What did not happen, specifically

Two bills would have changed this, and both died in their first committee.

SB 352 would have created a new § 81-327 requiring façade and structural inspections, pushed reserve projections to 30 years, bound reserve studies to the Community Associations Institute's standards, extended those duties into the communities §§ 81-117, 81-119 and 81-120 currently exempt, and given the Department of Justice's Consumer Protection Unit power to enforce DUCIOA for the first time. It was filed June 24, 2026 — six days before adjournment — docketed once, and never reported out.

HB 469 would have given the Ombudsperson three county deputies and a dedicated fund. Filed June 10, 2026 with a fiscal note of $292,617 a year, it was never placed on a committee agenda at all.

Also dead: SB 87, which would have voided covenants prohibiting accessory dwelling units created after June 30, 2027, and which sat on the Senate Ready List for fourteen months after clearing committee 5-0; HB 451, the disparate-impact bill that passed the House 26-12 and stalled on a split Senate committee report; HB 39, which passed the House 39-0 and died in a Senate committee over fourteen months; and SB 167, written expressly to help associations with speeding on subdivision streets.

And Delaware's major enacted housing law does nothing to covenants. Senate Substitute 2 for SB 23, the Housing for Every Delawarean Act, was signed July 13, 2026 (85 Del. Laws c. 343). Its full text contains zero occurrences of “covenant,” “common interest,” “unit property,” “declaration” or “deed restriction.”

What did change — sideways

This is the part a board tracking “HOA legislation” by bill title would have missed entirely. Delaware community association law moved this session through statutes about other things:

• Association liens can now be cleared administratively. SB 316 added a definition of “lien” at 25 Del. C. § 2120(j) that expressly includes “a homeowner association or condominium lien.” Effective June 24, 2026.
• Off-highway vehicles on shared private roads are presumed unauthorized. HB 471, in the motor-vehicle code, with golf carts carved out. Effective July 23, 2026.
• Reviving a void nonstock charter got clearer. HB 353 amended 8 Del. C. § 312(j). Effective August 1, 2026.
• Two protected classes were added to the rules associations are judged against. Military status, plus a forward-looking catch-all.
• Associations lost their standing as crime victims. 11 Del. C. § 9419 was repealed effective August 20, 2025, after thirty years.

On the manufactured-housing side, by contrast, Chapter 70 was amended six times — 85 Del. Laws chapters 205, 206, 208, 211, 358 and 436. That is where the legislature's attention actually went.

What this means for a Delaware board or owner

Every DUCIOA rule you operated under in 2024 is the rule today. Reserve studies are mandatory for condominiums and cooperatives and not for planned communities. Budgets ratify themselves unless a majority of all owners rejects them. Fines require notice and an opportunity to be heard and nothing more. Records must be produced on a good-faith request for a proper purpose. The small-community exemption at § 81-117 still exempts communities of 20 units or fewer. September 30, 2009 is still the date that decides whether DUCIOA or the Unit Property Act primarily governs you. Our Delaware governing statute page sets all of that out.

There is no statewide inspection or planned-community reserve mandate, and no agency enforces DUCIOA. Enforcement is a private lawsuit in the Court of Chancery, or the Ombudsperson's voluntary process.

Track the code, not the bill titles. The reliable signals in this state are the Delaware Code's own history notes and the Governor's Legislative Advisories.

What to watch next

The 154th General Assembly convenes January 2027. We verified the legislature's own bill database directly: zero bills of any kind are filed for it. Nothing is pre-filed, and no legislator has publicly announced an intention to reintroduce any of the bills above.

One industry commentator expects SB 352 back in 2027. That is a vendor's forecast, and the record it is set against is three predicted introductions, one actual bill and no committee report.

The highest-value forthcoming document is the Ombudsperson's 2025 annual report, due around December 2026. Its recommendations go by statute to the Governor, the Attorney General, the General Assembly and the Chief Justice, and several have been restated unchanged since 2022.