Thank you for your interest in Harris Cove. Enclosed you will find two documents — the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&Rs) and the Design Guidelines — that govern how homes are built and how the community operates. I want to take a moment to explain why they are as detailed as they are, because I think that context matters.
I have been building neighborhoods in western North Carolina since 2019. Before that, I was part of a team building communities in Southern California. In earlier communities, I kept governing documents intentionally short and general. My thinking at the time was straightforward: most people are decent, and I did not want to write a rulebook that treated neighbors like adversaries before they had even met each other.
What experience has taught me is that no matter how good the community is — and the communities I have built have been filled with genuinely wonderful people — there is almost always one person who will look for the minimum. Not out of malice, necessarily, but because the rules did not clearly say otherwise. And that one person, and the disputes that follow, can consume an enormous amount of energy and goodwill that the rest of the community would rather spend enjoying their homes.
I wish these documents could be as simple as “be a considerate neighbor.” Honestly, if everyone lived by that standard, they could be. But I have learned the hard way that without specifics, “considerate” means different things to different people — and the gap between those definitions is where problems live.
So these documents are detailed not because I expect conflict, but because I want to prevent it. Every requirement in the CC&Rs and Design Guidelines is there for a reason. Most of them came directly from situations I have seen go sideways in other neighborhoods: a builder who left a mud-covered road for weeks, a homeowner who decided their idea of a nice fence looked like a chain-link enclosure, a house that sat unlandscaped for far too long because the landscaping budget was the first thing cut when construction costs ran long. The specificity is the protection.
At the same time, I want to be clear about what these documents are not. They are not an attempt to dictate your personal taste or to make Harris Cove look like every other subdivision. There is no prescribed architectural style. Modern homes are welcome here alongside traditional ones. The Architectural Review Committee exists to ensure quality and harmony — not to enforce a single aesthetic vision.
Harris Cove is a small community — eight lots, eight homes. The people who choose to build here will be neighbors in a real sense of the word. My genuine hope is that the CC&Rs and Design Guidelines do their job quietly in the background, and that what you actually experience at Harris Cove is a beautiful place filled with people who are glad to be there.
Please read both documents carefully. If you have questions, I am happy to talk through them. There are no trick questions in here — what you see is what you get.
Bald Headed Builders, Inc.
