The word search that settles the whole question
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, was searched for this page on September 11, 2026, and the search was run again on September 27, 2026.
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, the association's own documents created it. The legislature did not. Which means those documents, and not the statute, are where your answer lives, starting with the recorded declaration.
What the statute really hands a board
Virginia's grant is at section 55.1-1819(A): except as otherwise provided in the chapter, 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, plus what the rest of the chapter provides. The statute is a container. The declaration is what goes in it.
North Carolina arrives at a similar 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 the powers on that list that name physical improvements, subdivisions (6), (7) and (9), are 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. The same list opens, though, with a power to "Adopt and amend bylaws and rules and regulations," and that one is not limited to common elements on its face.
So in Virginia, the board's power over ordinary construction on your own lot, a patio or a drive, comes through what the declaration assigns. That is not the same as saying the act stops at the lot line. It reaches inside the lot on a few named subjects: section 55.1-1820.1(B) lets an association set "reasonable restrictions concerning the size, place, and manner of placement" of solar energy collection devices on an owner's property, and section 55.1-1823.1(A) allows reasonable restrictions on the number, size, place and manner of placement or installation of an electric vehicle charging station on the exterior of the owner's property. A pad for a charger or a footing for ground-mounted solar is concrete work on the lot, so read those sections if that is your job. In North Carolina, ask the association what its rules reach. 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.
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. A declaration can speak to what a thing looks like as well as to 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
Both statutes lay out a process an association has to follow before it charges you, and both also leave a lawsuit open. 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 the association's own charges, 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 caps are statutory ceilings on what the board itself assesses, not on what a court can award. Section 55.1-1828(A) makes a lot owner's failure to comply with the declaration "grounds for an action to recover sums due, for damages or injunctive relief, or for any other remedy available at law or in equity," and says the prevailing party "shall be entitled to recover reasonable attorney fees, costs expended in the matter, and interest on the judgment." None of these are anybody's price for concrete, and none is a fee we or any contractor charges.
Removal is a court's call rather than the board's, but the board can ask a court for it. Section 55.1-1819(E) lets the board of directors file legal action "that seeks relief, including injunctive relief arising from any violation of the declaration or duly adopted rules and regulations," and under section 55.1-1819(F), if the court finds the violation remains uncorrected, the court may order the lot owner to abate or remedy the violation. Section 55.1-1828(A) also lets one or more aggrieved lot owners bring an action "in any proper case." Whether a court would order anything 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, and subdivision (4) of the same section lets it "Institute, defend, or intervene in litigation or administrative proceedings on matters affecting the planned community." Same shape. The association enforces the declaration and its rules, and those documents are where the restriction has to come from.
What to settle before the pour is booked
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.
Read the document for what it restricts before you ask anyone to price the work. If it calls for a particular finish, limits color, or calls for a stamped pattern or a plain broom finish to match the rest of the street, say so when you ask for a price, so the free written estimate is for the concrete the declaration allows. Where the document is silent on a point, ask the association rather than guessing what the committee wants.
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. The permits pages are 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.