2026-09-10 · Indiana · Legislation · Did not pass

What happened — and did not. Senate Bill 445 of 2025 was the most administratively ambitious HOA bill Indiana has seen recently. It would have built a light state oversight apparatus around homeowners associations, with the Attorney General at the centre of it. It got a first reading on 13 January 2025, was referred to the Committee on Local Government, and was never heard.¹

None of this is law. The bill was authored by Senator J.D. Ford.

The five things it would have required

Amending IC 32-25.5, the bill would have:

1. Authorised electronic voting where an association's governing documents permitted it.
2. Required associations to send certain notices to members.
3. Required an association to send a notice to the Attorney General — the provision that would have created, for the first time, a state-held roster of Indiana HOAs.
4. Required every association to create and maintain a website carrying specified information.
5. Required the Attorney General to establish a mandatory training course for board members, which a director would have had to complete within a year of joining a board.

Why this one is worth remembering

Indiana today has no state registry of homeowners associations, no state licensure of community managers, no state agency that supervises association governance, and no mandatory director education. An owner with a governance complaint has the association's own dispute process and the courts.

SB 445 would have changed the first, third and fifth of those. The training-course provision in particular would have been a genuine structural shift — it is the sort of requirement that, once in place, tends to accumulate further obligations around it.

It died the way most Indiana bills die: referred in January, never scheduled, dead at adjournment.

1. Indiana General Assembly, Senate Bill 445 (2025) — bill page, digest and action log ↩
2. Indiana Attorney General, Homeowner Protection Unit — scope of complaints accepted and limits on the office's role ↩
3. Legislative Council Resolution 26-01, 2026 interim study committee topic assignments ↩