$100,000 of improvements did not take an Iowa association's common ground
$100,000 of improvements did not take an Iowa association's common ground
2026-09-10 · Iowa · Courts
Iowa associations own a great deal of ground they never mow: greenbelts, pond frontage, buffer strips. Adjoining owners improve and absorb it routinely. A 2025 decision says that pattern alone does not transfer title. Worrell v. Lake Crest Manor Home Owners Association, No. 23-2028, was decided by the Iowa Court of Appeals on May 7, 2025.1
What happened
Brad Worrell bought a rural Johnson County lot in 1993 without checking the plat, having been told the lot ran to the shore of a pond. It did not. A strip along the pond, jutting into his lot's south-west corner, belonged to the neighbouring Lake Crest Manor Home Owners Association.
Worrell said that in 1994 he struck a deal: Lake Crest Manor could use a gravel road across his land to reach a wastewater facility, and in exchange his lot would be replatted to the pond. No deed or other document ever memorialised it.
Over the following decades the Worrells cleared timber, graded and seeded to the pond, spent roughly $100,000 improving the land, built a three-storey scaffolding play structure with a six-foot fence and no-trespassing signs on the corner parcel, and put a dock in the pond.
The association never maintained the land. But it investigated tree removal in 2001, told Worrell to stop pumping pond water, encouraged members to use the area for fishing, hiking and mushroom hunting, and had members drive across the strip to dump trash. After a 2018 survey it asserted ownership. The Worrells removed the dock but not the fence or tower, and sued in 2019.
After a bench trial the district court awarded them the fenced corner parcel on adverse possession and rejected everything else. Only the Worrells appealed.
Why the rest of the claim failed
Affirmed, on two independent grounds.
No good-faith claim of right. Under Carpenter v. Ruperto, 315 N.W.2d 782, 784-86 (Iowa 1982), adverse possession is unavailable to one who knows he has no claim or title; hostile, actual, open, exclusive and continuous possession for ten years is not enough without a good-faith claim of right. The only evidence of the 1994 transfer was minutes from the Worrells' own association plus their assumption that a deal had been struck — not the clear and positive proof required.
No exclusivity, and not continuously hostile for ten years. The Worrells never fenced the disputed strip, never excluded Lake Crest Manor members — they did not stop members driving tractors and mowers across it to dump trash — and removed the dock when asked in 2018. That conduct was “inconsistent with the acts of an exclusive owner.” The initial 1990s clearing likely was hostile, actual and open, but that level of conduct was not continuous for ten years, and within a few years the association was policing its boundary.
Publication status unconfirmed — we could not locate a National Reporter citation, so whether this opinion is controlling under Iowa R. App. P. 6.904(2)(c) is unresolved.
The comparison inside the case is the lesson
The same owners, the same pond, the same decades — and they won one parcel and lost the other. The court was explicit about why.
On the parcel they won: they fenced it, posted no-trespassing signs, and refused to remove the structure when asked.
On the parcel they lost: no fence, no exclusion, members continued to drive across it, and the dock came out on request.
Roughly $100,000 of improvement and thirty years of maintenance sat on the losing side. The controlling variables are exclusion and record proof, not investment or beautification. An association whose common ground is being mowed and landscaped by a neighbour is in a very different position from one whose common ground has been fenced and posted against it.
A defensive playbook, taken from what worked
Each of the association's acts that the court credited is cheap, and none required litigation. For an Iowa board with unmaintained common ground, they amount to a practical routine.
Investigate and measure. The association looked into tree removal in 2001 and measured its boundary. That is what put a limit on the period of uninterrupted hostile possession.
Keep members using the area. Encouraging fishing, hiking and mushroom hunting was not sentiment — it directly defeated exclusivity. Common ground that members actually use is common ground nobody can possess exclusively.
Object in writing, and about specific acts. Telling Worrell to stop pumping pond water is a small thing that appears in an appellate opinion twenty years later. Written objections date the association's assertion of its rights.
Ask for removal, and note what happens. The dock came out on request; the fence and tower did not. The difference in response mapped exactly onto the difference in outcome.
Survey. The 2018 survey is what converted a vague sense of the line into an assertable position. An association that does not know where its boundaries are cannot defend them.
The corollary is the warning. It was the association's inaction against a fenced, posted, defended encroachment that lost it that corner. Doing nothing about a visible, exclusive encroachment is the one response with a real cost.
The oral deal is worth nothing
The other durable point: a replatting arrangement made with a board and never reduced to a deed did not survive. Not because the court disbelieved that conversations happened, but because minutes of the other association plus a party's assumption is not clear and positive proof of a land transfer.
That cuts in both directions. An association cannot rely on an informal accommodation it granted years ago, and an owner cannot rely on one they were given. Land changes hands by deed.
What the good-faith requirement means in practice
Iowa's Carpenter rule is stricter than the adverse-possession doctrine many owners half-remember. Knowing you have no claim defeats the claim, however long and however openly you occupy.
For encroachments onto association ground that follow a survey — where the owner has been shown the line and continues anyway — the good-faith element is where the claim will run into difficulty. That is a category-level observation about the elements, not a forecast for any particular encroachment, which would turn on what the owner knew and when.
What to watch next
This is the only Iowa appellate decision in the window addressing association common ground, and it arrives with unconfirmed publication status — which is itself the thing to watch, because Iowa is currently building its association law entirely at the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court issued no HOA or condominium decision in 2025 or 2026.
For boards, the actionable follow-up is not legal at all. It is knowing which parcels the association owns, where the lines run, and which of them somebody else is currently treating as their own.
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