Right-Sizing in Foothills Club West

The children have moved out, or are close to it. The upstairs rooms have become storage. You are maintaining a house that was sized for five people and is now being run by two.

Downsizing in Foothills Club West is what the search bar calls it. For most of the people I work with it turns out to be a move of a mile or two, out of a larger home in one part of this community and into a smaller one somewhere else inside it.

A move like that changes more than your address. Club West is a master community with its own named neighborhoods inside it, and the association is explicit that each of them carries its own tract declarations applying in addition to the master CC&Rs. Vistas, Montana Vista, which is gated, Rosewood Canyon Estates, Whistling Rock and Fairway all sit beneath the master, and each has a second document of its own. Cross from one to another and you keep the master rulebook and swap the parcel-level one.

The clubhouse at 16414 S 14th Ave and the maintained common areas stay with you as long as you stay inside the master community. What can change is the detail underneath: what may be parked, built, painted or attached to the outside of your next home.

What you get from me is that comparison made properly, in both directions, before you commit to either end of the move.

A right-size inside this community involves four governing documents rather than two: the master CC&Rs and the tract declarations on the home you are leaving, then the same pair on the one you are buying. Getting current copies of all four early is the part I care most about, because each can be slow to arrive and none is slow to matter. The rest runs in its usual order at the six-step listing process.

• Establish both parcels first. Which named neighborhood your current home sits in, and which one you are considering. Everything after this depends on those two answers rather than on treating Club West as one rulebook.
• Request current copies from the current manager. All four come from 360 Community Management. What is in your own files is a historical record, and a request sent to the company named on those old papers can sit for a week before anyone notices.
• Read the outgoing pair as a disclosure job. Your buyer is entitled to both documents that govern the home you are selling, and having them at listing rather than in the third week of escrow is the difference between a file that moves and one that stalls.
• Read the incoming pair as a lifestyle question. Parcel-level declarations tend to address exactly what people want to do after a right-size: a second vehicle, a casita, a wall height, an exterior color, how long a guest may stay.
• Decide the order with numbers in front of you. Which side goes first is an equity and financing question, and inside one community it becomes a timing question too, because the smaller home you want may come up once.
• Then the ordinary work. Walkthrough, trades, staging consultation, photography, pricing and marketing run in sequence from step one. Emptying a long-occupied house can be spread over months, and I can introduce you to people who do that work.