Illinois HOA Governing Statute
1. Overview — How HOAs are governed in Illinois
Illinois runs two comprehensive statutes side by side, and together they govern nearly every residential community association in the state. The Common Interest Community Association Act — CICAA, codified at 765 ILCS 160 — governs the non-condominium associations: townhomes, villas, and single-family planned communities.1 The Condominium Property Act, codified at 765 ILCS 605, governs condominiums, and it arrived 47 years before CICAA did.2
CICAA took effect on July 29, 2010, under Public Act 96-1400.3 The Condominium Property Act goes back to 1963 (Laws 1963, p. 1120). Practitioners call it a "first-generation condo enabling statute," adopted after Section 234(c) of the National Housing Act became law in 1961. Many other states later moved on to second- or third-generation statutes; Illinois took a different path, updating the 1963 Act through targeted amendments rather than rewriting it wholesale.4 The two statutes share a lot of structure — both define association powers, set meeting and election procedures, impose financial and records duties, and authorize lien-based collection — but they govern legally distinct forms of property, and you cannot swap one for the other.
What triggers CICAA is an opt-out exemption, not a flat unit count. Under Section 1-75, a non-condo association organized under the Illinois General Not For Profit Corporation Act of 1986 is exempt if it has either 10 or fewer units or annual budgeted assessments of $100,000 or less — unless its directors or members affirmatively vote to be covered.5 Larger associations are covered by default.
One more thing to keep straight: Illinois is not a Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA) state. The General Assembly built its own framework through repeated targeted amendments instead of adopting the uniform model. That puts Illinois in the comprehensive non-UCIOA category, alongside California, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Virginia. So don't import UCIOA defaults — like deemed-rejection budget ratification — into an Illinois analysis. Here, the statutes mean what their text says, and what Illinois courts have held they mean.
2. The statutory framework
The Common Interest Community Association Act (CICAA)
CICAA is codified at 765 ILCS 160 and was enacted by Public Act 96-1400, taking effect July 29, 2010.3 Before CICAA, non-condo associations in Illinois ran mostly on their own declarations, the General Not For Profit Corporation Act, and a patchwork of provisions in the Forcible Entry and Detainer Act. The legislature passed CICAA to give planned communities, townhome associations, and similar non-condo forms a statutory baseline — the kind condominiums had enjoyed since the 1963 Condominium Property Act.
Article 1 carries the operative provisions. Section 1-5 defines a "common interest community" as "real estate other than a condominium or cooperative" in which owners must pay for maintenance, improvement, insurance premiums, or real estate taxes on common areas described in a declaration that an association administers.1 The definition excludes cooperatives and condominiums; whether a townhome counts as a common interest community or a condominium depends on how the recorded community instruments organized the real estate and the association.
CICAA's structure follows the life cycle of association governance. Section 1-25 covers elections, board composition, and proxies. Section 1-30 lists board duties. Section 1-40 governs meetings and notice. Section 1-45 sets records, budget, and reserve obligations, and it requires associations of 100 or more units to use generally accepted accounting principles.6 Section 1-50 covers rule adoption and the homeowner due-process protections that must come before any fine. Section 1-55 governs alternative dispute resolution. Section 1-75 holds the small-association exemption described above.5
Section 1-20 governs amendments to community instruments. An amendment is not valid until it is duly recorded — and where the community instruments require mortgagee or lienholder approval, the mortgagee is deemed to have consented unless it sends a negative response within 60 days of the association's certified-mail request.7
CICAA parts ways with UCIOA in a few mechanical respects. It contains no UCIOA-style deemed-rejection budget ratification procedure. It does not adopt UCIOA's six-month "super-priority" lien language word for word; instead, the comparable assessment-collection mechanics live in the Forcible Entry and Detainer Act (735 ILCS 5/9-102(a)(7)–(8)) and, for condominiums, in Section 9 of the Condominium Property Act. Section 1-15 makes the declaration and community instruments operative where CICAA permits variation, but CICAA controls wherever a conflict arises and the Act does not expressly defer.
The interaction between CICAA and recorded declarations matters in practice. Many declarations recorded before 2010 contain provisions that conflict with CICAA. Section 1-15(a) lets boards amend community instruments by a two-thirds board vote, without a membership vote, to conform to the Act or other applicable law — an unusual self-correcting feature that practitioners lean on often.
The Condominium Property Act
The Condominium Property Act, 765 ILCS 605, became law in 1963 (Laws 1963, p. 1120), and the legislature has amended it in nearly every session since.4 The Act applies to all property submitted to its provisions by a recorded declaration, and submission is mandatory for property organized as a condominium.8
Section 2 holds the controlling definitions — "declaration," "unit," "common elements," "limited common elements," and "condominium instruments."8 Section 4 governs what the declaration must contain. Sections 9 and 9.2 address common-expense liens and remedies, including the association's right to bring an action for possession against a delinquent unit owner under the Forcible Entry and Detainer Act. Section 14.5 covers distressed condominium property. Section 15 governs the sale of the entire property, and Section 18 sets out what the bylaws must contain — the meeting, notice, election, quorum, and board-conduct provisions that drive most day-to-day compliance work.9 Section 18.4 lists the powers and duties of the board of managers.
Other defined and operative terms worth knowing include "unit owner," "board of managers" (Section 18), "common elements" and "limited common elements" (Section 2(s)), and "acceptable technological means" (Section 2(z)), which authorizes electronic notice and voting once the board adopts enabling rules under Section 18.8.
Recent amendments cluster in three areas. First, the legislature amended the Section 22.1 resale disclosures effective January 1, 2023 — shortening the response window from 30 days to 10 business days, capping the disclosure fee at $375 (adjusted annually for CPI), and authorizing an additional $100 rush fee for 72-hour service.10 Second, Public Act 103-1051 (HB5502) amended Section 22.2 effective January 1, 2025 to bar associations from exercising any right of first refusal or option to purchase for a "discriminatory or otherwise unlawful purpose," and it created an express circuit-court cause of action for aggrieved purchasers.11 Third, Public Act 103-916 (SB2740), effective January 1, 2025, created a new Section 18.12 that requires condominium associations with parking facilities to adopt written accessible-parking policies by April 1, 2025.12
The declaration supplements the Act but cannot override it. Section 4.1 establishes the order: where the declaration conflicts with the Act, the Act controls; where the bylaws or other condominium instruments conflict with the declaration, the declaration controls — unless the declaration is itself inconsistent with the Act.
The role of corporate law, declarations, and the Chicago municipal overlay
Most non-condo associations, and a good share of condominium associations, are incorporated as Illinois not-for-profit corporations under the General Not For Profit Corporation Act of 1986, 805 ILCS 105.13 That Act supplies the default rules on corporate formation, director duties, member rights, indemnification, and dissolution — filling gaps that CICAA and the Condominium Property Act leave open. Where the two bodies of law conflict, the community association statute controls, because each contains an express supremacy clause for association governance.
Common-law contract and property doctrine stay in play, too. Illinois courts read declarations as contracts and apply the business judgment rule to discretionary board decisions. They review rule adoption under the standard from Apple II Condominium Ass'n v. Worth Bank & Trust Co., 277 Ill. App. 3d 345 (1st Dist. 1995): restrictions written into the declaration are presumed valid, while rules a board promulgates must be reasonable and consistent with the governing documents.14
At the municipal level, Chicago layers its own rules on top of the state framework through Chapter 13-72 of the Municipal Code of Chicago — the Chicago Condominium Ordinance.15 Chapter 13-72 imposes developer property-report and disclosure-summary obligations, conversion-condominium tenant-notice rules, and several consumer-protection provisions, all enforced by the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection. It is a developer- and conversion-focused ordinance; it does not create a Chicago-specific community association manager license.
Statewide manager licensing runs separately, under the Community Association Manager Licensing and Disciplinary Act, 225 ILCS 427, administered by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. Under Section 15 of that Act, no one may provide community association management services to an Illinois association unless licensed or exempt; Section 20 exempts uncompensated directors and officers.16 The Act is currently set to be repealed on January 1, 2027 unless the legislature reauthorizes it.
That leaves a clear order of precedence within each framework: (1) the governing statute — the Condominium Property Act for condos, CICAA for non-condo communities; (2) the recorded declaration; (3) recorded bylaws or operating agreement; (4) board-adopted rules and regulations; (5) the gap-filling provisions of the General Not For Profit Corporation Act for incorporated associations; and (6) common-law contract and property doctrine.
3. Compliance obligations created by the statutory framework
Governance obligations
Board meetings, annual unit-owner meetings, elections, and records inspection are the most heavily prescribed governance topics. For condominiums, Section 18 of the Condominium Property Act requires the bylaws to provide for an annual meeting of unit owners; it requires board meetings to be open to all unit owners (with narrow statutory exceptions for litigation, employment, and delinquent-account discussion); it gives unit owners at least 48 hours' notice of every board meeting; and it requires the board's election procedures to meet enumerated requirements, including the secret-ballot or proxy options under Section 18(b)(9).9 These provisions are mandatory, and a declaration cannot vary them.
For non-condo communities, CICAA imposes parallel rules: Section 1-25 sets election and proxy requirements, Section 1-40 sets meeting and notice obligations including the 48-hour rule, and Section 1-30 enumerates board duties.17 Boards must also produce records on written request — under Section 1-45 of CICAA and Section 19 of the Condominium Property Act — in each case within statutory timeframes (10 business days for most categories under recent amendments) and subject to limited redaction rights.
Financial obligations
Both statutes require an association to adopt an annual budget and give it to owners. Under Section 18(a)(8) of the Condominium Property Act, the board must deliver the budget to unit owners at least 25 but no more than 30 days before adoption, and owners can petition for a vote to reject any budget increase that exceeds 115% of the prior year's regular and separately billed assessments.9 CICAA Section 1-45 sets a parallel budget-disclosure regime for non-condo communities and requires associations of 100 or more units to use generally accepted accounting principles.6
Reserves are mandatory under Section 9(c) of the Condominium Property Act unless the association waives them by a two-thirds vote, with the waiver disclosed in the financial statements and in the Section 22.1 resale disclosures.18 CICAA carries a parallel reserve obligation in Section 1-45. Statute does not require independent audits, but a CICAA association collecting more than $250,000 a year must obtain an annual independent review of its finances. Both statutes let a declaration strengthen these provisions — but not weaken them.
Disclosure obligations
The signature disclosure obligation is Section 22.1 of the Condominium Property Act. It requires the selling unit owner to obtain specified documents from the association — the declaration, bylaws, rules, anticipated capital expenditures, status of reserves, insurance, pending litigation, and the like — and hand them to the prospective purchaser on demand. Under the amendments effective January 1, 2023, the association's principal officer must respond within 10 business days, the disclosure fee is capped at $375 (CPI-adjusted), and a $100 rush surcharge is allowed for 72-hour completion.10 In Channon v. Westward Management, Inc., 2022 IL 128040, the Illinois Supreme Court held that Section 22.1 does not create an implied private right of action for sellers against management agents who charge excessive fees — which is what prompted the General Assembly to pass the fee cap.19 This obligation is mandatory, and a declaration cannot vary it.
CICAA puts parallel disclosure duties on non-condo associations under Section 1-35: the declaration, bylaws, rules, current operating budget, any reserve study, and a statement of unpaid assessments at the time of resale. And Section 22.2 of the Condominium Property Act, as amended effective January 1, 2025, bars associations from exercising any right of first refusal or option to purchase for a discriminatory or otherwise unlawful purpose, and it creates a circuit-court cause of action.11
Dispute resolution obligations
Illinois has a distinctive way of collecting delinquent condominium assessments: it runs through the Forcible Entry and Detainer Act, 735 ILCS 5/Article IX, working in tandem with Section 9.2 of the Condominium Property Act. Under 735 ILCS 5/9-102(a)(7), a condominium association can bring a forcible entry and detainer action against a delinquent unit owner to recover possession of the unit — which the association may then lease to recoup the assessments — and to win a money judgment.20 The demand notice under Section 9-104.1 must give the owner 30 days to cure, must spell out the assessments and time periods, and must meet attorney-fee disclosure requirements. After judgment, the association can obtain a money judgment under Section 9-111, enforceable like any other creditor's judgment, as the court confirmed in Board of Managers of Inverrary Condominium Ass'n v. Karaganis, 2017 IL App (2d) 160271. Lien foreclosure under Section 9(h) of the Condominium Property Act is the alternative remedy.
For non-condo communities, CICAA-subject associations have a similar possession remedy under 735 ILCS 5/9-102(a)(8) — but only where the declaration was recorded after 1985 (or the association has elected coverage) and the association meets the statutory prerequisites in CICAA Section 1-50.
Before any fine or possession action, both statutes require written notice and a reasonable opportunity to be heard. CICAA Section 1-50 and Condominium Property Act Section 18.4(l) are mandatory, and a declaration cannot vary them. Section 35 of the Condominium Property Act and Section 1-55 of CICAA authorize alternative dispute resolution, but neither one requires it.
4. Illinois's recent legislative and judicial activity
Recent bills
Illinois lawmakers are refining the condominium statute rather than rewriting it — recent acts target parking access, sale-approval rights, and state oversight.
SB 2740 · Public Act 103-916 · 103rd General Assembly
This act amends the Condominium Property Act by creating a new Section 18.12. Condominium associations with parking facilities must adopt written accessible-parking policies and procedures, must process accessibility requests within 45 days, and must have the required policy in place by April 1, 2025 for existing associations.[12]
| Property managers | Confirm the association has adopted a written accessible-parking policy and that accessibility requests route to a documented 45-day review track. |
| HOA board members | Boards of condo associations with parking facilities have a non-discretionary obligation to adopt and apply the policy; failing to do so exposes the association to fair-housing risk. |
| Community association attorneys | Section 18.12 sits alongside the federal Fair Housing Act and Illinois Human Rights Act; advise on the overlap and on the new framework for assigning common-element parking. |
| Homeowners | Disabled owners may request use of accessible common-element parking and, in some configurations, may exchange use of an owned or limited-common-element space. |
HB 5502 · Public Act 103-1051 · 103rd General Assembly
This act amends Section 22.2 of the Condominium Property Act to bar associations from exercising any right of refusal, option to purchase, or right to disapprove a sale for a "discriminatory or otherwise unlawful purpose" — or because the purchaser is using FHA financing — and it creates an express right of action in Illinois circuit court.[11]
| Property managers | Update Section 22.2 review checklists and make sure board minutes document a non-discriminatory basis for any refusal or option-to-purchase exercise. |
| HOA board members | Any board vote to block a sale now carries explicit statutory exposure; document the legitimate basis as it happens. |
| Community association attorneys | The new private right of action layers on top of existing federal and state fair-housing claims; advise boards on coordinating pre-vote review. |
| Homeowners | Sellers and prospective purchasers now have a direct statutory cause of action against the association if a sale is blocked for an unlawful reason. |
Public Act 104-0377 · 104th General Assembly
This act extends the repeal date of the Condominium and Common Interest Community Ombudsperson Act (765 ILCS 615) to January 1, 2029, and makes conforming changes to 765 ILCS 605 and 765 ILCS 160.[21]
| Property managers | The IDFPR Ombudsperson office stays open; keep directing owner inquiries that exhaust internal complaint procedures to the Ombudsperson. |
| HOA board members | Associations must continue to maintain a written complaint policy as a precondition to Ombudsperson review. |
| Community association attorneys | Track the 2029 sunset date; the reauthorization debate is the primary vehicle for broader CICAA and Condominium Property Act amendment in the next biennium. |
| Homeowners | The Ombudsperson remains available to receive complaints after you exhaust the association's internal process. |
Recent court rulings
Illinois appellate courts spent the past year marking the limits of board power — over unit alterations, deconversion sales, and how far an association's duty to owners reaches.
Claymoor Condominium Ass'n v. Majewska
A unit owner raised one room's ceiling by roughly 26 inches into the common-element ceiling space, without board approval. The Appellate Court affirmed summary judgment for the association, holding that limited common elements are a subset of common elements under Section 2 of the Condominium Property Act and cannot be altered unilaterally — and it upheld a $96,155.08 fee award.[22]
| Property managers | Architectural-modification intake should screen for any encroachment into ceiling, floor, or wall cavity space, all of which are common elements unless the declaration says otherwise. |
| HOA board members | Document and enforce written-approval requirements before owner alterations; the fee-shifting outcome here is significant. |
| Community association attorneys | The case extends Section 2(s)'s limited-common-elements treatment and supports robust injunctive and fee remedies. |
| Homeowners | Cosmetic alterations that breach a ceiling, floor, or wall plane likely require board approval and won't be excused as a good-faith mistake. |
Gunnison Commons, LLC v. Alvarez
A 96.4% owner tried to amend the declaration to lower the building-sale approval threshold from 100% to 85%, then voted to force the sale over a holdout. The First District affirmed summary judgment voiding both the amendment and the sale, holding that the declaration's 100% threshold could not be reduced without unanimous owner consent — and that an LLC manager-signatory who did not reside in the building lacked authority under the declaration.[23]
| Property managers | Confirm that any Section 15 sale vote complies with the declaration's amendment thresholds and that resident-eligibility requirements for officers are met. |
| HOA board members | Strict compliance with declaration amendment procedures is now squarely required; majority ownership alone doesn't authorize shortcuts. |
| Community association attorneys | Counsel deconversion clients carefully; expect First District scrutiny of every procedural step in a Section 15 sale. |
| Homeowners | Minority owners keep meaningful procedural protections in deconversion transactions. |
Purevdori v. Mission Hills Condominium T-2 Ass'n
The First District affirmed dismissal of wrongful-death and breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims after a child wandered off association property and drowned in an adjacent retention pond. The court held that the Section 18.4 fiduciary duty does not extend to open-and-obvious off-premises hazards.[24]
| Property managers | The decision constrains, but doesn't eliminate, common-area premises-liability exposure; on-site hazard practices stay critical. |
| HOA board members | Section 18.4's fiduciary duty has clearer outer boundaries, but on-premises hazards remain the board's responsibility. |
| Community association attorneys | The opinion limits prior precedent to on-property damage claims and is a defense-favorable precedent for off-site hazard cases. |
| Homeowners | Hazards adjacent to but outside common-element boundaries generally don't create association liability. |
Active legislative debates
The current General Assembly is weighing tougher reserve-study rules, and attorneys are watching the next statutory reauthorization as the likely vehicle for bigger changes.
HB 2563 · 104th General Assembly
HB2563 would require both CICAA and Condominium Property Act associations to conduct and update reserve studies every five years, with a small-association exemption for communities of 15 or fewer units. At the close of the 2025 spring session, the bill remained in committee.[25]
| Property managers | Start scoping reserve-study vendors and a five-year refresh cycle now, so a mandate wouldn't catch budgets unprepared. |
| HOA board members | Communities of 15 units or fewer may qualify for the exemption, but larger associations should plan for a recurring reserve-study line item. |
| Community association attorneys | Watch the committee version for how the five-year clock and exemption interact with existing Section 1-45 and Section 9(c) reserve duties. |
| Homeowners | A reserve-study mandate would give owners clearer visibility into whether the association is funding long-term repairs. |
Practitioners should also keep an eye on the Ombudsperson Act's 2029 sunset, which the General Assembly has historically used as the vehicle for substantive amendments to both governing statutes.
5. National positioning and related coverage
Illinois sits in the comprehensive non-UCIOA category, alongside California (the Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act), Florida (Chapters 718 and 720), Texas (Property Code Titles 11 and 12), Arizona (Title 33, Chapters 9 and 16), and Virginia (the Property Owners' Association Act and the Condominium Act). What sets Illinois apart is a handful of features: CICAA is relatively new, enacted in 2010; the 1963 condominium statute is first-generation, amended many times but never recodified; the collection procedure is possession-based and runs through the Forcible Entry and Detainer Act rather than the condominium statute itself; manager licensing is statewide under 225 ILCS 427; and Chicago adds a municipal overlay (Chapter 13-72) of developer-disclosure and tenant-notice obligations on top of state law. Multi-state operators should not assume that California, Florida, or UCIOA workflows carry over cleanly into Illinois — re-validate each compliance touchpoint against the Illinois statute.
6. Closing note
HOA Weekly updates its Illinois Governing Statute coverage every quarter, tracking amendments to CICAA, the Condominium Property Act, and the Chicago Condominium Ordinance, along with new rulings from the Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court. Federal frameworks — including the Fair Housing Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the Corporate Transparency Act — apply in parallel and are tracked separately at /federal/.
Footnotes
- 765 ILCS 160/1-5, Common Interest Community Association Act (definition of "common interest community") ↩
- 765 ILCS 605/1, Condominium Property Act ↩
- Public Act 96-1400, 96th Gen. Assemb. (Ill. 2010) ↩
- 765 ILCS 605/1 (Source: Laws 1963, p. 1120); Brian Meltzer & Victoria C. Bresnahan, Condos and Common Interest Communities in Illinois § 5.2 (IICLE 2021). ↩
- 765 ILCS 160/1-75, Common Interest Community Association Act (applicability and exemption) ↩
- 765 ILCS 160/1-45, Common Interest Community Association Act (records, budget, and reserves) ↩
- 765 ILCS 160/1-20, Common Interest Community Association Act (amendment of community instruments) ↩
- 765 ILCS 605/2, Condominium Property Act (definitions) ↩
- 765 ILCS 605/18, Condominium Property Act (contents of bylaws) ↩
- 765 ILCS 605/22.1, Condominium Property Act (resale disclosures); House Bill 5246, 102nd Gen. Assemb. (Ill.) ↩
- Public Act 103-1051 (HB5502), 103rd Gen. Assemb. (Ill.) ↩
- Public Act 103-916 (SB2740), 103rd Gen. Assemb. (Ill.) ↩
- 805 ILCS 105, General Not For Profit Corporation Act of 1986 ↩
- Apple II Condominium Ass'n v. Worth Bank & Trust Co., 277 Ill. App. 3d 345 (1st Dist. 1995) ↩
- Municipal Code of Chicago ch. 13-72, Chicago Condominium Ordinance ↩
- 225 ILCS 427/15, Community Association Manager Licensing and Disciplinary Act (license required) ↩
- 765 ILCS 160/1-25, 1-30, 1-40, Common Interest Community Association Act ↩
- 765 ILCS 605/9(c), Condominium Property Act (reserves) ↩
- Channon v. Westward Management, Inc., 2022 IL 128040 (Ill. Nov. 28, 2022) ↩
- 735 ILCS 5/9-102, Code of Civil Procedure (forcible entry and detainer) ↩
- Public Act 104-0377 (Ill.); IDFPR, Condominium and Common Interest Community Ombudsperson ↩
- Claymoor Condominium Ass'n v. Majewska, 2024 IL App (3d) 230171 (June 14, 2024) ↩
- Gunnison Commons, LLC v. Alvarez, 2024 IL App (1st) 232176 (Aug. 23, 2024) ↩
- Purevdori v. Mission Hills Condominium T-2 Ass'n, 2024 IL App (1st) 231693 (Sept. 30, 2024) ↩
- Illinois HB2563, 104th Gen. Assemb. ↩