Arkansas HOA Reserve Studies

Section 1: Overview — Reserve study requirements in Arkansas

Arkansas asks no community association to run a reserve study. It sets no minimum funding standard. It provides no mechanism for disclosing reserves. What governs reserves here instead is the recorded declaration and the board's fiduciary duty.² Condominiums answer to the Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code §§ 18-13-101 to 18-13-120 — a traditional condominium statute that Arkansas first enacted in 1961, and one that says nothing about reserve studies, reserve funding, or reserve disclosure.¹ Planned communities — the developments that are not condominiums — have no HOA statute at all. They run on their recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions, and, where they organize as nonprofits, on the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code §§ 4-33-101 et seq.⁶ Arkansas never adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, so the post-1980 uniform framework for reserve disclosure does not reach this state.¹ That places Arkansas among the no-mandate states — a contrast with mandate states such as California, Florida, and Nevada, which spell out study intervals, inspections, and funding rules by statute.⁷ The sections that follow lay out the statutory framework, the compliance obligations, the recent legislative and judicial activity, and where Arkansas stands nationally.

Section 2: The reserve framework under Arkansas law

2A. The Horizontal Property Act and reserves

The Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code §§ 18-13-101 to 18-13-120, governs condominiums in Arkansas, and it carries no reserve-study requirement, no reserve-funding requirement, and no reserve-disclosure provision.¹ Its financial provisions are spare. Section 18-13-110 directs the administrator or board to keep a book of receipts and expenditures, with vouchers, and to open it for examination by co-owners.³ Section 18-13-116 requires co-owners to contribute pro rata to the expenses of administration, maintenance, and repair of the common elements, and it spells out what a buyer owes for unpaid assessments at sale.⁴ Section 18-13-108 requires the bylaws to provide for the care, upkeep, and surveillance of the building and common elements, and to set the manner of collecting common expenses.⁵ None of these provisions mentions reserves, capital planning, or a periodic study. The Act also imposes no resale-certificate or buyer-disclosure duty; § 18-13-116 makes a purchaser jointly and severally liable with the seller for unpaid assessments and directs that unpaid assessments come out of the sale price, but that is a successor-liability and lien-priority rule, not a disclosure mechanism.⁴ The Act predates the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act and UCIOA, and Arkansas adopted neither; it remains a traditional horizontal-property statute keyed to the master deed and the recorded bylaws.¹

2B. Planned communities

Planned communities that are not horizontal property regimes have no dedicated statute in Arkansas. Their reserve obligations, if any, come entirely from the recorded declaration, the board's fiduciary duty, and — for associations organized as nonprofit corporations — the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993.⁶ Which framework applies turns first on how the community came into being: the Horizontal Property Act reaches a property only where someone submitted it to a horizontal property regime by recording a master deed under § 18-13-103.⁸ A development built as a conventional subdivision with lot-owner covenants is not a horizontal property regime, and the Act does not cover it, even when people call it an HOA. The practical result is that most Arkansas planned communities have no statutory reserve layer at all. The declaration answers the reserve question, and the board answers it through its own fiduciary judgment.²

2C. The declaration, corporate, and fiduciary backstop

Across both frameworks, the reserve obligation rests on the recorded declaration and the board's fiduciary duty, not on any reserve statute.² The order of precedence runs from the applicable statute — the Horizontal Property Act for condominiums, where one applies — to the recorded declaration or master deed, and then to the bylaws and rules. For associations organized as nonprofit corporations, the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 supplies the corporate scaffolding: § 4-33-830 requires a director to act in good faith, with the care an ordinarily prudent person in a like position would use under similar circumstances, and in a manner the director reasonably believes serves the association's best interests.⁹ That is a corporate standard of conduct — not an HOA statute, and not a reserve mandate. It requires no study and sets no funding level, though a board that ignores foreseeable capital needs can expose itself to a breach-of-duty claim. The takeaway is plain: there is no "Arkansas reserve study law" to cite. The obligation is contractual and fiduciary, and the controlling document is the declaration.

Section 3: Compliance obligations

A. Study and inspection obligations

No statutory reserve-study or physical-inspection obligation applies to condominiums or planned communities; the duty here is fiduciary and contractual for both types. A study or inspection obligation arises only from the recorded declaration, or as a prudent exercise of the board's fiduciary duty under the Nonprofit Corporation Act standard of care.⁹

B. Funding obligations

No statutory reserve-funding requirement and no minimum funding standard apply; again, the duty is fiduciary and contractual for both types. Condominium owners must contribute pro rata to common-element administration, maintenance, and repair under § 18-13-116, but that provision funds expenses generally and sets no reserve level — a statutory rule that reaches condominiums only.⁴ Reserve funding levels otherwise come down to board discretion under fiduciary duty and the declaration.²

C. Disclosure obligations

For condominiums, § 18-13-110 requires the board to open the book of receipts and expenditures for owner examination at convenient hours on working days — a records-access right, not an affirmative reserve disclosure, and one that applies to condominiums by statute.³ The Horizontal Property Act imposes no annual reserve-disclosure obligation and no resale or buyer reserve-disclosure obligation; that gap runs to both community types.¹ Planned-community disclosure duties, where they exist, are contractual — set by the declaration — or corporate, through member information rights under the Nonprofit Corporation Act.⁶

D. Account and governance obligations

No statute requires an association to segregate reserve funds into a dedicated account, restrict their use, or hold a board or member vote before spending them; for both community types, this is contractual and fiduciary. Those controls exist only where the declaration or bylaws impose them. The Horizontal Property Act asks only that the bylaws address the manner of collecting common expenses and the upkeep of common elements under § 18-13-108 — a statutory rule for condominiums.⁵ For planned communities, every reserve-related account and governance obligation is contractual, fiduciary, or corporate, and never statutory.²

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

B. Recent appellate rulings

No Arkansas appellate decision in the past 36 months — from either the Arkansas Court of Appeals or the Arkansas Supreme Court — has taken up condominium or homeowners-association reserve funds, reserve funding, or board fiduciary duty in the reserve context.¹² Trial-level association disputes move through the Arkansas Circuit Courts, with appeals to the Arkansas Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the Arkansas Supreme Court. Because no qualifying ruling exists in the window, this page provides no case metadata block or audience-implication table.

C. Active legislative debates

No reserve-study, reserve-funding, or reserve-disclosure bill for condominiums or planned communities is pending in the Arkansas General Assembly as of the verification date. The 2025 session's work on the Horizontal Property Act — Act 516 — modernized definitions and structure rather than touching reserves.¹¹

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Arkansas sits in the no-mandate group. The mandate group prescribes reserves by statute. California asks the board, at least once every three years, to cause a reasonably competent and diligent visual inspection of major components as part of a reserve study, reviewed annually, under Civil Code § 5550 (as amended by SB 900, effective January 1, 2025) — though it sets no fixed percent-funded target.¹³ Florida requires a Structural Integrity Reserve Study for each condominium or cooperative building three or more habitable stories tall, with the first study due by December 31, 2024 and updates at least every ten years, under Section 718.112(2)(g) — enacted through Senate Bill 4-D (signed May 26, 2022, after the June 24, 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside that killed 98 people) and later amended by SB 154 (2023) and HB 913 (2025).¹⁴ Nevada requires a reserve study at least every five years, with annual review, prepared by a permit holder — except for small associations of 20 or fewer units in counties under 55,000 population — under NRS 116.31152.¹⁵ A second group of states has limited reserve provisions. Arkansas belongs to the third group, where reserves run on the recorded declaration and the board's fiduciary duty, with a traditional condominium statute and no HOA statute for planned communities. Arkansas has not adopted UCIOA, and its Horizontal Property Act carries no reserve-study framework.¹ For a multi-state operator moving from a mandate state into Arkansas, the practical lesson is that statutory compliance checklists do not transfer. The governing document, not the state code, defines the reserve obligation, and lender standards may fill the gap the statute leaves open.²

Federal frameworks also reach Arkansas associations regardless of the state rules — among them the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule.

Footnotes

1. Arkansas Code, Title 18, Subtitle 2, Chapter 13, Horizontal Property Act, §§ 18-13-101 to 18-13-120 (official free public access provided by the Bureau of Legislative Research) ↩
2. Arkansas General Assembly, Arkansas Law (gateway to the Arkansas Code and Constitution of 1874, Bureau of Legislative Research); no reserve-study statute exists, and reserves are governed by the recorded declaration and board fiduciary duty ↩
3. Ark. Code § 18-13-110, Book of receipts and expenditures — Examination (official Arkansas Code, Bureau of Legislative Research) ↩
4. Ark. Code § 18-13-116, Liability for expenses and assessments, as amended by Act 516 of 2025, Section 8 (subsections (c)–(d) address successor liability and lien priority, not disclosure) ↩
5. Ark. Code § 18-13-108, Bylaws (official Arkansas Code, Bureau of Legislative Research) ↩
6. Act 1147 of 1993, Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, codified at Ark. Code §§ 4-33-101 et seq. ↩
7. California Civil Code § 5550 (reserve study at least every three years), shown as a mandate-state contrast to Arkansas ↩
8. Ark. Code § 18-13-103, Establishment of horizontal property regimes, as amended by Act 516 of 2025, Section 5 (regime created only by recording a master deed) ↩
9. Ark. Code § 4-33-830, General standards for directors, Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 (good faith; ordinary prudence; best interests of the corporation) ↩
10. Arkansas General Assembly, SB323 Bill Information (now Act 516): Lead Sponsor Sen. J. Bryant; co-sponsor Rep. McCollum; introduced Feb. 26, 2025; delivered to Governor Apr. 8, 2025; Act date Apr. 10, 2025 ↩
11. Act 516 of 2025 (SB323), To Amend the Horizontal Property Act (full enrolled text; Section 9 applicability date of September 1, 2025) ↩
12. Arkansas Judiciary published opinions database; no qualifying reserve or association-fiduciary-duty appellate opinion identified for June 2023 through June 2026 ↩
13. California Civil Code § 5550(a), Reserve study requirements (as amended by SB 900, eff. Jan. 1, 2025) ↩
14. Florida Statutes § 718.112(2)(g), Structural Integrity Reserve Study (enacted via SB 4-D, 2022; amended by SB 154, 2023, and HB 913, 2025) ↩
15. Nevada Revised Statutes § 116.31152, Study of reserves (at least every five years; permit-holder preparer; small-association exception) ↩