Why the transfer fee mattered

Manufacturer HVAC warranties commonly run five to ten years on parts and longer on compressors and heat exchangers, and they have historically been either non-transferable or transferable on payment of a fee and a filing made within a short window after closing — often 30 to 90 days.

That window is easy to miss in any residential closing. It is easier to miss in a condominium purchase, where the buyer may reasonably assume that anything mechanical is the association's problem and may not know what equipment serves their unit or who bought it.

The result was a quiet transfer of risk: the warranty lapsed on sale, the second owner discovered it when the system failed, and paid for a repair the manufacturer would have covered for the first owner.

What it changes for boards and managers

The obligation this act creates falls on the warrantor, not on the association. But three practical points follow for anyone running an Alabama condominium.

Know where the boundary runs in your building. Whether an HVAC system is a unit component or a common element is a declaration question, and Alabama condominiums answer it inconsistently. Individual air handlers and condensers serving a single unit are usually the owner's; central plant is usually the association's. The act reaches equipment that transfers with the unit.

Add it to the resale packet. Alabama has no statutory resale-certificate content list for condominiums beyond what § 35-8A-409 requires, and nothing obliges an association to supply HVAC warranty information. But an association that already assembles a resale packet can note the equipment serving the unit and the fact that an unexpired manufacturer's warranty now transfers automatically. It costs nothing and it prevents a predictable complaint.

Where the association owns the equipment, the same rule does not obviously help. The act speaks to the transfer of residential real property. Common-element plant does not change hands on a unit sale, so an association replacing a chiller should still negotiate warranty terms directly rather than assume anything about transferability.

The other 2025 act worth knowing

One further real-estate act took effect in the same window and has been widely mischaracterised, so it is worth correcting here.

Act 2025-380, effective October 1, 2025, overhauled Alabama real-estate licensing — amending Ala. Code §§ 34-27-2, -3, -8, -32, -36 and -81 through -86, and adding § 34-27-39 on brokerage teams. In re-enacting § 34-27-2 it carried forward the sentence exempting apartment managers from licensure with the proviso that “this exception shall not apply to a person acting as an on-site manager of a condominium building or complex.”

Several industry summaries describe that condominium proviso as new in 2025. It is not. In the enrolled bill the sentence appears without underlining, which is Alabama's drafting convention for existing text carried forward; added language elsewhere on the same page is underlined and struck text is struck through.

The rule is long-standing and unchanged: an on-site condominium manager in Alabama needs a real estate licence; an apartment manager does not. Licensure matters to an association hiring an on-site manager, but not because anything changed in 2025.

What to watch next

This act is uncodified, which means it will not appear in a Code section an association's counsel is likely to be reading. Its practical enforcement will show up, if anywhere, in warranty-claim disputes where a manufacturer refuses a second owner's claim on a system sold after October 1, 2025.

We have found no Alabama decision construing it.