Why an invisible sector is a practical problem, not a tidiness one

Four consequences follow directly, and each of them shows up elsewhere in Delaware's own records.

Nobody can warn a voided association. A lapsed franchise-tax filing voids a Delaware nonstock corporation's charter, and most associations are nonstock corporations. There is no way to run a list of voided community associations and tell them. The clearest illustration is on the Court of Chancery docket: a Kent County association is alleged to have filed its last franchise-tax report in 2015 and continued invoicing owners for years afterwards. Delaware amended the revival mechanism this year — HB 353, effective August 1, 2026 — but a revival route only helps an association that knows it needs one.

Education cannot be targeted. The office's own output is substantial — a rewritten collections guide, a brochure, transition materials, workshops. It reaches the 1,354 addresses on its email list. There is no way to reach the communities that have never contacted it, which are precisely the ones whose boards the report describes as defunct or operating without recorded bylaws.

Nobody knows the denominator. Eighty-four formal complaints in a year is either a lot or very few depending on how many communities exist, and the state's figure for that is an estimate. Any statement about how well Delaware's common-interest sector is functioning rests on a number nobody can verify.

Enforcement has no starting list. SB 352 would have given the DOJ's Consumer Protection Unit power to enforce DUCIOA and required façade and structural inspections of qualifying buildings. It died in committee — but had it passed, the agency would have had no way to identify the communities it was enforcing against. A registration bill is the precondition for the enforcement bill, and it is the one that has never been filed.

How this compares with the manufactured-housing side

The contrast is instructive, because Delaware solved the same problem in the adjacent sector.

The Delaware Manufactured Home Relocation Authority maintains a registry of manufactured home communities and their homeowners associations, collects a per-lot assessment through community owners, and certifies rent increases against a published inflation ceiling. It knows who the communities are, and it enforces: in December 2025 it drafted a policy providing that “Failure to be in compliance with the above requirements will result in your HOA being removed from our HOA listing on our website,” with the annual request letter going out January 5, 2026.³

DNREC has been able to run a statewide infrastructure survey of manufactured home communities — identifying more than 170, of which 98 have on-site wastewater systems — for the same reason. That survey has no counterpart for common interest communities, and could not have one.

The difference is not sophistication. It is that one sector has a registry and a funding mechanism attached to it, and the other does not.

What the light-touch bill would and would not do

Worth being clear about the scale of what is proposed, because “registration” sounds heavier than this is.

It would add a supplemental form to a filing associations already make, and require an email address. It would not create a licence, a fee regime, an inspection, or an approval requirement. It would not give any agency power over an association's governance — DUCIOA enforcement would remain a private lawsuit in the Court of Chancery or the Ombudsperson's voluntary process.

Its whole effect is that the state would know who to write to.

A related recommendation, sitting in the same place

The office also recommends registering community association managers — background checks, education certificates, experience, bonding or insurance, and oversight by the Division of Professional Regulation. Delaware has no such licence. The driver in the report is specific: complaints of managers giving false information, and “several instances of ‘borrowing’ Community association funds for personal purposes,” with the observation that two other ombudsperson states acted only after roughly $2 million was embezzled.

Delaware's Real Estate Commission regulations exempt property management from real-estate licensure so long as the individual does not negotiate or draft contracts or leases. Two Real Estate Commission regulation packages were proposed in February 2026, withdrawn, and re-proposed in March 2026, with a comment deadline of March 31, 2026 — and no final order has been published through September 2026. Neither would register community managers.

What to watch next

The 2025 annual report, due December 1, 2026, is where the registration bill's status will next be recorded. On the pattern of prior years, expect the recommendation restated.

The other thing worth watching is mundane and would matter more than a bill: whether the Division of Corporations moves franchise-tax filings to a machine-readable format for its own reasons. That single change would make the whole registration question mostly moot.