer, you might want to save that until winter!

2. The contact page will give you contact emails for the committee chairs and officers of Leewood. It is in the administration tab.

3. Next, browse through the community tab. In particular, take the time to join our message board so that you can keep abreast of the latest trends in Leewood. We try to keep opinion out of our main site and confine it to the message board. Be sure to read the help articles on the message board for an overview of what you can, and cannot do. Another "must read" for the newtimer is the "Pearls of Wisdom" article written by the Community Associations Institute. It gives you an idea of the rights and responsibilities of life in a community association from a un-biased standpoint. There are other things here you might want to focus on immediately, such as the map.

4. By now, your head may be swimming so take a break and look at the Parks tab. We are lucky in Fairfax to have abundant parks and recreational facilities, and Leewood is close enough to many of them to make it like our own personal park. We put together a "nearby facilities" paper so that you can take a break and take a stroll (or perhaps go to our post office or swim). In particular, Greensprings is a gem that many of us enjoy (it's as if you have your own manor grounds to stroll around without all the work) and Deerlick Park is beautiful and right across the street. Residents have also found this paper convenient when they have visitors, or just want to know where the Leewood children attend school.

5. Are you so inspired after your walk that you have decided to make changes to the exterior of your house? Before you do, be sure and read through our Standards Manual. You might want to have a quick read and then home in on the specifics through using the "find" function on your browser. Check out the ARC tab to see even more pictures than are included in the manual. There you will also find the forms that you need to fill out for approval before any changes can be made to your home.

6. Talking about reading, great bedtime reading is your Leewood Manual or your Standards Manual. You should have gotten both in your POA packet as hard copy. Most people fall asleep quite quickly after beginning to read these manuals, and it is important to know the documents that form the foundation of Leewood governance. Just as you are exposed to the Constitution of the US, you should be exposed to our legal documents.

7. Particularly if you are new to computers, explore our "Help" area. There is site specific information there (as in how to search our site, the standard notice about the site working best in 600x800 and on Internet Explorer.) However, there are general purpose articles about computers and the web there also which might have some new information even for those that have been using the web for a number of years.

8. You might be ready to explore the site more fully now. Notice on the right hand side of your page there are a number of things listed, including Archives. The archives, by year, show what has been on the front page of our website (without the pretty pictures so those with slower connections don't go crazy loading the page). They contain the link to the full story.

9. Another tab to explore is the News tab. You will be able to access past copies of our newsletter through that and also under "Web/other articles" you will find a list of more articles that are on the website. That started out to be a comprehensive list of all articles on the site, but it was getting too long, so now some of the various tabs, such as Help, contain articles not included in that index. In that, though, you will find some inspirational articles on home remodeling with pictures showing what people in Leewood have accomplished. You will also be able to explore our history, and the history of the region. Talking about background, if you haven't done so, you should read "About Us" which gives a overview of Leewood.

10. We are hoping that now you will be filled with enthusiasm for your new community, and will want to volunteer and make your mark on Leewood. Either contact a board member, an appropriate committee chair, or fill out the "Leewood Needs You" form and mail it in to the association. There are so many ways to help!

11. We hope this little tour of the website will have been instructive for you. There is much more that you will find on the site when you explore it yourself, but we thought we should save some hidden treasures as rewards for sifting through all the information! We definitely hope you will be happy here in Leewood and be sure to contact us if you have any questions.