Deed Restrictions & Covenants in Custer County, CO

Most land for sale in Custer County sits inside one of more than 120 already-platted subdivisions, each with its own recorded covenants. The county's own Zoning Resolution says plainly that it is not an enforcement tool for those covenants -- which means checking them yourself isn't optional homework, it's the only enforcement most buyers will get.

This page covers what's specific to Custer County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

The county says it directly: zoning enforcement and covenant enforcement are not the same thing

Custer County's own Zoning Resolution states that the Resolution is not an enforcement tool for covenants or deed restrictions. The county's position is that while many recorded covenants happen to align with the county's own zoning rules, a covenant or deed restriction is fundamentally a civil matter between a landowner and their homeowners' or property owners' association, or between neighboring property owners -- not something Custer County Planning & Zoning will step in to police on a resident's behalf.

That distinction matters more here than in a county with fewer legacy subdivisions, because the great majority of residential and vacant land in Custer County -- more than 120 separately platted subdivisions -- comes with its own recorded set of covenants layered on top of, and sometimes more restrictive than, the county's zoning code. A use the county's zoning would otherwise allow can still be prohibited by a subdivision's private covenants, and if a neighbor violates a covenant, the county is not the agency that will enforce it against them. If enforcement matters to you, that responsibility runs through the subdivision's own HOA/POA or through a civil claim between property owners, not through a call to the county.

Where to actually get the covenants -- and what to do with them

Because the county doesn't administer covenants as part of its own regulatory process, don't expect Planning & Zoning to hand you a subdivision's covenants automatically when you ask about zoning. The Custer County Clerk and Recorder's office holds the recorded Protective Covenants and Bylaws for a given subdivision as part of the public land records, and that's the direct, authoritative source to pull before buying -- not a zoning-map lookup, and not a real-estate listing's summary of 'HOA rules.'

Once you have the actual recorded document, read it for the items that most often surprise off-grid or budget-conscious buyers in this kind of legacy subdivision: minimum dwelling size or building-material requirements, restrictions on RVs, mobile homes, or outbuildings as residences, road-maintenance obligations tied to lot ownership, and any architectural review requirement before you build. If the subdivision has an active homeowners' or property owners' association, contact it directly too -- an inactive-on-paper covenant can sometimes still be actively enforced by a motivated HOA or neighbor, and knowing whether the association is functioning day to day is separate information the recorded document alone won't tell you.

Deed Restrictions and Covenants in Custer County, Colorado

The county says it directly: zoning enforcement and covenant enforcement are not the same thing

Where to actually get the covenants -- and what to do with them

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