2026-09-10 · Arizona · Legislation

An Arizona condominium association will need a unit owner to be $10,000 behind, or eighteen months behind, before it can foreclose an assessment lien — up from $1,200 or one year. SB 1246 was signed on June 19, 2026 as Chapter 162, Laws 2026, and takes effect September 12, 2026.¹

For condominium owners this is the larger of the two changes the bill makes, and it closes a gap that has been open for almost a year.

Planned communities got here first

The reform is not new to Arizona. SB 1494, Chapter 71 of the 2025 session, made exactly the same change to A.R.S. § 33-1807 for planned communities, and it has been in force since September 26, 2025.²

The Condominium Act was left out. The result was that for close to a year, two Arizona owners in identical financial positions faced different exposure depending on which of the state's two association statutes governed their community. An owner in a planned community was safe from foreclosure until $10,000 or eighteen months. An owner in a condominium was foreclosable at $1,200 or one year — a figure that in many communities is less than two years of regular dues.

SB 1246 amends § 33-1256 to match. The three changes to the condominium text are:³

• the delinquency period goes from one year to eighteen months;
• the dollar figure goes from $1,200 to $10,000;
• what counts is broadened from “assessments” to “any assessment or portion of the assessment”.

The section keeps its “whichever occurs first” structure, so either threshold still opens the door on its own, measured as of the date the action is filed.

One thing is genuinely new for both

SB 1246 also adds a sentence that appears in neither statute today:

For any special assessment with an initial value of $10,000 or more, only the eighteen-month delinquency threshold applies.

Without it the dollar threshold would have been substantially hollow. A community levying a $12,000 special assessment for a roof or a road would have produced an instantly foreclosable balance the day it fell due — and the raised threshold would have protected nobody in exactly the situation, a large and unbudgeted charge, where owners are least able to pay. This sentence is added to § 33-1256 and § 33-1807 alike.

1. SB 1246, Chapter 162, Laws 2026 — enacted session law text (approved June 19, 2026) ↩
2. SB 1494, Chapter 71, Laws 2025 — the planned community threshold change (approved April 18, 2025) ↩
3. A.R.S. § 33-1256, Lien for assessments — condominiums (text in force before September 12, 2026) ↩
4. A.R.S. § 33-1807, Lien for assessments — planned communities (current text, already at $10,000/18 months) ↩
5. Windrose Estates HOA v. Wright, 2 CA-CV 2024-0074 (Ariz. App. Div. Two, Dec. 15, 2025) ↩