Kansas HOA Assessment Limits

Section 1: Overview — How assessment authority and limits work in Kansas

In Kansas, HOA boards hold clear authority over the budget — and they exercise it without a statutory cap or an owner veto. The board proposes and adopts the budget at least annually, giving owners at least 10 days' notice and a reasonable opportunity to comment before the vote. Any dollar ceiling on that authority comes from the community's recorded declaration, not from state law.¹ The uniform rules governing this process come from the Kansas Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act (KUCIOBORA), K.S.A. 58-4601 through 58-4623. The act originated as 2010 HB 2472 and took effect January 1, 2011.² For regular increases, the board proposes and adopts the budget after at least 10 days' notice of the meeting and a reasonable opportunity for owners to comment — no owner veto, no statutory cap.³ Special assessments follow the same notice-and-comment procedure; the exception is an emergency, where a two-thirds vote of the board can push an assessment into effect immediately, with prompt notice going out to all owners.³ To understand where Kansas stands nationally, consider the contrast: California limits regular increases to 20 percent and aggregate special assessments to 5 percent of budgeted gross expenses without a member vote, and UCIOA states give owners the ability to veto a board-adopted budget. Kansas does neither.⁴ It is a declaration-driven state with uniform notice-and-comment budgeting, but no cap and no veto. The sections that follow detail the framework, the procedures in practice, and recent legislative and judicial activity.

Section 2: The assessment framework

2A. Authority to levy and allocate assessments

KUCIOBORA supplies the operating framework for most Kansas common interest communities. Under K.S.A. 58-4620, the board of directors must propose and adopt a budget at least annually, and assessments are the sums attributable to each unit under that adopted budget.³ The act defines "assessment" by tying it directly to the budget adopted under section 58-4620 — which anchors the board's revenue authority to the annual budgeting process.⁵ The act applies to all common interest communities with 12 or more units available for residential use, reaching HOAs, condominiums, and cooperatives alike.⁶

How the dollar burden is divided among units is the declaration's job, not the statute's. KUCIOBORA sets the procedure for adopting the budget but prescribes no allocation formula — the recorded declaration controls each unit's share.¹ Two older property-type acts continue operating alongside KUCIOBORA. The Kansas Apartment Ownership Act, K.S.A. 58-3101 et seq., governs how condominium and apartment ownership regimes form, with associations electing coverage by recording a declaration with the register of deeds.⁷ The Kansas Townhouse Ownership Act, K.S.A. 58-3701 et seq., does the same for townhouse regimes.⁸ Neither act caps assessment increases. KUCIOBORA layers its uniform owner-rights and budgeting rules on top — so the declaration's allocation formula and the act's budgeting procedure work in tandem.

2B. Limits on regular assessment increases

The primary constraint on a regular assessment increase in Kansas is procedural. Under K.S.A. 58-4620(a), the board must give unit owners at least 10 days' notice before any meeting where a budget is on the agenda, make a copy of the proposal available to any owner who requests it, and allow owners a reasonable opportunity to comment before the board votes.³ Once those steps are satisfied, the board adopts the budget on its own authority.

Kansas law provides no owner ratification, no owner veto, and no statutory percentage cap on regular assessment increases. KUCIOBORA gives owners no vote to approve or reject the board's budget, and it sets no numeric ceiling on year-over-year increases.³ Any substantive limit on the amount comes from the declaration. A declaration can cap annual increases at a fixed percentage, tie them to an index, require a membership vote above a threshold, or impose no limit at all — whatever the recorded instrument specifies. Where the declaration is silent on a ceiling, the board's discretion is constrained mainly by the statutory standard of care and the duty of good faith, not by a dollar limit.

The practical consequence of this procedural focus is that the adoption process is where challenges surface. If a board adopts a budget without the required 10 days' notice, without making the proposal available on request, or without giving owners a reasonable opportunity to comment, that adoption is open to challenge for failure to follow K.S.A. 58-4620. KUCIOBORA provides an enforcement path: under K.S.A. 58-4621, a unit owner or other person subject to the act may bring an action to enforce a right granted or obligation imposed by the act, the declaration, or the bylaws, and the court may award reasonable attorney fees and costs.⁹

2C. Special assessments, emergency assessments, and the declaration

Special assessments follow the same path as the annual budget. Under K.S.A. 58-4620(b), the board may propose a special assessment at any time, and — except in emergencies — notice and consideration must follow the same notice-and-comment procedure used for the budget: at least 10 days' notice, a copy on request, and a reasonable opportunity to comment before the board acts.³

The emergency route is the one departure from that comment-first rule. Under K.S.A. 58-4620(c), if the board determines by a two-thirds vote of its membership that a special assessment is necessary to respond to an emergency, the assessment takes effect immediately in accordance with the terms of the vote. The board must then promptly notify all unit owners and may spend the funds only for the purposes described in the vote.³ The declaration sets any approval threshold or dollar ceiling that applies on top of this statutory procedure; the statute imposes none. A Kansas board can move quickly on an urgent repair using the two-thirds emergency vote, while a non-emergency special assessment must run through the same notice-and-comment process as a regular budget — with the amount governed by whatever the declaration provides.

Section 3: Assessment limits and procedures in practice

A. Regular assessment increase procedure

• Annual board adoption (K.S.A. 58-4620(a)). The board proposes and adopts a budget at least annually. Owners receive at least 10 days' notice of the meeting and may request a copy of the proposal.³
• Comment before action (K.S.A. 58-4620(a)). Owners receive a reasonable opportunity to comment before the board votes, but the board adopts the budget without an owner ratification vote.³

B. Special assessment procedure (including emergency route)

• Standard special assessment (K.S.A. 58-4620(b)). The board may propose a special assessment at any time, following the same notice-and-comment procedure as the annual budget.³
• Emergency special assessment (K.S.A. 58-4620(c)). A two-thirds vote of the board membership makes an emergency special assessment effective immediately, with prompt notice to all owners and use of funds restricted to the purposes stated in the vote.³

C. Caps, ceilings, and override mechanisms

• No statutory percentage cap. KUCIOBORA sets no numeric limit on regular or special assessment increases.³
• No owner veto. The act provides no owner vote to ratify or reject the board-adopted budget.³
• Declaration-defined limits. Any ceiling, indexing, or membership-approval threshold for increases exists only if the recorded declaration imposes it.¹

D. Notice, documentation, and disclosure

• Budget meeting notice (K.S.A. 58-4620(a)). At least 10 days' notice of any budget meeting is required, along with a copy of the proposal on request.³
• Records access (K.S.A. 58-4616). The association must retain detailed financial records and make them available for examination and copying by a unit owner on 10 days' written notice that reasonably identifies the records requested, during reasonable business hours, subject to listed exemptions.¹⁰
• Assessment liens (K.S.A. 58-3123; 58-3710). For condominium and townhouse regimes, unpaid assessments for a unit's share of common expenses constitute a lien on the unit, junior only to tax liens and a first mortgage of record. The association may foreclose the lien in the manner of a real-property mortgage.¹¹

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted in the 2024, 2025, or 2026 sessions changed KUCIOBORA's assessment or budgeting provisions in K.S.A. 58-4620. The recent legislative activity touching common interest communities centered on solar-panel restrictions and home-repair standards — not assessment caps or budget procedure.

B. Recent appellate rulings

A review of Kansas Court of Appeals and Kansas Supreme Court decisions from June 2023 through June 2026 turned up no published or unpublished appellate opinion squarely addressing assessment authority, the validity of a regular or special assessment, KUCIOBORA's budget procedure, or a declaration-based assessment limit. The closest HOA decision in that window involves a declaration-interpretation dispute about maintenance responsibility rather than assessments.

C. Active legislative debates

For years, both chambers of the Kansas legislature have seen bills targeting restrictive covenants that limit or prohibit solar-panel installation. These proposals would void such covenants while preserving HOA authority to adopt reasonable installation rules. The Overland Park City Council added platform language for the 2026 session, formally stating that "[t]he City supports legislation that limits the ability of homeowner associations to ban or restrict reasonable use of residential solar panels." None of these proposals touches assessment caps or the budget procedure under K.S.A. 58-4620.¹⁵

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Kansas occupies one of three distinct national positions on assessment limits. The first model belongs to statutory-cap states, led by California. California Civil Code Section 5605(b) provides that the board "may not impose a regular assessment that is more than 20 percent greater than the regular assessment for the association's preceding fiscal year or impose special assessments which in the aggregate exceed 5 percent of the budgeted gross expenses of the association for that fiscal year" without member approval.⁴ The second model comes from UCIOA states, where the act's budget-ratification provision lets owners veto a board-adopted budget. According to the Community Associations Institute, nine states have enacted the full Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act — Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, and West Virginia under the 1982 version, and Connecticut, Delaware, Vermont, and Washington under the 2008 version.¹⁶ Kansas represents the third model: a declaration-driven state with uniform notice-and-comment budgeting, but no statutory cap and no owner veto.³ For multi-state operators, that distinction matters in practice. A budgeting playbook built for California's caps or Colorado's veto does not transfer to Kansas, where compliance turns on the 58-4620 procedure and each community's declaration. Kansas also applies one uniform owner-rights act across community types — the same KUCIOBORA budgeting rules reach HOAs, condominiums, and cooperatives, while the older Apartment and Townhouse Ownership Acts govern only how those regimes are created.²

This page is reviewed and updated quarterly. Federal frameworks — including the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the Bankruptcy Code — also bear on Kansas assessment collection and related practice.

1. K.S.A. 58-4620, Adoption of budget; special assessments (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
2. K.S.A. 58-4601, Findings; purpose of act (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes); origin as 2010 HB 2472 and Jan. 1, 2011 effective date per Kansas Legislative Research Department ↩
3. K.S.A. 58-4620(a)–(c), Adoption of budget; special assessments (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
4. Cal. Civ. Code § 5605(b), Assessment increases; requirements and limitations (California Legislative Information) ↩
5. K.S.A. 58-4602(a), Definitions (assessment defined by reference to the budget adopted under 58-4620) (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
6. K.S.A. 58-4605, Application of act (12 or more residential units) (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
7. K.S.A. 58-3101, Apartment Ownership Act; name of act; citation (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
8. K.S.A. 58-3701, Townhouse Ownership Act; name of act; citation (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
9. K.S.A. 58-4621, Enforcement of rights (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
10. K.S.A. 58-4616, Record keeping requirements; records open to unit owners; copy fees (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
11. K.S.A. 58-3123, Priority of liens (Apartment Ownership Act); see also K.S.A. 58-3710, Common expenses; liens; foreclosure sale (Townhouse Ownership Act) (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes) ↩
12. 2025 SB 144, bill history and status (Kansas State Legislature) ↩
13. Kansas Legislative Research Department, The Kansas Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act and Homeowners Associations (Feb. 26, 2026), summarizing 2023 HB 2268 and 2024 HB 2733 ↩
14. Restum v. Hawthorne Master Homeowners' Ass'n, No. 125,567 (Kan. Ct. App. May 24, 2024) (not designated for publication) (Kansas Courts) ↩
15. Johnson County Post, OP supports state law change to disallow HOA bans on solar panels (Jan. 5, 2026) ↩
16. Community Associations Institute, Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (1982 version: Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, West Virginia; 2008 version: Connecticut, Delaware, Vermont, Washington) ↩