What chapter 421J does not contain

All of the following exist in chapter 514B and have no counterpart in chapter 421J:

• No reserve study or reserve funding requirement of any kind.
• No budget-content requirement. The only fiscal provision is § 421J-9 — notify members in writing of any increase in regular assessments at least thirty days prior.
• No audit requirement.
• No insurance mandate.
• No state registration of the association, and no managing-agent registration, bonding or fiduciary provision.
• No arbitration provision — mediation only, under § 421J-13 — and no trial de novo.
• No fining authority statute, and therefore no statutory due process attached to fines.
• No education trust fund, and no state agency oversight: the Real Estate Commission regulates condominiums, not planned community associations.
• No statutory lien priority. Section 421J-10.5 provides that priority is “as provided in the association documents or, if no priority is provided… by the recordation date of the liens.”

And the records deadline is different: § 421J-7(e) gives a board sixty calendar days to authorise or refuse a document request, against thirty in § 514B-154(f) and § 514B-154.5(c).

Two places where 421J is actually better drafted

It is not uniformly thinner, and both facts matter.

It has an exemption list. Chapter 514B has no general list of what may be withheld from a records request. Section 421J-7(e) does: personnel records; medical records; “records relating to business transactions that are currently in negotiation”; privileged communications; “complaints against an individual member of the association”; records whose release would violate law; and similar records.

Its conflict rule is emphatic. Section 421J-11: in a conflict between chapter 421J and any other applicable law, “this chapter shall govern.” And § 421J-1.5 directs that the chapter “shall be liberally construed to facilitate the operation of the planned community association.”

The fee provision, which cuts against boards

Section 421J-10(a) entitles the association to “[a]ll costs and expenses, including reasonable attorneys’ fees” — and the Intermediate Court of Appeals held in June 2026 that proportionality alone is no defence, affirming $67,280.34 in fees against a collection amount of $11,498.21.

But the reciprocal is triggered by “if the association is not the prevailing party,” not by the condominium chapter’s “not substantiated” standard. A planned community association that loses pays, full stop.

What the 2026 session did for 421J

Nothing. Three narrow bills — expanding the definition of “condominium association” to include 421J associations; allowing termination of a planned community association on a 67% member vote plus court approval and all lienholders’ consent; and a study of dissolution and governance — were referred and never heard.

The one 2026 act that touched the chapter was Act 37, which extended cumulative voting to write-in candidates in § 421J-3.2 and imported the condominium chapter’s “longest term” seniority rule.

What a planned community board can do

• Do not assume the condominium rules apply to you. Reserve studies, audits, insurance minimums and fining due process are governed by your recorded documents alone.
• Read your declaration on lien priority, because the statute defers to it.
• Budget for full mediation costs. The Condominium Education Trust Fund subsidy — up to $600 facilitative and $3,000 evaluative — is unavailable to you.
• Adopt voluntarily what the statute does not require: a reserve study, an audit, a written fining procedure with an appeal. Nothing prevents it, and the absence of a mandate is not an argument against the practice.

What to watch

Whether anyone revives the task force or introduces its draft. The document exists, it is public, and it has been sitting for nearly three years while the condominium chapter got two task force cycles and three acts.