Rhodes Ranch Attorneys

Rhodes Ranch is a guard-gated master plan in Spring Valley, ZIP code 89148, whose specific plan area is generally bounded by Sunset Road and the beltway on the north, Durango Drive on the east, Pebble Road on the south and Fort Apache Road on the west. Clark County commissioners approved that plan in October 1996, the golf club opened in November 1997, and homes went up in phases into roughly 2010. Almost everything distinctive about legal life here follows from three facts: it is private, it is governed by recorded documents, and it was built straight across a boom and a bust.

O'Reilly Law Group has advised Nevada property owners since 1972 from the Nevada Professional Center at 325 South Maryland Parkway. The questions that reach us from inside these gates usually concern recorded restrictions and boundaries, handled through our real estate practice, or disagreements about what a document actually obligates someone to do — which becomes a breach of contract question.

This page describes Nevada procedure in general terms. It is not advice about your property, your association or your dispute, and reading it creates no attorney-client relationship.

Private streets change the questions you ask

Behind a staffed gate, roadways are typically association property rather than public right-of-way. Rhodes Ranch Parkway runs through the plan to the golf club at 20 Rhodes Ranch Parkway, and interior loops serve the individual tracts. Where a street is private, maintenance, lighting, signage and speed control sit with the association rather than with Clark County Public Works.

After a collision or a fall inside the gates, that shifts the analysis: traffic-control questions become questions about the association's own adopted standards and its records of complaints. The deadline does not change. Nevada generally allows two years from the date of injury under NRS 11.190(4)(e), and our personal injury practice handles claims arising on private roadways as well as public ones.

The step Nevada requires before most HOA lawsuits

Nevada does not let most covenant fights start in court. Two separate tracks exist, and owners routinely file in the wrong one:

• Alternative dispute resolution under NRS 38.310. A civil action over the interpretation, application or enforcement of CC&Rs — or over how assessments were increased or imposed — must first be submitted to mediation or referred to a dispute resolution program. Under NRS 38.320 that written claim is filed with the Real Estate Division, names every party, states the nature of the claim, and is accompanied by a $50 filing fee.
• The Ombudsman for Owners in Common-Interest Communities. That office investigates alleged violations of NRS Chapter 116 and NAC Chapter 116, the statute and regulations. It does not decide what a community's own CC&Rs mean.

Choosing the wrong lane can cost months, and the two-year and six-year civil deadlines keep running while the file sits in the wrong place.

Fairway frontage and what a golf-course lot really conveys

Lots backing the Ted Robinson–designed course carry recorded burdens and benefits that transfer to each buyer: maintenance and access easements along the course boundary, wall and fencing standards, and in many Nevada golf communities an express acknowledgment of errant balls and normal course operations. None of that is visible from the patio during a showing.

Views are the recurring surprise. Nevada does not recognize a general right to a view, so a neighbor's second story or maturing landscaping is usually a setback and architectural-review question rather than a nuisance claim. The answer sits in the declaration, the plat and the design guidelines — all recorded with the Clark County Recorder at 500 South Grand Central Parkway and available to any owner.

A community finished on both sides of the crash

Construction ran from 1997 into roughly 2010, straddling the 2008 collapse. Builders and trades that worked the later phases restructured or dissolved afterward, which changes who remains to answer for workmanship. Nevada's repose period under NRS 11.202 permits a constructional defect action within ten years of substantial completion of the improvement; with construction here finished by roughly 2010, that ten-year mark has now passed for the community's homes, and the substantial completion date for a particular home rather than the neighborhood name is what controls.

Resale disclosure is the more common live issue. A seller here transfers a home and a governance package at the same time, and arguments about what the resale documents showed, what the association's minutes revealed and what was never mentioned tend to become litigation when the paperwork was thin.

Delinquent assessments and the nine months that outrank a mortgage

Unpaid assessments create an association lien. Under NRS 116.3116, part of that lien — nine months of common-expense assessments based on the association's periodic budget, plus certain maintenance and abatement charges — takes priority over a first deed of trust. That priority is why an association delinquency gets a lender's attention quickly, and why a delinquency notice is not routine mail.

Terms you may hear

CC&Rs

Covenants, conditions and restrictions — the recorded declaration binding every lot in a common-interest community and every later owner of those lots.

ADR claim

The written claim filed with the Real Estate Division under NRS 38.320, with a $50 fee, that NRS 38.310 requires most CC&R disputes to pass through before a lawsuit may be filed.

Superpriority lien

The portion of an association's assessment lien — nine months of budget-based common-expense assessments under NRS 116.3116 — that outranks a first deed of trust.

Private street

A roadway owned and maintained by a homeowners association rather than by Clark County, which changes who is responsible for its condition and controls.

Resale package

The governing documents and financial disclosures a seller in a Nevada common-interest community must deliver to a buyer before closing.