Where the money actually was

This provision is aimed at a real and quite specific business model. In some Indiana communities the assessment covered a baseline and the manager's revenue came from everything around it: a charge to email a document, a charge to process an architectural application, a charge for an account inquiry, a charge to update owner records after a sale, a charge to attend to a violation notice.

Individually these were small. In aggregate, for an owner in a badly-run community, they were not — and they were effectively unregulated, because the association setting them was also the only party the owner could complain to.

The statutory answer is structural rather than a price cap: if the assessment covers it, it is covered, and you may not bill for it again.

The audit, line by line

Each line of an Indiana association's fee schedule falls into one of three boxes.

Box one — unlawful now. Anything that is a component of a service the assessment funds. Charges for violation-letter processing, account inquiries, record searches, routine correspondence, owner-record updates, or attending to common-area matters fall here. So does any charge for producing a statement of account, which the same act made free on request.

Box two — genuinely optional, and defensible. Services an owner affirmatively elects and could decline without losing anything the assessment promised: a private clubhouse booking, an extra amenity key or fob, a guest parking permit beyond an allocation, use of a facility outside its included hours. The test to apply honestly is whether an owner who never opts in still receives everything their assessment entitles them to. If the answer is no, it is in box one.

Box three — separately authorised. Fines under the new schedule-of-fines section, and the resale statement fee, are their own statutory creatures with their own limits. They are not “fees for services” and are not affected by this subsection — but they are constrained elsewhere, so do not treat box three as unregulated.

The reclassification vote, and why it is not a light undertaking

A board that concludes it cannot afford to absorb the lost fee revenue has exactly one lawful route: put the reclassification to the members at a properly convened meeting.

Three things make that harder than it sounds. The meeting must satisfy the new four-day notice and agenda requirement. The proposition is inherently unattractive — members are being asked to vote for a service they currently receive to become something they pay extra for. And the vote is a matter of record, so a board that loses it has established that the service is included, in writing, permanently.

The realistic alternative is the honest one: fund the service through the assessment and set the assessment accordingly. That is a budget conversation, and Indiana's 2026 budget rules constrain how far a board can go without a member quorum — which is the connection between this provision and the budget tiers, and the reason both landed in the same session.

For the management contract

Where a management agreement entitles the manager to retain itemised charges, some of those entitlements now point at fees the association may not lawfully levy. That is a contract problem as well as a compliance problem, and it does not resolve itself.

• Identify every fee the manager retains and test each against the list above.
• Expect a repricing conversation. Revenue removed from itemised charges will reappear in the management fee. That is not objectionable — it is the transparency the statute was aiming at — but budget for it.
• Fix responsibility for compliance in writing. The association is the entity the statute names, and a manager billing owners unlawfully creates exposure for the association.

Who it applies to

Every Indiana homeowners association. This subsection sits within IC 32-25.5-3-3(e) through (o), the range HEA 1115 placed on the list of provisions binding all associations regardless of when they were formed or whether they ever elected into the article.

What to watch

The boundary around “administrative duties.” It is the broadest term in the list, it is undefined in the statute, and it is where the first genuine dispute will be. Until an Indiana court draws a line, a board charging separately for anything administrative is on the wrong side of the safer reading.