The city tells you what is legal. The HOA tells you what is allowed. They are different documents, enforced by different people, and in most Grayson County subdivisions built in the last twenty years the HOA is the stricter of the two.
It is also the one more likely to cost you real money, because a city will usually work with you on a permit problem, while a board that rejects a fence already built can require it to come down.
What covenants typically specify
Every neighbourhood is different and the document that governs your lot is the one recorded against it. That said, the same handful of items come up again and again:
- Maximum height, often lower than the city allows. Eight feet may be legal in Sherman or Denison while your covenants cap you at six.
- Material. Cedar is the common default. Some newer developments specify vinyl. Chain link is frequently prohibited outright in front yards, and sometimes everywhere.
- Stain colour, or a requirement to leave the wood unstained and let it weather. Both exist, and they are not interchangeable.
- Which way the finished side faces. Almost always outward — toward the street or the neighbour. This is not usually optional.
- Where the fence may start. Many covenants prohibit fencing forward of the front building line, which is a stricter rule than most city ordinances impose.
- Gate style and placement, particularly on corner lots.
- A submitted plan and written approval before construction starts.
Greenbelt and detention lots are a category of their own
If your lot backs onto open space, a greenbelt, a detention pond or a trail, expect different rules — and usually stricter ones.
The reason is that the shared amenity is what the whole development was priced around. A solid six-foot cedar wall along the back of every lot turns a greenbelt into a corridor between two fences. So covenants for those lots commonly require ornamental iron or a similar open style along the rear boundary specifically so the outlook stays open in both directions.
This is not the board being difficult. It is the thing that protects the value of every lot backing onto it, including yours. But it does mean the rear run of your fence may cost considerably more per foot than the sides, and that needs to be in the quote from the start rather than discovered later.
Approval is tightest early
Worth knowing if you are in a newer development: in the early phases of a subdivision, the developer usually still controls the board. Standards tend to be enforced most rigidly then, because the developer is still selling houses and the appearance of the neighbourhood is a sales asset.
Once control transfers to resident homeowners, enforcement often becomes more pragmatic — but by then the recorded covenants are what they are, and a relaxed board can still be replaced by a strict one next year. The document is the document.
Where this bites hardest around here
Van Alstyne is the clearest case in Grayson County. It has grown roughly 95% since the 2020 census, and nearly all of that is covenant-governed new construction. A 667-acre development approved on the south side alone carries more than 2,000 homes and 300 townhouses. On those lots the HOA document is very often the binding constraint and the city ordinance is the looser of the two.
Sherman is split. The older streets near downtown and Austin College largely predate homeowner associations entirely — there, the city rules are the whole story and your practical constraint is what the neighbours either side already have. The newer south and southwest subdivisions are conventional covenant neighbourhoods. Two houses a mile apart in the same city can be under completely different regimes.
Denison’s historic core mostly predates HOAs too, but that does not mean no constraints — property in or adjoining the commercial historic district carries design expectations of a different kind, and the character of those streets is precisely why people bought there.
Howe and Whitesboro have very few HOAs, which is part of their appeal. What applies there instead is recorded deed restrictions on individual tracts, which vary enormously, are often decades old, and were sometimes written for a use the land no longer has.
What to do before you order anything
- Find your actual covenant document. Not what a neighbour said. The recorded restrictions for your subdivision, plus any architectural guidelines the board has adopted. They are usually available from the management company or the county records.
- Check whether written approval is required before construction. If it is, find out when the board meets. Some meet monthly. This is often the longest single item in a fence project timeline, and it is entirely outside anyone’s control.
- Submit the plan with real detail — height, material, colour, orientation, gate positions. Vague submissions come back with questions and lose you a meeting cycle.
- Check the city permit separately. Approval from one is not approval from the other. See our Grayson County permit guide.
One honest caveat
We are a fencing company, not your attorney. Covenants are legally binding recorded documents, and disputes about what one means, or about enforcement, are legal questions. We will read your covenants so we can build something compliant, and we will tell you when we think something is a grey area — but the interpretation of a restrictive covenant is not something to take from a contractor.