Guest parking rules get followed when they are short, written down and enforced the same way for everyone. Decide where guests park, for how long, how a guest is registered and what happens when a rule is broken, then make registering a guest easier than ignoring the rules.
What an association may require, charge or enforce depends on its governing documents and on state and local law, and these vary a great deal. This is general guidance, not legal advice: check both before the board adopts or enforces anything.
What the rules should answer
| Question | What to decide |
|---|---|
| Where do guests park? | Visitor spaces, the resident's own space, or either. |
| How long may a guest stay? | A day, a week, longer; and whether an overnight stay needs a pass. |
| How is a guest registered? | Who asks, who approves, and what is recorded. At the least, the plate. |
| Is there a charge? | Free, or a price per pass. |
| What happens after a breach? | Usually a warning first, then whatever your documents allow. |
| Who checks? | A board member, a manager, or a patrol company. |
Five habits that make the rules stick
- Register the plate, not only the name. Whoever walks the lot is looking at plates, and a pass without one cannot be matched to a car.
- Give every pass an end. A guest pass with no end date soon works like a second permit.
- Warn before you cite. Most breaches are a visitor who did not know the rule, and a recorded warning is what makes a later penalty hard to argue with.
- Check on a routine. Walk the lot at regular times, write down what you find, and treat every unit alike.
- Publish the rules where residents will see them, and give the notice your governing documents require before a change takes effect.
How Parken Lot handles guests
- Residents ask from their own account. On My parking, a resident asks for a guest pass with the guest's name, plate, start date and length: a day, a week or a month, whichever the property offers. A pass asked for this way is for the resident's own space. See Asking for a guest pass.
- The board or manager decides. Requests wait under Guest & visitor passes with Approve and Decline, and the resident is emailed the decision. If the property charges for guest passes, the price is shown when the resident asks and added to their bill when the pass is approved.
- A manager can issue a pass directly, for a named space or for any visitor space, with the plate and how long it is good for, and email it to the visitor. See Issuing a visitor pass.
- Patrol recognises guests. On a patrol round, a plate on a pass that is valid now comes back as Guest, and a plate with no permit and no pass comes back as Not ours. See Patrol rounds.
- Overstays have their own offence. Guest pass expired is one of the starter offences, and it warns before it cites.
What Parken Lot does not do
- It does not cap passes per unit by itself. Every resident request is approved or declined by a person, so a limit in your rules is applied when you decide.
- It does not tow, and it does not decide what your rules are. See Does Parken Lot tow vehicles?
If you are writing the whole parking policy rather than only the guest section, start from the HOA and condo parking policy template.