Reston Association to Conduct Inspections Next Fall

Later this year, Reston Association, rather than SCS, will be performing inspections of Lakeport homes. Note that although anything identified in this inspection would likely be caught during the required RA inspection when your home is sold, passing this inspection now will not guarantee that no additional issues will be identified at the time of sale.

There will be several differences in the approach taken by RA and SCS:

• Focus: We have requested that the primary focus of the RA inspection be on maintenance issues (which was the case with SCS), but RA will also be looking for compliance with Lakeport and RA design standards. In addition, RA-trained inspectors may notice things SCS wouldn’t notice (and vice versa).
• Timing: Inspections will take place in September and owners will have six months to remediate any issues that are identified prior to a re-inspection by RA the following spring. RA uses this timeline so owners can line up contractors over the winter months and schedule the work in the spring. 
• Enforcement and extensions: Owners will be dealing with RA instead of the Board (we will not receive a list of violations and cannot give extensions, as we have been able to do with SCS inspections). 

Because this will be a somewhat different process from the past, we recommend you take the following steps to avoid receiving a violation letter from Reston:

1. Review the ten Lakeport Cluster standards documents at http://www.lakeportcluster.org/p/cluster-standards.html as well as RA’s Cluster Property Guidelines at https://www.reston.org/PropertyOwnerResources/DesignReview/DesignGuidelines/ClusterHousing/tabid/377/Default.aspx to make sure you are in compliance. Eight of Lakeport’s documents have been changed in the last two years, and these recent changes mean that homes that otherwise would have been in violation (e.g., for missing house numbers, window replacements, or colors of garage doors, decks, or gutters) will now be compliant. That said, some Lakeport homes are still in violation of some of the standards. For example, an owner who recently sold her home alerted the Board that outside light fixtures painted to match the siding and a board added to reinforce the bottom of the garage door were found by RA inspectors to be in violation of Lakeport standards. 
2. We anticipate that the main non-compliance issue will be color; so be sure to check all your colors (especially doors) to make sure they meet the requirements of the various standards. Lakeport’s Color Summary (available on the standards web page) is a helpful reference, but you’ll also need to check the roof, deck, window, and garage-door standards separately for those colors. If you aren’t sure of the name of a paint color used on your home, compare the colors on the exterior of your home with the colors used on the other homes in your building. If they’re the same, you probably should be all right because the color palettes are set up so that all the homes in each building are the same. 
3. The checklist that RA inspectors will use to identify maintenance issues is included as Appendix A below. Please use it to check the outside of your home (safe to do even with Covid-19) and contact contractors to get proposals (again, this should be safe if you discuss the job over the phone and carry on conversations from a distance when the contractor comes to visit). 

If you have any questions about whether you are in compliance, please contact Lakeport’s Standards Committee Chair Kelly Driscoll (kmdriscoll@outlook.com) or the  Board; please realize, however, that although you will receive a good faith opinion from the Lakeport representative, the RA inspector may interpret things differently. Fortunately, repairs in response to the SCS inspections over the last three years mean that a number of issues have been taken care of already. And this year’s inspection will do even more to improve the appearance of Lakeport and thus our home values.