RMS Investments

At the beginning of the month of May we made an offer to buy a property at the [redacted] community [redacted]. Their advertisement indicates that this is a maintenance free comunity, meaning that they will cut the grass and keep up with the green areas around the property. This sounds very appealing and it's a good selling point. When you are parents of little kids not having to worry about spending hours cutting your grass is very appealing. Before we made an offer on one of their homes, we did our research about installing a fence, the property has a pond and we have a toddler so having a fence is a must for safety reasons. We read the HOA covenants and my realtor contacted the seller's agent asking if a fence was allowed. The answer we received was: yes a fence can be installed it just has to be approved by the architectural committee. So after we did our research we felt that we had ensured that the fence wouldn't be a problem. We signed the contract and gave them a due diligence deposit of $1,000. To our surprise after we signed the contract as a welcoming email we received an email saying that the community was a maintenance free community unless we installed a fence. Immediately we contacted about the issue and the answer was: yes its not in the HOA covenants and it is an understanding between neighbors and the HOA that if a fence gets installed no maintenance will be performed. We believe that this information has to be disclosed in writting, it must be included on the HOA covenants and new potential owners should be notified before and offer is made. Our realtor is a witness that we asked the necessary questions and this piece information was never disclosed to us. We believe it is false advertisement to offer a service when selling a property that is not going to be given if a fence is installed, this disclaimer MUST be included in writing somewhere. We tried to settled with them this issue but they dug their heels and wouldn't make it right.Desired SettlementWe are requesting that our $1,000 deposit on this house be returned to us. We had to rush to find another house with the characteristics we needed and that we thought we had found. It is not right for this business to keep our money when they did not disclose such a very important piece of information. Having a fence was a MUST for us, and this is why we did our research and the business failed to provide the information. Thanks so much!