Hawaii HOA Director Qualifications

Section 1: Overview — Who can serve on an association board in Hawaii

When it comes to director qualifications, Hawaii takes a moderate-touch approach. Two governing statutes set the board-governance rules: they impose a fiduciary standard and reserve qualification-setting to the owners for condominiums, and after 2022 they spell out director removal and cumulative voting for planned communities. But the statutes leave most candidate eligibility screens to the recorded governing documents. The Hawaii Condominium Property Act, Haw. Rev. Stat. Chapter 514B, governs condominium associations,¹ and the Hawaii Planned Community Associations Act, Haw. Rev. Stat. Chapter 421J, governs planned, non-condominium communities.² The older condominium statute, Chapter 514A, was repealed effective July 1, 2020,³ and Chapter 514B now carries the transition language for projects created or registered under it.⁴ After Act 69 (2022), Chapter 421J — not the Hawaii Nonprofit Corporations Act — governs the removal of a planned-community director, and the nonprofit removal section says plainly that it does not apply to a Chapter 421J association.⁵ Neither statute requires certification or education, sets a term limit, or automatically disqualifies delinquent owners or people with criminal records. That sets Hawaii apart from heavy-touch states like Florida.¹ The sections below lay out where qualifications come from, the operational eligibility and tenure rules by community type, recent legislative and judicial activity, and where Hawaii stands nationally.

Section 2: Where director qualifications come from

2A. The two statutes: Chapter 514B (condominiums) and Chapter 421J (planned communities)

Hawaii splits common-interest governance into two statutes, and they don't interchange. Chapter 514B, the Condominium Property Act, governs condominium associations — the associations of unit owners often styled AOAOs or AOUOs. It gives the condominium board its powers and lays out the statutory fiduciary duty at Section 514B-106,¹ along with the eligibility limitations at Section 514B-107.⁶ Chapter 421J, the Planned Community Associations Act, governs planned, non-condominium communities; its board provision sits at Section 421J-3,² and the cumulative-voting and director-removal provisions at Sections 421J-3.2⁷ and 421J-3.3⁸ arrived with Act 69 (2022).⁹ The two chapters cover different community types, and a rule from one does not carry over to the other.

Chapter 514A, the older Condominium Property Regimes law, was repealed effective July 1, 2020. The Hawaii State Legislature lists the chapter as "REPEALED,"³ and the DCCA Real Estate Branch confirms both the repeal and that the select sections temporarily re-enacted under Act 223 (2019) sunsetted on July 1, 2020.⁴ Chapter 514B now governs every condominium and reaches all condominiums created after July 1, 2006, with transition treatment for projects previously created or registered under Chapter 514A.¹⁰

What neither statute does matters just as much as what it does. Neither Chapter 514B nor Chapter 421J requires director certification or education, sets a statutory term limit, or automatically disqualifies owners who fall behind on assessments or who have criminal histories. Those screens, where they exist at all, come from the recorded declaration and bylaws.

2B. The corporate-law layer and the Chapter 421J carve-out

Most Hawaii associations organize as nonprofit corporations under the Hawaii Nonprofit Corporations Act, Haw. Rev. Stat. Chapter 414D, which supplies the corporate scaffolding: a minimum board size (Section 414D-133),¹¹ director terms (Section 414D-135),¹² general standards of conduct (Section 414D-149),¹³ conflict-of-interest rules (Section 414D-150),¹⁴ and director removal (Section 414D-138).⁵ For condominium associations, Chapter 514B itself ties the board's standard of care back to Chapter 414D,¹ and Chapter 414D fills the gaps that the condominium statute and the governing documents leave open.

For planned communities, Act 69 (2022) carved two subjects out of Chapter 414D. The Act exempted planned community associations from the nonprofit cumulative-voting provision (Section 414D-114)¹⁵ and the nonprofit director-removal provision (Section 414D-138), and moved both into Chapter 421J. Section 414D-138 now says the section "shall not apply to any planned community association governed by chapter 421J."⁵ So for a planned community, Chapter 421J governs director removal and cumulative voting, and Chapter 414D applies only where Chapter 421J does not displace it.

2C. The declaration and bylaws as the source of eligibility screens

Because the statutes set so few candidate screens, the recorded declaration and bylaws are where most eligibility rules actually live. For condominiums, Chapter 514B reinforces that division of labor: Section 514B-106(b) bars the board from acting "to elect members of the board or determine the qualifications, powers and duties, or terms of office of board members," and reserves those subjects to the unit owners.¹ A condominium board cannot write its own director-qualification rules; only the owners can, through the governing documents.

The order of precedence depends on the track. For a condominium, start with Chapter 514B, then turn to the recorded declaration and bylaws, then the Chapter 414D defaults, and finally any duly adopted rules. For a planned community, start with Chapter 421J, then the association documents — the declaration, bylaws, and similar instruments — then the Chapter 414D defaults to the extent Chapter 421J hasn't displaced them, then the rules. In practice, a manager vetting a candidate should first pin down the community type, apply the statutory board rules for that type, and then read the declaration and bylaws for any added eligibility screen.

Section 3: Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

A. Eligibility to serve

For condominiums, Section 514B-107(a) requires a board member to be a unit owner or co-owner, a vendee under an agreement of sale, a trustee of a trust that owns a unit, or an officer, partner, member, or other person authorized to act for a legal entity that owns a unit (source: Chapter 514B; applies to condominiums).⁶ The same subsection allows no more than one representative on the board from any single unit. Section 514B-107(b) bars any tenant, resident manager, or employee of the condominium from serving on its board. Chapter 514B sets no residency, age, or good-standing requirement; any such screen is documentary, flowing from the declaration or bylaws, and Section 514B-106(b) hands the power to set qualifications to the owners, not the board.¹

For planned communities, Section 421J-3(a) requires every board member to be a member of the association, subject to a developer's reserved appointment rights (source: Chapter 421J; applies to planned communities).² Section 421J-3(b) builds the board from the number and group of persons the association documents specify, with no more than one representative from any one unit owned by someone other than the master developer or declarant. Chapter 421J sets no statutory residency, age, or good-standing screen; those, if they exist, are documentary. The condominium side spells out how to treat co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives — Section 514B-107(a) lists co-owners, trustees, and authorized entity representatives — while the planned-community side leaves that to the association documents.

B. Disqualification and removal

For condominiums, Section 514B-106(f) lets the unit owners remove any board member at a regular or special association meeting by a majority vote, with successors elected for the remainder of the term, or otherwise as the bylaws direct (source: Chapter 514B; applies to condominiums).¹ A removal at a special meeting must also clear the call-and-notice requirements that Section 514B-106(f) cross-references.

For planned communities, Section 421J-3.3 — added by Act 69 (2022) — governs removal (source: Chapter 421J; applies to planned communities).⁸ Members may remove a director with or without cause unless the association documents say otherwise. A member-initiated removal runs by petition, and the petition must be "signed by members representing at least one hundred units or members who own at least twenty-five per cent of the total number of units in the planned community, whichever is less," while also meeting the content and timing requirements in the section.⁸ The nonprofit removal section, Section 414D-138, does not reach a Chapter 421J association.⁵

Neither statute disqualifies a candidate or a sitting director for falling behind on assessments or for a criminal record. Any such bar is documentary — it arises from the declaration or bylaws — and Hawaii does not mandate it by statute. On conflicts, condominium directors owe a statutory fiduciary duty under Section 514B-106(a), which demands the care and loyalty of a director of a Chapter 414D corporation;¹ Section 514B-125(a) requires a director to declare a conflict of interest and then bars that director from voting on the matter.¹⁶ For both community types, the parallel corporate baseline is Section 414D-149 (general standards)¹³ and Section 414D-150 (conflict-of-interest transactions).¹⁴

C. Board composition and terms

For condominiums, Section 514B-106(e) requires the owners to elect a board of at least three members. A project created after May 18, 1984 with one hundred or more units must seat an elected board of at least nine members unless the bylaws are amended to lower that number, and a project of more than one hundred units that is not majority owner-occupied may shrink the board to as few as five (source: Chapter 514B; applies to condominiums).¹ The Chapter 414D default is a board of three or more.¹¹ Chapter 514B does not fix a director's term length; the bylaws set the term, the staggering, and any limit, while the Chapter 414D default caps a term at five years and, if the bylaws say nothing, makes it one year.¹² Hawaii imposes no statutory director term limit for either community type.

Declarant-appointed seats and the transition of control are statutory too. For condominiums, Section 514B-106(d) lets the declaration set a period of developer control, which ends no later than the earliest of four points: sixty days after seventy-five per cent of the common interest has been conveyed, two years after the developer last offered units in the ordinary course, two years after anyone last exercised a right to add units, or voluntary surrender.¹ For planned communities, Section 421J-3(a) preserves a developer's reserved appointment rights.² On vacancies, Section 514B-106(b) lets a condominium board fill a seat only through the next annual or duly noticed special association meeting.¹

D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Hawaii requires no director certification or education as a condition of service in either community type. That is the sharpest contrast with Florida, where a newly elected or appointed director must, within ninety days, submit a certificate showing completion of an approved educational curriculum — and stays suspended from the board until they comply — under Fla. Stat. 720.3033(1)(a).¹⁷ A Hawaii director takes office on election, with no certification step in between. The duties that do bind a sitting director are the statutory fiduciary standard under Section 514B-106(a) for condominium boards¹ and the corporate baseline under Sections 414D-149 and 414D-150,¹³ together with the conflict-of-interest disclosure that Section 514B-125(a) demands.¹⁶ A new director would do well to read the declaration, the bylaws, and the recent budgets, and to disclose any conflict — but neither Chapter 514B nor Chapter 421J conditions eligibility on training.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills and acts

No enacted measure in the past twenty-four months has touched the board-composition, director-eligibility, or director-removal provisions of Chapter 514B or Chapter 421J. The change that still controls is Act 69 (2022), which we include as recent context because it sits just outside the current twenty-four-month window.

B. Recent appellate rulings

No published decision from the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals or the Hawaii Supreme Court in the past thirty-six months speaks directly to director eligibility, director removal, board composition, or the director fiduciary standard. The recent appellate activity that does touch associations has run to foreclosure remedies and unit-access disputes, not director qualifications. Trial-level disputes move through the Hawaii Circuit Courts, with appeals to the Intermediate Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the Hawaii Supreme Court.¹⁹

C. Active legislative debates

One proposal keeps coming back. House Bill 299, introduced in the 2023 session and carried over to 2024, would have required cooperative, planned-community, and condominium board members to complete a Real Estate Commission training and certification course covering the legal and fiduciary obligations under Chapters 421I, 421J, and 514B. It did not advance, and no director-certification mandate is law in Hawaii today.²⁰

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Hawaii lands in the moderate-touch category for director qualifications. Its two statutes supply a fiduciary standard and owner-reserved qualification-setting for condominiums (Sections 514B-106 and 514B-107)¹ and statutory director-removal and cumulative-voting rules for planned communities (Sections 421J-3.3 and 421J-3.2),⁸ yet leave candidate eligibility screens to the recorded governing documents. That puts Hawaii between the heavy-touch states and the light-touch ones. Florida sits on the heavy end: by statute it requires director certification within ninety days (Fla. Stat. 720.3033),¹⁷ and under Chapter 720 it imposes an eight-consecutive-year term cap and disqualifies members more than ninety days delinquent on monetary obligations, along with certain felons (Fla. Stat. 720.306(9)(b)).²¹ On the light end, states leave eligibility almost entirely to the governing documents. For a multi-state operator, the practical takeaway is simple: Hawaii splits condominium and planned-community governance into separate statutes, and planned-community director removal lives in Chapter 421J, not the nonprofit corporation act. One more difference worth noting — condominium associations answer to DCCA registration²² that planned communities do not.¹⁰

HOA Weekly's Hawaii Director Qualifications coverage updates quarterly as the legislature, the DCCA, and the Hawaii courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Hawaii associations remain subject to federal law — FHA, ADA, FDCPA, SCRA, and OTARD — across their broader operations.

Footnotes

1. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 514B-106 (Board; powers and duties), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
2. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 421J-3 (Board of directors), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
3. Haw. Rev. Stat. Chapter 514A (Condominium Property Regimes), REPEALED. L 2017, c 181, §§2, 47, Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
4. "The Repeal of Chapter 514A, HRS," DCCA Real Estate Branch. ↩
5. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 414D-138 (Removal of directors elected by members or directors), subsection (j) carve-out for Chapter 421J associations, Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
6. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 514B-107 (Board; limitations), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
7. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 421J-3.2 (Cumulative voting for directors), added by L 2022, c 69, Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
8. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 421J-3.3 (Removal of directors elected by members or directors), added by L 2022, c 69, pt of §1, Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
9. Conference Committee Report on S.B. No. 2685, S.D. 2, H.D. 1, C.D. 1 (Act 69, SLH 2022, Relating to Planned Community Associations), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
10. "Condominium FAQs," DCCA Real Estate Branch (Chapter 514B governs condominium associations; Real Estate Commission has no jurisdiction over Chapter 421J planned community associations). ↩
11. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 414D-133 (Number of directors), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
12. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 414D-135 (Terms of directors generally), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
13. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 414D-149 (General standards for directors), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
14. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 414D-150 (Director conflict of interest), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
15. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 414D-114 (Cumulative voting for directors), subsection (e) carve-out for Chapter 421J associations, Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
16. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 514B-125 (Board meetings; conflict of interest disclosure), Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
17. Fla. Stat. § 720.3033 (Officers and directors; certification requirement), The Florida Senate. ↩
18. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 421J-3.5 (Notice required; regular, annual, and special meetings), twenty-one-day posting requirement, Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
19. "The Intermediate Court of Appeals," Hawaii State Judiciary. ↩
20. H.B. No. 299 (2023 Regular Session), Relating to Board of Directors Training and Certification, Hawaii State Legislature. ↩
21. Fla. Stat. § 720.306 (Meetings of members; eligibility for board service), The Florida Senate. ↩
22. "Real Estate Branch (REB)," DCCA (registration of condominium projects, condominium associations, condominium managing agents, and condominium hotel operators). ↩