Illinois HB 5449 gives every association until January 1, 2028 to put up a website
Illinois HB 5449 gives every association until January 1, 2028 to put up a website
2026-09-10 · Illinois · Legislation
What happened. HB 5449 was signed August 7, 2026 as Public Act 104-0797, effective January 1, 2027. It adds two duties to both Illinois association statutes: a mandatory website, and electronic delivery of the annual financial accounting.1
The website language is identical in both Acts — new subsection (l) of 765 ILCS 160/1-30 for common interest communities, new subsection (t) of 765 ILCS 605/18.4 for condominiums:
The board must provide a website no later than January 1, 2028 that unit owners can access on the Internet that includes information about board and membership meetings and the approved minutes from a meeting of the board.
The second duty: financials by electronic transmission
The itemized accounting of the preceding year's common expenses — or the consolidated annual independent audit — must now be supplied “through electronic transmission to all members who have provided their information to the association and authorized the association to transmit such information by electronic transmission.” The condominium bylaw requirement at 765 ILCS 605/18(a)(7) is separately expanded so the annual itemized accounting expressly includes receipts and expenses.
Note the conditional. The duty runs only to members who have given the association their address and authorized electronic transmission. Associations that have never collected those authorizations in writing will find the obligation hard to discharge and harder to prove.
Correcting the record: what is not in this law
Two provisions widely attributed to HB 5449 are not in the enacted Act. As introduced, the bill required a quarterly electronic financial statement covering receipts, expenses, invoices, contracts and obligations, and required 75% owner approval of any fee increase over 10%. House Floor Amendment No. 2 deleted the supermajority requirement outright and downgraded quarterly to annual.
Session round-ups written before the amendment — including advocacy reporting describing what the industry fought off — describe the pre-amendment bill. A board budgeting on the assumption it now needs a 75% vote to raise assessments more than 10% is planning against a provision that does not exist. Read the Public Act, not the summary.
What the website obligation costs, and what it does not require
Read the statutory text narrowly, because it is narrow. The board must provide a website that includes information about board and membership meetings and approved minutes of board meetings. That is the floor. It does not require:
- an owner-only authenticated portal;
- downloadable governing documents, contracts, budgets or ledgers;
- membership-meeting minutes (the text says minutes “from a meeting of the board”);
- a records-request mechanism.
That last point matters, because a separate bill that would have required a full owner-accessible records portal at no cost — HB 5617 — died in committee. Illinois got the minutes page, not the document library.
For a small self-managed association, the practical answer is a single static page. For a professionally managed one, it is a line in the management agreement, and boards renewing contracts before 2028 should get it named there rather than discovering it is an add-on.
Where the fiduciary risk sits
Both new subsections were placed in the powers-and-duties sections. That is a drafting choice with consequences: a failure to provide the website is a breach of a statutory duty of the board, not a technical violation with no remedy. It also means the duty is the board's and does not transfer to the manager by contract — a board can delegate the work, not the obligation.
The narrower risk is the minutes themselves. A site that carries approved minutes is compliant; a site that carries drafts, or that lags approval by three meetings, invites an argument the association is not meeting the requirement. Boards that do not currently approve minutes promptly have a governance problem the website will now make visible to every owner.
What to do in the next fifteen months
Now: start collecting written email authorizations, because the financial-transmission duty is live January 1, 2027 — a year before the website deadline. Mid-2027: stand up the page and decide who maintains it. Before January 1, 2028: confirm the meeting calendar and approved minutes are actually posted, not merely posted once.
What to watch next
Whether the 2027 session revisits the scope. The records-portal and copying-fee bills that died this year addressed exactly what HB 5449 leaves out, and their sponsors are returning. A board that builds a bare minutes page in 2027 may be rebuilding it in 2029.
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