Myrtle Beach’s posh Grande Dunes neighborhood in hot sand over unexpected roof war
When buying a house with a home- or property-owners’ association, some might worry about getting fined for letting the grass grow too tall or having to deal with restrictions on outdoor decorations.
Those were the kinds of minor issues Brandon and Erin Coakley imagined when they purchased a lot and began building their “forever home” in one of the Grand Strand’s most exclusive communities, Grande Dunes.
They weren’t expecting to be threatened with a $50 million lawsuit for installing a roof that did not match other homes near theirs.
“I thought I was being a nice husband because my wife said, ‘Hey, I liked this roof.’ And, I said, ‘Cool, let’s build it,’” Brandon Coakley said. “I don’t care what my house looks like.”
Their roof features flat, black tiles, while the rest of the Golf Village neighborhood uses “Spanish barrel” or “S-shaped” tiles. The color of their roof also allegedly doesn’t fit because it’s not an “earth tone,” though nearby homes have roof tiles ranging from blue-gray to pink to dark brown to reddish-orange.
Security guards were sent to run off the Coakleys’ construction workers, with only 60% of the roof finished at the time.
That was six weeks ago. Still battling to finish their roof and prevent damage to the half-built home during hurricane season, the Coakleys have now filed a suit against their property owners’ association for illegal trespassing. They also restarted construction on the roof, resulting in threats of hundreds of dollars in daily fines the association.
Lawyers for the Coakleys and the Golf Village association plan to meet soon to discuss the issues at hand.
An unfinished roof and a $50 million threat
Brandon Coakley, a skin cancer surgeon, and his wife, Erin, moved to Myrtle Beach in November 2018 to expand access to his medical specialty, Mohs micrographic surgery, in the Grand Strand region. The couple purchased their lot and signed a contract with Nations Homes, which builds mansions all across the Grand Strand, including in Golf Village.
The Grande Dunes community advertises many of its neighborhoods as featuring “Mediterranean-style” homes. This includes several varieties of architectural styles found along the European coast, but mostly the barrel and Spanish S-shaped roof tile found on their neighbors’ homes.
“I agree that it’s different than the other ones in the neighborhood,” Brandon Coakley said. “(But), I’m a doctor. I’m not an architect or a builder or fashion person. My wife showed me a picture on Pinterest and said, well, ‘I like the style of this house. It’s under the Mediterranean section on Pinterest.’ And then we drove around the neighborhood, and we saw this other house that had the same style roof. And we said, ‘Oh, that looks cool.’”
The Grande Dunes’ website even features a photo of an architectural rendering with a roof matching the Coakleys’, and two houses in a far back corner of the gated community match it as well.
The couple sent their home designs to the Architectural Review Committee for approval. The committee approved their choices, according to documents provided by the Coakleys, and they moved forward with construction in April.
Three months later, Brandon Coakley received a formal cease and desist letter from Waccamaw Management, the company in charge of the property owners’ association’s day-to-day affairs, on Aug. 6. Grande Dunes security guards went in to stop construction the next day.
Waccamaw Management did not respond to questions for comment.
Two days later, Brandon Coakley said he spoke with John Bree, the Golf Village association’s president. Coakley said Bree told him his roof would devalue the Golf Village neighborhood by 10%. As the neighborhood currently consists of 500 homes that each hold about $1 million in value, this would result in $50 million in lost value for the neighborhood, Coakely said Bree estimated.
Should the Coakleys continue building their home, Coakley said Bree threatened to sue them personally for $50 million in damages caused by their home having a different roof from the rest. Coakley provided detailed notes from his conversation with Bree, which included the legal threat. An email to Nations Homes on Aug. 10 also detail the threat. Coakley said similar threats were made on another occasion, in person, a few days later.
“John Bree says the neighborhood’s worth $500 million and if home prices go down, they’re going to say it’s my ugly roof that did it,” Coakley said. “It’s craziness, and I just feel like it’s a ‘Real Housewives’ story or something.”
Bree, however, said he never threatened the Coakleys with a lawsuit.
“Totally rubbish, totally rubbish, that’s not true,” Bree said. “Trust me when I say we’re just a bunch of volunteers that are here trying to do what’s right for the community. I mean, I don’t threaten anybody with lawsuits.”
Bree also denied that the Golf Village association told the security team to stop construction, saying they were told to only keep an eye on whether construction continued. They intervened anyway.
Some of the Coakleys’ neighbors, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said Coakley had told them about Bree’s alleged threat of a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
The Coakleys said they would be happy to change their roof to one that better matches the neighborhood — so long as they don’t have to pay for it. Their developer, Nations Homes, quoted them $110,000 to remove the existing roof and replace it with what the property owners’ association wants.
If anything, they would’ve chosen a different roof from the beginning if they knew it would be this much of a problem.
“Really, we don’t feel like we’re responsible for this, but if it’s rubbing that many people the wrong way, we want to be good neighbors,” said Erin Coakley. “It was so bizarre. It just felt like they were like attacking us personally.”
Not the first controversy
With much of the community hidden behind guard gates and a bridge crossing the Intracoastal Waterway, Grande Dunes isn’t a place anyone can just wander into. Over the years, some of its homeowners have fought to keep it that way.
Less than four months after its creation in January 2019, the Golf Village Property Owners’ Association waged a public battle against Grande Dunes developer LStar Ventures to prevent the Grande Dunes Members Club neighborhood from being connected to another planned development, the Waterway Hills Village.
Some Golf Village residents argued connecting the two areas would devalue their property and provide “unlimited” access to Waterway residents, with some arguing they moved into Golf Village specifically because it was a private community. They ultimately killed the connection project.
The Golf Village association isn’t an organization that residents can speak out easily against. Two neighbors with knowledge the Coakleys’ situation requested anonymity to speak candidly about the community for fear of retaliatory fines for minor issues or slow-downs for paperwork related to home modifications.
Those neighbors, both of whom have lived in Golf Village for several years, said they were initially taken aback by the threat of a $50 million suit against the Coakleys but not necessarily surprised.
Both said they had seen similar forms of “bullying” and intimidation permeate the property owners’ organization, as well as the neighborhood itself.
Bree disputes that he and other members of the property owners’ association have done anything but try to have amicable relations with the Coakleys, their builder Nations Homes and the Grande Dunes’ developer.
“The board’s not here to try to take any one landowner to task. I mean, our job is just to work for the community and uphold the standards…. We want to be good neighbors,” Bree said. “We all want to find an amicable solution to a problem and not have to go through some kind of litigation to try to get something solved.”
The power struggle
The Coakleys’ lawyer, Tommy Brittain, along with other Golf Village residents and experts all said the couple’s home has become the site of a proxy war between the various entities with power and influence over Grande Dunes.
Overseeing Grande Dunes, which consists of both the private community isolated by the Intracoastal Waterway as well as a few surrounding neighborhoods, is developer LStar Ventures. That company also controls the community’s Master Association, an organization that, alongside management company Freehold Properties, runs the Architectural Review Committee, which approves new construction. LStar and Freehold Properties did not respond to requests for comment.
Then there are smaller property owners’ associations, such as the Golf Village Property Owners’ Association
The Coakleys “were caught in a power struggle between the two homeowners’ associations,” Brittain said. “It has nothing to do with them. They’ve done everything right, and (this situation) is threatening to do serious damage to their property.”
Sheri McAllister, an attorney with a Grand Strand law firm that works on cases involving homeowners’ associations, said it’s unusual for developers to let homeowners associations set up before they have fully pulled out of the community, but it’s not necessarily unheard of.
“There’s one typical scenario, which is developer out, HOA in, HOA rules,” said McAllister, who works for the Clemmons Law Firm in Myrtle Beach. But for Grande Dunes, the developer LStar is still around while the last few lots in the community are sold, creating a power struggle between the two.
In most cases, the developer would have the most power in a dispute, McAllister says, with the community’s founding documents being the final arbiter.
Bree said he believes the Grande Dunes Master Association improperly approved the Coakleys roof, and he has led the Golf Village association in trying to rectify the situation.
HOA problems are common
While the threat of a $50 million lawsuit may seem extreme, problems between residents and community associations tend to be fairly common, experts say.
Sometimes, those disputes are about decor or the type of plants a homeowner wants to display. Associations may issue fines for rule violations, which can typically be found in their covenants or bylaws. One association in Denver demanded a homeowner remove milk jugs decorated and painted by his wife from their yard because they violated “community standards,” according to the Washington Post. In a Virginia case, an HOA lawsuit over holiday lights made it to the state’s supreme court before the homeowners won.
Other times, associations will go so far as to foreclose on homes that fail to abide by their standards. One association in Houston initiated such proceedings earlier this year after a tenant fell behind on rent payments, forcing the landlord to scramble during the pandemic to figure out how to cover thousands of dollars in condominium owners’ association payments and legal fees to keep the property she’d owned for 16 years.
South Carolina has a law requiring community associations to be more transparent and increase accountability of organizations that seemed to operate with little oversight. The law went into effect in January 2019, but a WMBF investigation in Myrtle Beach found that later the same year, in August, many homeowners felt like little had changed.
Effects of a ‘toxic’ reputation
The Coakleys were told that the color and style of their roof could severely damage the value of the Golf Village neighborhood. However, the extent to which the association has gone to fight them raises questions about whether future potential residents might avoid the neighborhood altogether.
Bree said the fight over the roof isn’t about making anyone feel unwelcome but simply about preserving the “harmonious” nature of Golf Village.
“We believe that strict adherence to the guidelines ensures that the homes could build here in a manner that will maintain the value and aesthetically pleasing, harmonious and unique character of the Golf Village, which is a lovely community,” Bree said. “We have great folks here. I mean, they are gonna love it here when they get past this issue.”
Regardless of the reason behind the dispute, Brandon Coakley said friends of his decided against moving into Grande Dunes after hearing about what he has been through.
If a mismatching roof could reduce the value of the Golf Village neighborhood by $50 million, Brandon Coakley said he wonders what effect the threats, intimidation and $25,000 in legal expenses he has so far dealt with might have.
“If I could do it over again, I would have never built a house in Grand Dunes,” Coakley said. “It’s just a miserable thing. I would never, I wouldn’t live in Grand Dunes again if I had known that this was how I was going to be treated.”
The Coakleys are still finishing the installation of their roof to prevent damage to the house and protect it from the weather, but the case of whether it belongs at all remains unresolved.
Their house was planned to be finished in November. Now, it sits indefinitely delayed.
This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
