Hello, All over the map today

In my neck of the woods we have a little thing call Home Owners Association (HOA).

How to handle this with having a home business...

Does anyone else deal with this?
Do you advertise on your property?
Do you have a sign on you vehicle?

I know I have a lot of families with young kids in my neighborhood...and would love to get them enrolled in my program and/or just the occasional date night. Just don't want to cause any issues for myself.

Any advice? Thanks...off to the park...did I mention just two kiddos toady.

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What are your bylaws?

Make up some flyers and take them door to door.

In our old HOA, we were not allowed to have signs in our yard, but that's also a city ordinance.

I had my name and phone number on my van.

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I live in a community with an HOA too, so far I havn't had any issues with it so that's good.

Because it's an HOA we have rules against having signs and advertising on the property. This is including the community property and my own home. I can't have signs or flyers on my windows or any place visible to other people including on our vehicles.

I get around the sign in the vehicle thing by having removable magnetic signs that I can put on and remove. I take them down anyway when I'm not using my vehicle to prevent them from getting faded and damaged so no biggie.

As for property signs, I'm glad that I live near a main street so I just place a nice sign (on a stake) on the grass on the main street. Since it's public property and the sign is not paper or attached to a pole I can have it out and it still be okay with my city.

If your regulations don't have anything against solicitation you can always leave your business card or flyers in the crack of front doors. I can't do it unfortunately, we have signs at the entrance of every street that prohibits solicitation.

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I have a HOA. We aren't allowed yard signs, etc, but I can run a business out of my home just fine.

I would get a copy of your regulations. An in home, legal daycare shouldnt be a problem for most HOA's

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Ok, I just read through our by-laws and it states

No business signs allowed of any kind.

So I think I will stick with posting fliers around and get a yard sign for the main entrance.

I may also look into the car sign...hopefully I remember to take it down daily.

Thanks for the advice!

Oh, One more question please?

I'm more interested in getting a few date night-weekend care from my neighborhood, would you post your prices on the fliers also?

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We have an HOA. We are not allowed to have signs on out homes at all unless it is a temporary political sign or for sale kind of sign. We are technically not allowed to have a business here either. Or...at least you have to not be able to tell that there is a business being run in the house. So no business signs or excess traffic, etc.

I would think we could have a decal on our vehicle. There is a lady in the neighborhood who does some kinds of home party business who has a big decal on the back of her mini van. Our neighborhood has a yahoo group that I have "advertised" on.

If your HOA does not allow signs, it would probably be good to make as many friends as possible in the neighborhood to spread the word about your business. Maybe you could put flyers in mailboxes? I haven't done that for my childcare business but I have put flyers in the bottom parts of the rural mailboxes in my neighborhood for events happening at my church. The only thing is, you cannot put them in the main part of the mailbox as that is not legal. Has to go in the bottom "newspaper" part. Some businesses, like lawn businesses, have stuck flyers in my door handle on my screen door or the make door hangers that can go on doors, too, if you want to invest in those.

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I would and I do post my prices without a second thought. When I shop for something (anything) and I don't see a price I automatically assume that it's too expensive for me so I don't bother looking into it. Or maybe it's because I'm too lazy and don't want to put the effort into finding out the price . I guess I feel like it'll save both me and the families a lot of time if I post pricing so if it's too much then I don't waste their time or mine KWIM?

I wonder if it's just in CA but as far as I know an in home daycare (family daycare home) isn't considered a reall "business" per say and an HOA can't keep you from running one in your home. Maybe it's different from state to state? I know that we have specific laws and regulations that protect us from people wanting to keep us from doing childcare in our homes especially if we're licensed FCC's. Here the one thing that they can do however is require you to purchase liability insurance but that's about it.

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I hate having an HOA. Ohhhhhh how they infuriate me.

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