CityLiving: Do you live in a housing estate or a controlled environment? Is your every DIY and decorative move being monitored by an all-pervading eye? Forget Big Brother, is your management company watching you?
Under such a regime you won't be able to paint your house a different colour to the rest, unsightly satellite dishes are verboten and replacing your windows with a sassier version is a punishable offence. Front gardens are tended by a specialist so that the shrubs and lawns reach synchronised perfection. You may well be asked to remove your truck or a commercial vehicle from your driveway if it is disrupting the collective harmony.
In some estates the self-appointed taste police - ie vigilant neighbours - will patrol the area and blow the whistle on anyone who doesn't adhere to the rules .
Things may have become so strict you live in fear of being hauled before the committee over a misplaced begonia or being visited by the gnome-snatch squad.
The result: colour-co-ordinated homes, with uniform shrubs and identical lawns.
Once upon a time it was only apartment owners who had to worry about management company regulations but now with local authorities washing their hands of estate management, house owners are having to defer to the rules of a committee.
The rules of these committees are becoming increasingly prohibitive. How stringently they are enforced will depend on the resources and strength of the management company and the number of owner occupiers living in the development .Estates populated by first time buyers or full of rented accommodation are less likely to go after errant neighbours than those occupied by seasoned property owners, says independent property management consultant Michael Noonan.
"Virgin property owners tend not to be as educated on these matters and if they are actually confronted, they often won't know what the rules are or understand what they've done wrong."
Could we heading towards the UK situation where in some developments washing your car in front of your own house is forbidden? This shameful operation is confined to a covert hosing area.
In one developments near Islington garden furniture and children's toys, sand pits and paddling pools are prohibited in visible back yards. Garden furniture has to be wood or chrome - no plastic allowed - and hanging baskets and gaudy flowerbeds are no-nos.
Manhattan Lofts, which converts historic buildings into apartments, reputedly stipulated in one development that anyone who hangs curtains should line them with black fabric. Other developers ban net curtains and windows boxes.
The reason they are so keen to banish what are perceived as taste crimes is that they are hoping to lure young wealthy professional buyers in a competitive market.
In Ireland some apartment leases are so strict they dictate the type of floor coverings to be used in each room. One 1970s apartment block in Dublin 6 insists that all of its residents have the same office-style canvas slatted blinds.
As a general rule of thumb, an alteration will not be approved by the management company if it is deemed to have a negative effect on the value or appearance of the property, or if it interferes with other residents' enjoyment of their property.
While Michael Noonan agrees that estate life in Ireland has become more regimented, he can't see it reaching English extremes.
"They have a totally different legal system over there where rules can be dictated, imposed and not discussed or agreed on by residents ."
The truth is that while management companies have the powers to haul a property owner through the courts for an infringement of the rules, they rarely do.
Often a stern warning will be enough to coax an offender into submission - or the prospect of being ostracised by the neighbours, says Noonan.
In serious cases however, the management company can refer to a superior lease which allows them to take drastic action if required.
This allows them to remove broken down cars from driveways that are posing a fire or security hazard. Noonan cites the case of a brothel in a city centre apartment block whose power was cut off by the management company after polite requests to vacate were ignored and the landlord couldn't be contacted.
"The superior lease should only be used for the common good, or where there is a serious security or health risk, not to be pointlessly draconian."
However, walk into most unregulated mature suburban estates and you will be confronted by a melange of clashing influences. Greek or Roman columned portico stuck on modest three-bed semi stand next to elaborate Georgian pvc next to brutalist red brick . Maybe there's a case to be made that living on a totalitarian estate could save us and our neighbours form our own bad taste.
