Connecticut sellers must now point condo buyers at the resale certificate and reserve report
Connecticut sellers must now point condo buyers at the resale certificate and reserve report
2026-09-09 · Connecticut · Compliance
Every Connecticut residential seller's condition report will carry a new warning about buying into a common interest community, starting October 1, 2026. It is Section 2 of Public Act 26-31, the same act that created the court-ordered audit right, and it amends the Uniform Property Condition Disclosure Act rather than the Common Interest Ownership Act.1
The change is one paragraph of statutory text. It is also the first time Connecticut law has told a buyer, on the form the seller must hand over, that a reserve fund report is a thing they should ask for.
What the form now says
Section 2 rewrites subparagraph (B) of subdivision (2) of subsection (d) of § 20-327b. The existing question about common interest communities stays — “Is the property located in a common interest community? If YES, is it subject to any community or association dues or fees?” — and a new special statement is inserted directly after it, pushing the old item (xiii) down to (xiv).1
The new clause reads:
“Special Statement: If the property is located in a common interest community that is comprised of more than twelve units, the buyer is advised to (I) obtain a ‘Resale Certificate’, which shall be provided by the common interest community pursuant to state law, and (II) request from the common interest community a report of such common interest community's reserve funds. For any common interest community that is comprised of not more than twelve units and not required to provide such resale certificate, if such resale certificate is not available, the buyer should consult with trade professionals, attorneys, real estate professionals, financial analysts and residents of such common interest community for more information concerning issues that may arise with ownership in common interest communities.”1
The twelve-unit line is doing the work
The statement splits at twelve units because CIOA does. Connecticut's resale certificate obligation does not reach every community, and the act does not extend it — it tells buyers in the communities that fall outside it to go and ask people instead.
That is an unusually candid piece of drafting. For small communities the statute's advice is, in substance, that the ordinary disclosure machinery will not be available and the buyer should assemble their own picture from professionals and neighbours.
What changes for sellers, agents and associations
Sellers and their agents carry the form, not the content. The condition report is the seller's statutory disclosure. The new clause is advisory text printed on it — it does not require the seller to obtain a resale certificate or a reserve report, and it does not make the seller answerable for what those documents would have shown.
The request volume is set to rise. The second half of the statement is the operative one for boards: buyers are now told, on a form they receive in every Connecticut residential transaction, to “request from the common interest community a report of such common interest community's reserve funds.” Nothing in the act creates a duty to produce such a report, or defines what one contains. Associations that have a current reserve study can answer in a sentence. Associations that do not will be answering that question repeatedly, in writing, at the point of sale.
The gap between advice and entitlement is the thing to watch. A buyer told by statute to request a document, whose association has no statutory duty to provide it, is being handed a question rather than a right. Whether that produces friction at closings, or simply becomes a line nobody reads, is the practical open question for October 1.
Why this arrived attached to an audit bill
Sections 1 and 2 of Public Act 26-31 are aimed at the same problem from opposite ends. Section 1 gives existing owners a court route to an independent audit when they suspect the books are wrong. Section 2 tries to get the next owner to look at the books before they buy in.
The Office of Legislative Research treated them as one measure throughout, and the act's own title carries both halves: an act “concerning court-ordered accountings of common interest community financial records and revising the disclosure requirements relating to common interest communities.”2
What did not survive
House Bill 5265 was raised with a third subject in its title — lender questionnaires — and a provision capping what an association could charge for preparing and recording one. The substitute reported out of the Insurance and Real Estate Committee dropped it, and the title lost the phrase. The Office of Legislative Research's analysis of the substitute contains no fee-cap provision.2
That matters for anyone tracking transfer-related charges in Connecticut: the fee a buyer's lender pays an association to complete a project questionnaire remains uncapped by statute.
What to watch next
The immediate question is whether the reserve-report advisory drives a de facto standard. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are separately raising the replacement-reserve floor they will accept on condominium projects, which means many Connecticut associations will be producing reserve documentation for lenders anyway. If that documentation becomes the thing associations hand buyers in answer to the new statement, the advisory will have done more work than its text suggests.
The second is whether the twelve-unit carve-out draws legislative attention. Connecticut has a substantial stock of very small associations, and the act now states on a government form that buyers in them may have no resale certificate to rely on. A 2025 bill, House Bill 6144, proposed extending resale-certificate duties to communities created before January 1, 1984; it died in committee without a hearing.4
Related Connecticut HOA Topics
- Public Act No. 26-31 (Substitute House Bill No. 5265), full enrolled text — Section 2 amends Conn. Gen. Stat. § 20-327b ↩
- OLR Bill Analysis, sHB 5265, Office of Legislative Research ↩
- 2026 Acts Affecting Housing and Real Estate, OLR Report 2026-R-0090 (June 15, 2026) ↩
- HB 6144 (2025), resale certificates for pre-1984 communities — died in committee ↩
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