Letting a lot go to a tax sale may not end HOA assessments, Alabama court holds
Letting a lot go to a tax sale may not end HOA assessments, Alabama court holds
2026-09-10 · Alabama · Courts
Two owners in a Winston County subdivision argued they could not owe homeowners association assessments on a lot that had been sold twice for unpaid property taxes. The trial court agreed with them. The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals has now reversed.
Stoney Point Landing Homeowners Association, Inc. v. Lee, No. CL-2025-0881, was decided on June 12, 2026, on appeal from Winston Circuit Court.1 Judge Edwards wrote; Presiding Judge Moore and Judges Hanson, Fridy and Bowden concurred.
What the association sued on
In June 2024 the association filed a complaint under Ala. Code 1975, § 35-20-12 — the assessment-lien enforcement section of the Alabama Homeowners' Association Act — to enforce its lien against Lot 200 in the Stoney Point subdivision.
The amended declaration requires an “owner” to pay an annual assessment by January 31 of each year, and defines the term as
“any contract buyer and/or the record owner, whether one or more persons or entities, of a fee simple title to any lot which is a part of any of the [p]roperty made subject to this [d]eclaration but excluding those having such interest merely as security for the performance of an obligation.”
The owners did not dispute that they were subject to the declaration or that they had not paid the 2024 assessment. Their argument was narrower and, on its face, straightforward: they were no longer owners.
The tax sales
Lot 200 had been sold twice for the nonpayment of ad valorem taxes. A tax deed issued to Gene Lynn on May 11, 2015. Lynn then failed to pay taxes himself, producing a second tax sale in 2017 and a tax deed to Brenda Steele on May 15, 2020. The owners attached both deeds to their summary-judgment motion and argued the deeds had stripped them of any interest. The trial court entered summary judgment in their favour on May 29, 2025.
The association's response pointed at what the deeds did not show: the association's discovery answers indicated that one owner had never been named a party to, or served in, any action to quiet title to Lot 200.
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