DC changed one section of its Condominium Act in two years
DC changed one section of its Condominium Act in two years
2026-09-09 · District of Columbia · Legislation
The District of Columbia Condominium Act runs to 77 sections. In 2025 and 2026, exactly one of them was amended.
That section is D.C. Code § 42-1903.03, the meetings provision, which acquired a new subsection permanently authorising electronic meetings and early electronic voting — covered in our report on that change.1
Everything else in the Act is where it was.
What that means, section by section
The provisions District boards deal with daily carry no recent amendment:
- § 42-1903.13, the lien for assessments and its limited priority — unchanged.
- § 42-1903.10, insurance, including the $5,000 deductible pass-through cap — unchanged. A bill would raise it to $25,000 and has not moved since a March 2026 hearing.
- § 42-1903.12, budgets and reserves — unchanged.
- § 42-1903.08, association powers — unchanged.
- The whole of Subchapter IV — developer registration, public offering statements, conversion condominiums, deposits and resale certificates — unchanged.
Nor did the Council touch the Nonprofit Corporation Act chapter that governs incorporated District associations, the Horizontal Property Regimes chapter, or the Common Interest Community Repairs programme.
The absences worth naming
No reserve mandate. The District has no statutory reserve-study requirement and no funding formula. Six years after Surfside, a search of the current Council Period returns no bill on reserve studies, milestone or structural inspections, or facade and balcony safety. The reserve floor District associations will actually face in 2027 is being set by the secondary mortgage market, not by the Council — covered in our report on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac changes.
No manager licensing. The District licenses individual property managers, not the firms. A bill would change that and has had no hearing in eighteen months.
No change to records, elections, board governance or director qualifications. Across the Council Period, no measure reaches them.
What actually reached District associations instead
A quiet Condominium Act did not mean a quiet two years. It meant the changes arrived from outside the Act — and, in most cases, from outside housing law entirely.
Water. Shutoff notices must now name the condominium or community association as the delinquent party, with the amount and days past due, posted at each unit thirty working days ahead. That is a governance exposure created by a utility statute.
Stormwater. Athletic courts, swimming pools and private streets are chargeable impervious surface, and non-payment produces a lien “without further notice to the owner,” with applicability reaching back to 2009 — a lien on common-element property created by a water-and-sewer provision.
Roads. Where an association covenanted an easement to the District, the Mayor may repair its private street “with or without the consent of the owner” and recover the cost as a “continuing and perpetual lien” — a second lien on common-element land, from a public-works statute.
Energy. Performance standards, a benchmarking threshold that dropped to 10,000 square feet, and a net-zero code deadline at the end of 2026.
Trees, trash, flood elevations, elevator standards, seller disclosure forms. Each a real obligation, none of them in the Condominium Act.
The pattern, and why it matters for how a board reads the law
Two liens now attach to District common-element property from statutes no community-association lawyer would think to check — one enforceable without notice, one perpetual. A utility statute publishes an association's arrears to its own membership. An environmental statute aggregates five years of permits into a compliance trigger.
The practical consequence is that reading the Condominium Act is no longer a way to know what binds a District association. It was never sufficient; it is now not even the main event. A board or manager tracking only Title 42 Chapter 19 would have missed everything above.
The other pattern: enacted and inoperative
The District's second habit is subject-to-appropriations drafting, and it has produced at least two provisions that are law and do nothing.
The right-to-charge law for electric vehicle charging ports is codified with a heading ending “[Not Funded]” and no operative text. The pet-fee caps and breed, size and weight provisions read “Not Funded” in the codified subsections.
Both were reported as effective. Neither is. For anyone reading District law from outside, the lesson generalises: the effective date of a DC act and whether a given section of it operates are two different questions, and the codified section heading is where the answer is.
What to watch next
Council Period 26 ends at noon on January 2, 2027, and a measure not finally adopted by then lapses without prejudice to reintroduction. The condominium insurance bill, the management-firm licensing bill, the smoke-free housing bill and the buildings-lien bill are all in that position.
If none of them is adopted, the District will close a two-year Council Period having amended a single section of its Condominium Act — while the obligations on its associations grew substantially, from everywhere else.
Related District of Columbia HOA Topics
- D.C. Code Title 42, Chapter 19 — the Condominium Act of 1976, all 77 sections with their History notes ↩
- D.C. Code § 42-1903.03, Meetings — the one section carrying a 2025-26 amendment ↩
- D.C. Code Title 29 — Business Organizations, including the Nonprofit Corporation Act chapter governing incorporated associations ↩
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