The word search that settles the whole question
On September 11, 2026 we pulled the full text of Virginia's Property Owners' Association Act, Code of Virginia sections 55.1-1800 through 55.1-1837, and Articles 1, 2 and 3 of North Carolina's Planned Community Act, Chapter 47F, and searched both.
The word architectural appears zero times in either one. In the Virginia act there are also zero occurrences of design guideline, prior approval and review board. Two states, two full statutes, no architectural review committee anywhere in them.
That is not a technicality and it is not a loophole. If an architectural review committee exists where you live, a recorded declaration created it. The legislature did not. Which means the document, and not the statute, is where your answer lives, and it is the one document most people have never actually opened.
What the statute really hands a board
Virginia's grant is at section 55.1-1819(A): the board of directors has power to establish, adopt and enforce rules and regulations with respect to use of the common areas, and with respect to such other areas of responsibility assigned to the association by the declaration, except where expressly reserved by the declaration to the members. Read that slowly. Common areas, plus whatever else the declaration hands over. The statute is a container. The declaration is what goes in it.
North Carolina arrives at the same place from a different direction. G.S. 47F-3-102 opens with the words unless the articles of incorporation or the declaration expressly provides to the contrary, the association may do all of the following, and every power on that list that reaches physical improvements, subdivisions (6), (7) and (9), is written about common elements. G.S. 47F-1-103(4) then defines common elements as real estate within the planned community owned or leased by the association other than a lot.
So in both states the statutory power stops at the lot line. What reaches inside it is the declaration, or nothing does. Virginia closes the loop from the owner's side at section 55.1-1828(A), which says every lot owner shall comply with all lawful provisions of the chapter and all provisions of the declaration. Not the board's preferences. The declaration's provisions.
Which is exactly why the honest instruction is read yours
Virginia defines a declaration at section 55.1-1800 as any instrument, however denominated, recorded among the land records of the county or city where the development sits, that either imposes maintenance or operational responsibilities on the association for the common area or creates authority in the association to impose mandatory payments of money in connection with the provision of maintenance or services. North Carolina's definition at G.S. 47F-1-103(10) is any instruments, however denominated, that create a planned community and any amendments to those instruments.
However denominated, and any amendments. Both phrases matter when you go looking. What governs your lot may be an original declaration plus twenty years of recorded amendments, plus a set of guidelines the declaration points at by reference. Ask the association for the current recorded set rather than a summary, and read what it says about finish and color as carefully as what it says about size. Declarations very often speak to what a thing looks like rather than whether you may have it at all.
Whether North Carolina's Chapter 47F even reaches your community is a live question in this part of the state. G.S. 47F-1-102(a) applies the Chapter to planned communities created on or after January 1, 1999. Subsection (b)(1) then excludes a planned community containing no more than 20 lots, counting all lots that may be added or created by the exercise of development rights, unless its declaration provides or is amended to provide otherwise. Whether the one you live in is over or under that line is something the recorded documents will show, and it is worth checking before you assume the Chapter governs anything. Older communities are not simply outside the Chapter either: subsection (c) applies a named list of its sections to planned communities created before 1999 unless the declaration says otherwise.
Virginia's coverage rule runs the other way and is broader. Section 55.1-1801(A) reaches developments subject to a declaration initially recorded after January 1, 1959, and section 55.1-1801(C) says that to the extent the declaration is silent, the provisions of the chapter apply.
What can actually happen if an association objects after the pour
What both statutes lay out is a process, and its shape is worth knowing before you worry about it. Virginia section 55.1-1819(C) requires that before any charge is imposed the member be given a reasonable opportunity to correct the alleged violation after written notice, and if it stays uncorrected, an opportunity to be heard and to be represented by counsel before the board or another tribunal named in the documents, with notice of that hearing hand delivered or sent by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, at least 14 days beforehand.
On money, Code of Virginia section 55.1-1819(D) caps the charge at $50 for a single offense or $10 per day for an offense of a continuing nature, and provides that the total charges for a continuing offense shall not be assessed for a period exceeding 90 days. Those are statutory ceilings written into the Virginia code. They are not anybody's price for anything and they are not a fee we or any contractor charges.
Removal is a court's call rather than the board's. Section 55.1-1819(F) provides that if the court finds the violation remains uncorrected, the court may order the lot owner to abate or remedy the violation. A court is what can order that. Whether one would, on your facts, is not something we or anyone else can tell you in advance, and you should be suspicious of a page that does.
North Carolina's enforcement power sits at G.S. 47F-3-102(12), which lets an association, after notice and an opportunity to be heard, impose reasonable fines or suspend privileges or services provided by the association, expressly excluding rights of access to lots, for reasonable periods for violations of the declaration, bylaws and rules. Same shape. The association enforces the declaration. The declaration is still where the restriction has to come from.
How this changes the way we quote your job
If you are in an association, get the approval in writing before you take a schedule date. An approval that lands after the forms are set is worth a great deal less than one that lands before, and moving a booked pour costs everybody something.
Tell us what the document restricts and we will quote to it. If it calls for a particular finish we will price that finish. If it limits color, or calls for a stamped pattern or a plain broom finish to match the rest of the street, we will price that. If it is silent on a point we will tell you it is silent instead of assuming what the committee wants. Everything lands on the written estimate so you have one sheet to submit rather than a conversation to recount.
One boundary worth keeping clear. Your declaration and your locality's rules are two separate questions with two separate answers, and clearing one is not the same as clearing the other. Our permits section is where the second one lives. And if you want to see what the finish choices actually look like on the ground before you submit anything, our patio page is the better place to start.