Indiana, Johnson County, White River Township

Hey all,

We're closing on a home in Pebble Hills subdivision (sec 2, which has no HOA) in Greenwood, Indiana. However, we're not in the Greenwood city corporation limits as far as we can tell, just the White River township limits. That means we're not zoned for Greenwood, and we're just an unincorporated area of Johnson County. For Johnson County, we couldn't find any restrictions in the 2015 ordinances that applied to chickens/poultry (besides that they are not included in the definition of "Domestic Animals", and I saw nothing relating to Domestic Animals besides leash and care provisions).

We're looking into the title of the property to make sure there are no restrictive covenants (Seller's Disclosure said there were none, but we've found that Pebble Hill, Section 4 has a restrictive covenant against poultry. We'll probably have to pull the original title/deed or see if our title company will pull it for us.

Anyone have any familiarity with this area to give some clarification? We just want to make sure we're not missing anything.

Thanks!

Small update: We pulled the Covenants for the subdivision, and of course there had to be a No Poultry or Farm Animals section. As far as we can tell though, there is no HOA to enforce such a covenant but theoretically a neighbor or the developer (not sure who this is though) could still bring suit.

So presumably we're going to have to go to the surrounding neighbors and get their input.

Hey there we live in your neighborhood and we're just discussing this today. Wondering what you ended up doing? Would love to meet up if you ended up getting chickens to see your set up.

asinn said:

Hey there we live in your neighborhood and we're just discussing this today. Wondering what you ended up doing? Would love to meet up if you ended up getting chickens to see your set up.

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Hey we are 6 years behind but we recently moved to Pebble Hill and wondering what the final outcome was for you all.

Antion3 said:

Hey we are 6 years behind but we recently moved to Pebble Hill and wondering what the final outcome was for you all.

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The prior posters haven't been on BYC since 2015 and 2016, respectively. You are unlikely to get any answers from them.

Restrictive Covenants are a wierd thing in State Law. In some states, they've been made completely unenforceable in favor of other means of encumbering title - easements, reservation of water and mineral rights, etc. In other States, a Restrictive Covenant is only enforceable by the Seller, and only if it furthers some purpose of the sellers, and only for their lifetime (I wouldn't have sold you the other half of my lakehouse property if I knew you were going to clearcut it for a parking lot). In still others, certain restrictive covenants are still enforceable if every title in the area shares a commonality of purpose, by neighbors whose titles are similarly impaired - that's how HOA/POA-like situations were made prior to those corporate instruments coming into vogue.

I am NOT a lawyer, this is NOT legal advice, but I do suggest your read up a bit on where Indiana stands, then discuss with a deed and property attorney if you plan to challenge it.

Oh, and racially restrictive covenants (as well as a few other protected classes) are of course void on their face, anywhere in the Nation.