The master deed, and any other deed involving Sussex County real estate, is on file at the Sussex County Clerk’s office. They have a searchable database of virtually every deed on file going back to about the mid-1940s, so you don’t even have to leave your house to see those. For deeds before that time, you physically have to go to the Clerk’s office during business hours. There should be someone there to assist in finding deeds. We’ve been calling it a “master deed” because that’s the language of the law (Chapter 106 and other laws relating to planned real estate developments). The documents for Cranberry Lake don’t necessarily say “master deed” on them, but they serve the legal function of a master deed. (This is similar to the way that what the law calls an “executive board” is in practice the “Board of Governors” at the CLCC.) The deeds involved (and there are more than one, probably because different sections of the lake were developed at different times) are the deeds from Susan Calkins to the Cranberry Lake Development Company. They cover the transfer of the land, how the subdivided house lots will be treated, the easements and common interest properties, the fact that the easement runs with the land (even if it isn’t mentioned in subsequent deeds) and the requirement that if a house is sold, it has to be sold to another CLCC member. In other words, it’s basically the “how to” for physically setting up the Cranberry Lake Summer Colony. None of this stuff is indented or in boldface so it will stand out, but it’s in there. It takes some searching to find it.
An example of a master deed with restrictions can be found in the chain of title for 29 Meteor Trail, and can be found in the Suporting Documents section of this page.
