AI covenant search
Search Your HOA Governing Documents. Get the Cited Section.
This is the differentiator. HOA-I searches the association’s own declaration, bylaws, and policies and returns an answer with the source. Boards stop guessing. Owners stop getting three different answers from three different officers.
Interactive example from the product UI
Question: “Can I build a fence?”
The card below matches how HOA-I answers inside the app: a plain-language explanation, then the recorded source.
“Can I build a fence?”
Fences require prior architectural approval and must match the materials and height limits in the recorded restrictions. Submit an ARC request with the proposed location, height, and materials before construction.
Source: Declaration §7.2, page 41
How it looks in the product
Question, answer, source — the same pattern boards already use
No marketing illustration of a generic robot. This is the assistant card: the question, the cited excerpt, and the document it came from.
“Can I park a trailer overnight?”
Covenants restrict trailers to 24 hours in driveways for loading or unloading. Source: Declaration §7.2, page 41
Why search fails in most HOAs
A 90-page scan is not a searchable rulebook
Most associations “have the documents.” They are PDFs in a shared drive, or a binder in the clubhouse. Searching them means remembering which article covered vehicles and hoping the OCR did not glue two sections together.
HOA-I indexes the uploaded governing documents so a question retrieves the isolated section — Article III, Section 7 for dogs, Section 19 for vehicle storage — not a driveway paragraph that happened to sit on the same scanned page.
What you can ask
The questions that currently land in a board member’s inbox
Improvements and exteriors
Fences, sheds, paint colors, roofs, solar, landscaping — the requests that should start with “what do the documents say?” before they start with a vote.
Use restrictions
Parking, rentals, home businesses, trash, quiet hours. The answer should quote the covenant, not the last person who yelled about it at a meeting.
Process questions
How hearings work, what the architectural application requires, who may call a special meeting — when those rules live in the bylaws, the search should find them.
Owner access, board boundaries
Residents search the documents they are allowed to see. Board-only records stay off the owner-facing answer.
How a search becomes work
From question to the workflow that owns it
Step 1
Ask in plain English
No Boolean syntax. “Can I park a trailer overnight?” is the query. The system retrieves the restriction.
Step 2
Read the cited section
The source is on the answer — declaration section and page — so anyone can open the same paragraph.
Step 3
Open the right workflow
If the answer is “yes, with approval,” that is an architectural request. If the trailer is already there, that is a violation case. Search does not replace those modules; it starts them correctly.
FAQ
Questions boards actually ask
Which documents can HOA-I search?
The files the association uploads into the document center — typically CC&Rs / the declaration, bylaws, rules, and policies. Quality depends on uploading the recorded versions, not a newsletter summary.
Will it invent a rule if nothing is on point?
It should retrieve from your documents. If the restriction is not there, the honest answer is that the documents do not say — not a plausible paragraph from another community.
Can owners search, or only the board?
Owners can ask questions through the resident experience. Document visibility still applies. Internal or board-only files are not used to answer owner questions.
Is a search result legal advice?
No. It is a retrieval of text the association provided. Your counsel and the recorded instruments control. HOA-I does not practice law.
Related
Keep going
AI HOA software
Search is one use case. Drafting and meeting prep are others.
HOA management software
Documents sit next to violations, ARC, and dues.
Architectural requests
When the search result is “submit an ARC application.”
Violation management
When the search result is the restriction already being broken.
Self-managed boards
Stop being the human index for the declaration.
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