No Kansas agency regulates HOAs. Two years of records confirm it
No Kansas agency regulates HOAs. Two years of records confirm it
2026-09-10 · Kansas · Regulation
A Kansas homeowner with a governance complaint against their association has exactly one option, and it is a lawsuit. There is no regulator to complain to, no licensing body with jurisdiction over the manager, and no state office that receives, investigates or resolves association disputes.1
That is a familiar claim, often asserted and rarely checked. Here is what the record actually shows.
The Attorney General: thirty-five opinions, none on point
Every Kansas Attorney General opinion issued in 2025 (Nos. 2025-1 through 2025-26) and in 2026 through September (Nos. 2026-1 through 2026-9) was searched for homeowners associations, condominiums, common interest communities, the Kansas Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act, restrictive covenants, and open-meetings questions as applied to associations.
Not one of the thirty-five addresses the subject. The single keyword hit, Opinion No. 2025-12, mentions restrictive covenants only in connection with the disposition of state-owned real property held by the State Historical Society. In two years, no Kansas official asked the Attorney General to construe the state's community association statute.
The Real Estate Commission: no community association manager licence exists
Kansas has no community association manager licensing act. The Kansas Real Estate Commission administers the real estate brokers' and salespersons' licence law; managing a community association is not itself a licensed activity, and residential property management generally falls outside the Commission's jurisdiction.
A correction is warranted here, because the opposite claim circulates widely. Several online summaries assert that the Kansas Real Estate Commission has authority over registered homeowners associations and can investigate complaints about excessive or unfair fines. No such registry exists, and no such authority appears anywhere in the Commission's own description of its jurisdiction. Kansas homeowners acting on that claim will find nobody at the other end.
What the statute puts in place instead
K.S.A. 58-4621 provides that “a declarant, association, unit owner, or any other person subject to this act may bring an action to enforce a right granted or obligation imposed by this act, the declaration, or the bylaws,” and that “the court may award reasonable attorney's fees and costs.”2 That is the mechanism. There is no other.
The one state office a Kansas association does answer to
The Secretary of State, and not for anything to do with governance. A Kansas association organised as a not-for-profit corporation must file its biennial information report. Miss it, and the delinquency window runs three months; miss that, and the association forfeits its articles of incorporation.
That is the only administrative lever the state holds over a Kansas association, and it is a corporate-existence lever rather than a conduct one. It applies identically to a garden club. But its consequences are real: an association whose articles have been forfeited has a genuine problem establishing that it is a validly existing corporation when it wants to enforce a covenant, sign a contract, or record a lien — and the counterparty's lawyer will check.
What follows for a board, and for an owner
For boards: internal process is the only process. In a state with a regulator, an association's procedural sloppiness produces a complaint and an administrative nudge. In Kansas it produces either nothing at all or a lawsuit with fee-shifting attached. There is no middle setting. That makes two statutory tools disproportionately valuable.
The first is the alternative dispute resolution power in K.S.A. 58-4608, which lets an association require that disputes “be submitted to nonbinding alternative dispute resolution…as a prerequisite to commencement of a judicial proceeding.”3 It is optional, and an association that has not adopted it has forgone the only filter available before a courthouse.
The second is the records regime in K.S.A. 58-4616, which requires the association to retain receipts and expenditures, minutes, owner lists, governing documents, contracts and architectural decisions for at least five years, with financial statements and tax returns for three and voting records for one.4 With no regulator to audit, records are what a board has when its judgment is questioned years later.
For owners: the fee provision cuts both ways. K.S.A. 58-4621 lets a court award fees, and it is not written to favour either side. Kansas courts have addressed the mechanics: in Johnson v. Board of Directors of Forest Lakes Master Association, the Court of Appeals held the statute does not require a prevailing party to move for fees by a set date but does require fair and explicit notice that the court may grant such a motion.
For everyone: check the manager's credentials yourself. Since the state does not, the only screens available are voluntary trade designations, references, proof of insurance and fidelity bonding, and the contract itself. A Kansas association that assumes a licensing regime stands behind its manager is assuming something that does not exist.
Why this keeps not changing
The Legislature has been offered a regulator once in recent memory. HB 2733 in 2024 would have let the Attorney General bring an action against an association over certain home repairs. It cleared its committee and was then stricken from the calendar under House Rule 1507, and it has not been reintroduced.
Nothing on the 2026 interim calendar takes the question up, which means the earliest a Kansas regulator could be created is the 2027 session, and only if a member introduces the bill without a study behind it.
What to watch next
Watch for any Kansas bill that names an agency — the Attorney General, the Real Estate Commission, a new office. That is the structural change, and it is the one Kansas has never made.
Related Kansas HOA Topics
- Kansas Attorney General opinions, 2025 — complete index ↩
- K.S.A. 58-4621, Enforcement of rights, with case annotations — Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes ↩
- K.S.A. 58-4608, Association powers and duties — Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes ↩
- K.S.A. 58-4616, Records — Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes ↩
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