There are no white picket fences in Farmwell Hunt.
Dog houses in Ashburn Farm must match the owner's home in color and materials.
All mailboxes in South Riding must be black with natural, undecorated wood posts.
Rules like these are a part of life for anyone in Loudoun's newer suburban communities. If someone wants to move anywhere in the suburbs — from Lansdowne in the north to South Riding in the south — that person will end up in a homeowners' association.
And if that person doesn't follow the rules of his new neighborhood, he can lose his house.
It rarely happens, but it's part of what makes Loudoun Loudoun.
To David K. White, HOAs, with their covenants and architectural review, represent more than just a neighborhood association.
"They're a new form of government," he said. "They can be too strict and too harsh. But on the other hand, you might have people who want to paint their house purple, and you can't have that."
White, who works for the federal government, lives in Belmont Ridge II in Ashburn. He's run into trouble in the past for staining his deck what the HOA deemed an "unnatural" color ("Well, I thought cedar was a natural color"), but dodged a potential violation when he painted his lamppost ("That, I never got crap for").
BELMONT RIDGE II is one of Ashburn's smaller HOAs — just 96 homes. It's also one of Ashburn's oldest — almost a decade has passed since the first house went up.
HOA president Morgan Wright grew up in a small town in Kansas.
"There's no such thing as HOAs in Kansas," he said.
Wright's first choice for a Loudoun home was in Leesburg, but when a deal fell through, he found himself in his first-ever HOA neighborhood in Belmont Ridge II six years ago.
Revising Belmont Ridge II's covenants is something that, in a decade, has never happened.
"It's something we've talked about," Wright said.
But because the neighborhood is completely built out, there's not a lot to update, he added.
That's the opposite of the situation in Westview, a 58-home subdivision off Gum Spring Road in Dulles south.
HOA president Dean Zywicki has overseen the two-year-old subdivision's drafting of its covenants. That means that residents of Westview got to weigh in on how they wanted their neighborhood to look.
"You see, people don't understand the role of a homeowners' association," Zywicki said. "Most people think they drop a set of rules on you and that's it."
So what issue is on the minds of neighbors in Westview?
"We ended up with a lot of discussion on fences," Zywicki said.
But the challenge Westview faces now, with its covenants in place, it to keep its covenants and covenants enforcement committees staffed with Zywicki jokingly called his "vast network" of volunteers.
"If you're not going to enforce [the rules], there's no point in having them," Zywicki said.
FINDING VOLUNTEERS is a challenge for many of Ashburn's smaller HOAs.
Every community in Ashburn — with the sole exception of Ashburn Farm, which pays it own staff — contracts a management company to conduct inspections.
At Farmwell Hunt in eastern Ashburn, HOA president GiGi St. Clair goes out with her management company's inspector on twice-yearly tours of Farmwell Hunt's 576 homes.
The community's covenants inspection committee is vacant.
On its architectural review committee, however, Farmwell Hunt is doing better.
Like in other HOAs, residents must apply to the architectural review committee before adding decks or other major changes to a house.
"We have been so fortunate," St. Clair said. "We are very small. Scott [Biller, a resident volunteer and former contractor] has the expertise in building that we are looking for."
The biggest complaint Farmwell Hunt faces, St. Clair said, is not that it enforces strict architectural guidelines, but that the letter of violation a resident may receive for a problem like faded shutters isn't worded as gently as it could be.
"We would like to send out a touchy-feely letter," St. Clair said, but instead, they send out the letter required by the state.
MOST VIOLATIONS are minor — like letting grass grow too long — and are wrapped up with a simple reminder.
Even if a resident protests a violation, at Ashburn Farm, the staff works hard to accommodate residents.
Bob Silvay has the honor of not only being Ashburn's only HOA-supported covenants administrator (instead of contracting a management team, Ashburn Farm pays its own staff out of dues), he's also Ashburn Farm's first-ever resident.
Silvay bought the first available plot in 1988. His job — keeping Ashburn Farm looking beautiful — is something he takes seriously. His wife is the founder of the Ashburn Farm newsletter.
"I take it to heart, this job here, because I have a vested interest in this community," Silvay said.
The first notice a resident in violation receives from Silvay is a "courtesy note."
"This is our way of saying, 'Hello, you are in violation and we would like you to take care of this,'" Silvay said.
"They're provided ample time and opportunity to work with association staff to get the violation fixed or remedied," said Steve DeLong, Ashburn Farm resident and its developer. "Ultimately, if they don't, we have to enforce the covenants."
Ashburn Farm, with its 3,800 homes, had about 500 violations issued last year, but only a handful actually went to the board before being resolved.
At Ashburn Farm and all other HOAs, violations comes in two forms: complaint-based and inspection-based.
Silvay walks his spring inspections.
"I could go drive out in the street and get my neck caught in this position" — Silvay craned his neck as if out a car window — "or I could get out and walk."
At Broadlands, a 2,400-home community and still growing, "enforcement is more of a drive-by," said HOA president Cliff Keirce.
There's a different source for violations, Keirce added.
"The number one way is, people come in and turn in their neighbor," he said.
Ashburn's other large HOA, Ashburn Village, declined to cooperate for this article.
DOWN IN South Riding, inspection of the community's 4,700 current homes is an ongoing project. It takes two and a half years to get to all of them — and there's 1,700 more homes coming soon.
"As soon as we finish the community, we start again," said Sue Ruggiero, covenants manager.
With its intranet system, Ruggiero and her staff are able to figure out if a house had a deck two years ago with a click of a button.
"We pretty much know if they have built if without providing an application," she said.
South Riding is currently updating its design and maintenance standards, a huge project for the ten-year-old community.
Most of the work is updating the standards, said covenants committee chair Bill Tuck.
"When the design and maintenance standards were originally created, a lot of the composite materials didn't exist," Tuck said. "That's a pretty new technology."
South Riding is the first HOA community that Tuck has ever lived in, so he's worked hard to involve and educate new residents.
"HOAs are really big in this area," he said. "It can be scary if you come to it and you're not familiar with it."
SO WHY live in an HOA, with its complexities and rules and disclosure packets and notices of violations and neighbors turning in neighbors?
"We moved [to South Riding] because of the aesthetics of the community," Tuck said. "You look at the other communities that don't have HOAs or have old HOAs — you can really tell from the curbside view."
Zywicki, in Westview, moved from a Sterling Park neighborhood where enforcement was spotty.
"I think it was worse than not having an HOA," he said.
HOAs protect property values, Ashburn Farm's DeLong said.
"You basically want to see the rules and regulations for the community that are going market and enhance property values and maintain the nice quality of life," DeLong said.
In Farmwell Hunt, covenants prevent residents from putting up high-quality white vinyl fences because good vinyl wasn't available when the first homes were built almost ten years ago.
Now, the neighborhood must stick with natural fences forever.
"If you just have a vinyl, then a wood, then a vinyl, then a wood, it just makes it — you know," St. Clair said. "The homeowners understand."