Amendments & STR | A.R.S. §§ 33-1806.01, 33-1817 | 2 CA-CV 2023-0071
Vista Del Corazon’s HOA amended its CC&Rs to ban rentals shorter than ninety days and re-voted to approve them with eighty-percent support. Division Two of the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated the injunction enforcing the amendments, applying Kalway v. Calabria Ranch HOA to hold that entirely new restrictions need fair notice in the original declaration and, absent that, unanimous consent.
Last updated June 30, 2026. Case: VISTA DEL CORAZON HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION, AN ARIZONA NON-PROFIT CORPORATION, Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant/Appellee, v. DEANNA SMITH AND MYCHAL A. KINTZ, Defendants/Counter-Claimants/Appellants, 2 CA-CV 2023-0071.
Scope note: This page covers VISTA DEL CORAZON HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION, AN ARIZONA NON-PROFIT CORPORATION, Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant/Appellee, v. DEANNA SMITH AND MYCHAL A. KINTZ, Defendants/Counter-Claimants/Appellants (2 CA-CV 2023-0071) as a public Arizona Court of Appeals HOA case guide. The downloadable source-document index below is generated from local raw source files when a PDF opinion is available. This page is educational and is not legal advice.
The takeaway
Applying Kalway v. Calabria Ranch HOA, the court held that an HOA cannot use the CC&R amendment process to impose entirely new restrictions or affirmative obligations on owners unless the original CC&Rs gave fair notice that such restrictions could be added; following the technical amendment procedure (here, an eighty-percent vote) does not cure the lack of notice, and absent unanimous consent the new short-term-rental ban and most related provisions are unenforceable. The permanent injunction compelling compliance was therefore an abuse of discretion and was vacated.
Case Participants
Petitioner Side
- Vista Del Corazon Homeowners Association (Plaintiff)
Arizona non-profit corporation and Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant/Appellee; adopted the 2021 and re-voted 2022 CC&R amendments and sought to enforce them by injunction. - Alexis G. Firehawk (Counsel)
Carpenter, Hazlewood, Delgado & Bolen LLP
Counsel for Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant/Appellee Vista Del Corazon Homeowners Association (Tempe). - Ember Van Vranken (Counsel)
Carpenter, Hazlewood, Delgado & Bolen LLP
Counsel for Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant/Appellee Vista Del Corazon Homeowners Association (Tempe).
Respondent Side
- Deanna Smith (Defendant)
Co-owner of Lot 89 (since 2020) and Defendant/Counter-Claimant/Appellant; challenged the validity of the CC&R amendments and prevailed on appeal. - Mychal A. Kintz (Defendant)
Co-owner of Lot 89 (since 2020) and Defendant/Counter-Claimant/Appellant; challenged the validity of the CC&R amendments and prevailed on appeal. - Jonathan A. Dessaules (Counsel)
Dessaules Law Group
Counsel for Defendants/Counter-Claimants/Appellants Deanna Smith and Mychal A. Kintz (Phoenix). - Ashley C. Hill (Counsel)
Dessaules Law Group
Counsel for Defendants/Counter-Claimants/Appellants Deanna Smith and Mychal A. Kintz (Phoenix).
Neutral Parties
- Judge Brearcliffe (Judge)
Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two
Presiding Judge who authored the memorandum decision of the Court. - Judge Kelly (Judge)
Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two
Judge who concurred in the decision. - Judge Eckerstrom (Judge)
Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two
Judge who concurred in part and dissented in part; would have upheld the lease-notice, lease-default, and disclosure provisions as enforcing the original covenants. - Joseph R. Georgini (Judge)
Pinal County Superior Court
The Honorable Joseph R. Georgini, trial judge whose grant of the permanent injunction was vacated on appeal.
What happened
Vista Del Corazon is a planned community in Pinal County whose CC&Rs were first adopted in 1997. Deanna Smith and Mychal Kintz bought Lot 89 in 2020 and rented it out from time to time for periods shorter than ninety days. In February 2021 the HOA board told members it had been “surprised to discover” that the existing CC&Rs did not prohibit short-term rentals, and it set out to amend them. Without holding a formal association meeting and vote, the HOA collected written approvals, repealed the existing rental section, and adopted new §§ 4.22.1-4.22.5 (the “2021 amendments”) banning rentals shorter than ninety days, prohibiting advertising, and adding a special fine structure. The HOA began fining Smith and Kintz, then sued to enforce the amendments and collect the fines; Smith and Kintz counterclaimed that the amendments were invalid because the HOA had not obtained the vote required to amend without a meeting.
After a settlement conference the parties stayed the case so the HOA could re-vote. In April 2022 about eighty percent of members approved the amendments (the “2022 amendments”), which the HOA president certified on April 28, 2022; they were erroneously recorded in Maricopa County before being properly recorded in Pinal County on August 11, 2022. The superior court granted the HOA partial summary judgment, entered a permanent injunction compelling Smith and Kintz to stop advertising and renting short-term, and awarded the HOA its fees and costs. On appeal, Division Two vacated the injunction. Applying Kalway, it held that the short-term-rental ban and most related provisions were entirely new restrictions for which the 1997 CC&Rs gave no fair notice, so they could not be enforced absent unanimous consent. The court vacated the injunction without prejudice, vacated the HOA’s fee award, awarded Smith and Kintz their appellate fees, and remanded for further proceedings.
Procedural timeline
Complete uploaded source-document index
This index is generated from every public-facing source file currently present in assets/court_case_downloads/vista-del-corazon-homeowners-association-v-smith/raw/: 1 PDF. Files are ordered by the date/sequence embedded in the normalized filename; AI-generated review materials are labeled separately and should not be treated as court filings.
Memorandum Decision
Type: Decision or judgment
Memorandum decision holding that applying Kalway v.
FAQ
Is the Vista Del Corazon v. Smith decision binding precedent?
No. It is an unpublished memorandum decision of the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two (No. 2 CA-CV 2023-0071, filed March 8, 2024). Under Arizona rules, memorandum decisions are generally not precedential and are not citable as binding authority, although this one illustrates how courts apply the binding precedent in Kalway v. Calabria Ranch HOA.
Can an Arizona HOA ban short-term rentals by amending its CC&Rs?
Not automatically. The court held that a ban on rentals shorter than ninety days was an entirely new restriction that the community’s original 1997 CC&Rs gave no fair notice could be imposed. Under Kalway, such a new restriction generally requires the unanimous consent of affected owners, not just a majority or supermajority vote, so the ban was unenforceable here even after an eighty-percent re-vote.
Does following the CC&R amendment procedure make an amendment valid?
Not by itself. The court explained that technically complying with A.R.S. § 33-1817 and the CC&Rs’ amendment clause (here, a seventy-five-percent threshold) is not dispositive. If the original declaration did not give owners fair notice that a particular kind of restriction could be added, the common law still requires unanimous consent for that new restriction.
Did A.R.S. § 33-1806.01 give the HOA power to restrict short-term rentals?
No. The court held that § 33-1806.01(A) protects an owner’s right to lease subject to validly imposed rental-time-period restrictions; it does not itself give HOAs an unfettered power to create such restrictions, and it did not abrogate the common-law notice requirement recognized in Dreamland and Kalway.
Which amendment provisions survived and which were struck?
The court left in place provisions carried over from the original CC&Rs (such as the bar on leasing less than the entire lot and an owner’s responsibility for an occupant’s compliance) and a new sentence defining ‘lease’ and ‘rent,’ which was tied to existing terms. It held unenforceable by injunction the short-term-rental ban, the advertising ban, the mandatory lease terms, the new power for the HOA to evict an owner’s tenants, and the broad requirement to disclose lease information.
What happened to the attorney-fee award?
Because it vacated the injunction, the court also vacated the related attorney-fee award the trial court had given the HOA. As the prevailing parties on appeal, Smith and Kintz were awarded their appellate fees and costs under the CC&Rs’ fee provision (§ 17.1), upon compliance with the rules; the HOA, having lost, recovered nothing on appeal.
Case Dossier
This generated dossier mirrors the structured data surfaced on the OAH/ADRE case pages. It is added from the curated court-case record and the custom page source package, while the hand-authored analysis below remains intact.
Case Summary
| Case ID / citation | 2 CA-CV 2023-0071 |
|---|---|
| Court / tribunal | Court of Appeals |
| Decision / key date | March 8, 2024 |
| Judge / panel | Presiding Judge Brearcliffe (authored), Judge Kelly (concurred), Judge Eckerstrom (concurred in part and dissented in part) |
| Parties | Vista Del Corazon Homeowners Association (Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant/Appellee) v. Deanna Smith and Mychal A. Kintz (Defendants/Counter-Claimants/Appellants) |
| Governing law | |
| Topics | cc-and-rsfinesdisclosureattorneys-fees |
| Outcome / holding | Applying Kalway v. Calabria Ranch HOA, the court held that an HOA cannot use the CC&R amendment process to impose entirely new restrictions or affirmative obligations on owners unless the original CC&Rs gave fair notice that such restrictions could be added; following the technical amendment procedure (here, an eighty-percent vote) does not cure the lack of notice, and absent unanimous consent the new short-term-rental ban and most related provisions are unenforceable. The permanent injunction compelling compliance was therefore an abuse of discretion and was vacated. |
| Primary public source | View source opinion/order |
Parties, Court, and Research Coverage
| Uploaded source package | 1 PDF |
|---|---|
| Step-by-step docket roadmap | 12 roadmap entries |
| Video overview | No video embed currently configured |
| Study / briefing material | 1 section |
| FAQ / homeowner questions | 6 questions |
| Curated download aliases | 1 download link |
Key Issues & Findings
Vista Del Corazon Homeowners Association sued homeowners Deanna Smith and Mychal Kintz to stop them from renting their Pinal County home for short terms and to enforce CC&R amendments the HOA adopted in 2021 and re-adopted by an eighty-percent vote in 2022. The amendments banned rentals shorter than ninety days, prohibited advertising short-term rentals, required disclosure of lease information, dictated lease terms, and let the HOA evict an owner’s tenants. The trial court found the amendments valid and entered a permanent injunction enforcing them. Division Two of the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated, applying Kalway v. Calabria Ranch HOA: even a properly conducted amendment vote cannot impose entirely new restrictions unless the original 1997 CC&Rs gave homeowners fair notice that such restrictions could later be added. Because the short-term-rental ban and most related provisions were new and unforeseeable, the injunction was an abuse of discretion.
The court first confirmed it could review the legal basis for the injunction even though it lacked jurisdiction over the underlying partial summary judgment ruling, because the injunction was “inextricably bound up” with the trial court’s conclusion that the 2022 amendments were valid. It then rejected the trial court’s view that A.R.S. § 33-1806.01(A) had abrogated the common-law limits on CC&R amendments. That statute preserves an owner’s right to lease subject to validly imposed rental-time-period restrictions; it does not give HOAs an unfettered power to create such restrictions, and it does not displace the notice requirement recognized in Dreamland and Kalway.
Under Kalway, an amendment is valid only if it is “reasonable and foreseeable” from the original CC&Rs, meaning the original declaration gave notice that a covenant existed and could be refined, corrected, or filled in. A general amendment clause (here allowing change by a seventy-five-percent vote), general-purpose recitals, and a flexible definition of “Declaration” were not enough to put owners on notice that any particular new restriction could be imposed. Technical compliance with A.R.S. § 33-1817(A)(1) and the CC&Rs’ amendment procedure was not dispositive; absent fair notice, the common law requires the unanimous consent of affected owners, which the HOA did not obtain.
Reviewing each provision, the court held that the short-term-rental ban (§ 4.22.2), the advertising ban (§ 4.22.3), the mandatory lease terms (§ 4.22.4), the new power to evict an owner’s tenants (§ 4.22.5), and the broad lease-disclosure requirement (last sentence of § 4.22.1) were entirely new and untethered to the 1997 CC&Rs, and so could not be enforced by injunction; the original CC&Rs allowed rentals of any duration and even excepted leasing from the ban on trades and businesses. Only provisions carried over from the original CC&Rs and the new sentence defining “lease” and “rent” (tethered to existing terms) were enforceable. Because the injunction rested on an erroneous view of the law and the equitable balance had shifted, the court vacated it in its entirety and remanded. It also vacated the related fee award to the HOA and awarded Smith and Kintz their appellate fees under the CC&Rs’ fee clause.
This case shows that following the formal CC&R amendment procedure, even with a large supermajority vote (eighty percent), is not enough to make new use restrictions enforceable in Arizona. Under Kalway, owners must have had fair notice from the original declaration that a particular kind of restriction could later be added; brand-new bans on short-term rentals, advertising, or tenant-related obligations generally require unanimous consent. For HOAs pursuing short-term-rental restrictions, the decision is a cautionary complement to Kalway and Dreamland: amendments can fail not only on procedure but on the more fundamental ground that they impose obligations no reasonable owner could have foreseen. It also illustrates that an injunction enforcing such amendments is an equitable remedy the trial court must independently justify.