Arkansas HOA Estoppel & Resale

Section 1: Overview — Estoppel and resale disclosure in Arkansas

Arkansas has no statutory resale or estoppel certificate for common interest communities; the recorded declaration and common law govern resale disclosure. The governing chapter for condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act at Ark. Code §§ 18-13-101 et seq., is a pre-uniform statute that establishes horizontal property regimes but creates no resale certificate and no disclosure-on-resale duty.¹ Because no statute names the instrument, there is no statutory term; closing agents and managers use a "statement of account," "dues letter," "payoff letter," or "estoppel letter" as a matter of practice. The recorded declaration governs instead, setting any obligation to issue a statement of the account balance, the fee that may be charged, and the turnaround; separately, an association that states a balance a purchaser reasonably relies on may be bound by that figure under Arkansas common-law equitable estoppel.³ At a glance, that means Arkansas supplies no statutory deadline, no fee cap, no content list, and no statutory binding effect. That places Arkansas in the CC&R-only camp, distinct from Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act resale-certificate states such as Alaska and Colorado, from hard-mandate states such as Florida, and from detailed-disclosure states such as California. The sections ahead lay out the statutory architecture — or its absence — the operational lifecycle of a resale request, recent legislative and judicial activity, and where Arkansas sits nationally.

Section 2: The statutory requirements

2A. The absence of a statutory resale certificate

Arkansas has no statutory resale or estoppel certificate for common interest communities. The chapter where such a provision would appear for condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act, runs from Ark. Code § 18-13-101 through § 18-13-120 and addresses the master deed, bylaws, common elements, assessments, and insurance, but it contains no resale-disclosure section, no statement-of-account-on-sale requirement, and no certificate mechanism.¹ Arkansas hasn't enacted a separate planned-community statute, so single-family and mixed communities operate under their recorded covenants and the Nonprofit Corporation Act rather than any resale-disclosure code.²

The contrast with certificate states makes the absence concrete. Under the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, § 4-109 provides that "the association, within ten days after a request by a unit owner, shall furnish a certificate" stating the assessment balance, capital expenditures, reserves, and pending litigation; the association is bound by the figures it states, and the sale contract is voidable by the purchaser until the certificate is provided. The Uniform Condominium Act (UCA § 4-108) runs parallel. Florida's estoppel-certificate statutes, Fla. Stat. § 718.116(8) for condominiums and § 720.30851 for HOAs, require issuance within 10 business days and cap the fee (set at $250 by statute and adjusted for inflation under the Department of Business and Professional Regulation schedule), barring the association from charging any fee if it misses the 10-business-day deadline. Arkansas has adopted none of this — no uniform-act resale provision and no Florida-style estoppel statute applies here, and none should be attributed to the state.

Verification of the Horizontal Property Act section by section confirms one near-miss worth flagging. Section 18-13-116 addresses the disposition of unpaid assessments when a unit is sold: unpaid assessments get paid first out of the sale price, and the purchaser is jointly and severally liable with the seller for amounts owing up to the time of conveyance.⁴ That provision allocates liability, but it doesn't require the association to disclose the balance, set a deadline, or bind the association to a stated figure — it's a liability rule, not a disclosure certificate. Developer or declarant sales and any offering-disclosure duties raise a distinct question from owner-to-owner resale disclosure; Act 516 of 2025 added declarant and development-rights provisions to the Horizontal Property Act, but those govern the establishment and build-out of regimes, not resale disclosure between an existing owner and a buyer.⁵

2B. What the declaration supplies instead

Because no statute speaks to resale disclosure, the recorded declaration — the CC&Rs — is the primary source of any obligation. Whether the association must issue a statement of the account balance on request, what it may charge, and how quickly it must respond are contractual terms fixed by the declaration and, in practice, by the management contract. Communities vary: some declarations require a written statement within a set number of days for a stated fee, while others stay silent, leaving the manager to respond as a matter of custom.

The broader package a selling owner furnishes by practice or contract typically includes the declaration, the bylaws, the rules and regulations, and a current statement of the assessment account showing the regular assessment, any delinquency, and any pending special assessment. The account balance and pending special assessments reach the closing table through that declaration-based statement of account rather than through a statutory certificate, because Arkansas provides no statutory instrument to carry them.

The Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 operates at the entity level. For associations incorporated as nonprofits, it supplies corporate governance, meeting, and records rules, including a member's right to inspect corporate records on written demand for a proper purpose.² Those inspection rights run to members, not to a non-member purchaser, and the Act creates no resale certificate. For condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act separately requires the administrator to keep a detailed book of receipts and expenditures available for examination by co-owners — again a records-access rule for owners rather than a resale-disclosure instrument for buyers.⁶

2C. Common-law estoppel, remedies, and scope

Even without a statute, an Arkansas association that states an account balance a purchaser reasonably relies on may be bound by that figure under common-law equitable estoppel. That's a doctrine, not a statutory certificate. The Arkansas Supreme Court recognizes four elements: the party to be estopped must know the facts; that party must intend that its conduct be acted on, or act so that the party asserting estoppel had a right to believe it was so intended; the party asserting estoppel must be ignorant of the true facts; and that party must rely on the conduct to its injury.³ In Relyance Bank, N.A. v. Pharr, the court applied the doctrine in a closing context, holding a lienholder estopped from later asserting a lien after its representative assured a title company at closing that the lien would be released and the parties relied on that assurance.³ The same logic can bind an association to a payoff figure its agent states and a buyer reasonably relies on.

The purchaser's practical remedy when a statement is wrong or late doesn't come from a statutory cancellation right, because Arkansas has none; it arises from the purchase contract and from common law. Scope matters here: the absence of a statutory resale certificate applies to condominiums and planned communities of every vintage, and the declaration governs in each case. No Arkansas statute reaches resale disclosure for any community type or era.¹

Section 3: The resale transaction in practice

A. Requesting the certificate

Who may request the statement is set by the declaration, not by statute; in practice the request comes from the selling owner, the purchaser, or an authorized agent such as a title company or closing attorney, and the standard form is a written request. Arkansas provides no statutory standing rule for requesters, and a non-member purchaser has no statutory record-inspection right under the Nonprofit Corporation Act.² The trigger that starts any response clock is the association's or manager's receipt of the request as defined in the governing documents; there's no statutory trigger.

B. The statutory clock and delivery

There is no statutory clock. Any turnaround period, and whether it's counted in business or calendar days, is fixed by the declaration or the management contract; Arkansas sets neither a day-count nor a business-versus-calendar basis. How and to whom the statement is delivered is likewise a matter of the governing documents and closing practice, not statute. If the association is late, Arkansas imposes no statutory consequence on the pending sale; any consequence flows from the purchase contract's own contingencies.

C. Fees and refunds

The association may charge a fee for preparing the statement only if and as the declaration or management contract permits, and any such fee is a reasonable charge with no hard dollar cap, in contrast to Florida's indexed statutory ceiling (a base of $250, adjusted for inflation, with capped rush and delinquency add-ons under Fla. Stat. § 718.116(8) and § 720.30851). Arkansas doesn't address an expedited or rush fee, and it doesn't address a refund if the sale doesn't close; the statute is silent on both, so any rush fee or refund term exists only if the governing documents create it.

D. Consequences and the binding effect

Arkansas imposes no statutory binding effect. Once a statement issues, whether the association can later collect from the purchaser amounts above those disclosed depends on common-law equitable estoppel, not a statute, and only if the estoppel elements are met.³ Association exposure for an erroneous or late statement isn't governed by any statutory liability standard; exposure, if any, arises from common-law estoppel or contract. The purchaser's remedy for nondelivery is a contract remedy under the purchase agreement, not a statutory cancellation right. A practical caution for buyers and closing agents: because Ark. Code § 18-13-116(d) makes a condominium purchaser jointly and severally liable with the seller for unpaid assessments accrued to the date of conveyance, obtaining and relying on an accurate statement of account carries real financial stakes.⁴

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No Arkansas bill in the past 24 months created, or proposed to create, a statutory resale or estoppel certificate. Three Horizontal Property Act measures from the 2025 Regular Session touched association governance but not resale disclosure, and are noted here only to show the absence of resale-specific action.

B. Recent Arkansas appellate rulings

No Arkansas appellate decision in the past 36 months interpreted a resale or estoppel certificate, because none exists. One recent Supreme Court decision applies the common-law estoppel doctrine that would govern a stated payoff figure at closing.

C. Active legislative debates

No active Arkansas proposal would create a statutory resale-disclosure regime, adopt UCIOA, or add a condominium resale-certificate provision; recent Horizontal Property Act activity has focused on definitions, declarant rights, and association financial transparency rather than resale disclosure.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Arkansas sits in the CC&R-only category of resale disclosure, with no statutory resale certificate for communities of any type. That distinguishes it from four broad national approaches: hard-mandate states with statutory estoppel certificates, short business-day clocks, and indexed fee caps (Florida, via Fla. Stat. § 718.116(8) for condominiums and § 720.30851 for HOAs, which require delivery within 10 business days and cap the base fee near $250 to $300); detailed-disclosure states with a statutory resale package and enumerated documents (California, via the Davis-Stirling Act, where Civ. Code § 4525 requires the seller to furnish an itemized package and § 4530 requires the association to deliver requested documents within 10 days of the request); UCIOA resale-certificate states such as Alaska, Colorado, and Washington, where § 4-109 requires the association to furnish a certificate within 10 days and the buyer isn't bound to pay more than the certificate states; and the CC&R-only treatment Arkansas follows. For a multi-state operator expanding into Arkansas, the practical implication is direct: assumptions that a statute supplies a resale certificate, a deadline, or a fee cap don't hold here, so the closing figure comes from the declaration-based statement and the turnaround and fee are contractual. Arkansas shows little legislative momentum toward a statutory resale-disclosure regime; recent bills have addressed governance and audits, not resale.

HOA Weekly's Arkansas Estoppel and Resale coverage updates quarterly as the legislature, the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and the Arkansas Supreme Court act. Federal frameworks also apply to Arkansas associations regardless of the state framework, notably the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act where a disclosed balance is being collected, along with the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule.

Footnotes

1. Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code §§ 18-13-101 through 18-13-120 (as amended by Act 516 of 2025) ↩
2. Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq. (Act 1147 of 1993) ↩
3. Relyance Bank, N.A. v. Pharr, 2026 Ark. 55 (Ark. Mar. 19, 2026) ↩
4. Ark. Code § 18-13-116, Liability for expenses and assessments (as amended by Act 516 of 2025) ↩
5. SB323 (Act 516 of 2025), To Amend the Horizontal Property Act — Arkansas General Assembly ↩
6. Ark. Code § 18-13-110, Book of receipts and expenditures — Examination ↩
7. HB1453 (2025), To Amend the Horizontal Property Act; and to Regulate Property Owners' Associations — Arkansas General Assembly ↩
8. HB1660 (2025), To Require an Audit for Certain Property Owners' Associations — Arkansas General Assembly ↩