Kentucky HOA Governing Statute

1. Overview — How HOAs are governed in Kentucky

Kentucky operates a hybrid governance framework: comprehensive statutory coverage of condominiums combined with the absence of any older, comprehensive planned-community statute for non-condo associations.¹ Condominiums created in Kentucky before January 1, 2011 are governed by the Kentucky Horizontal Property Law at KRS § 381.805 to § 381.910, a bespoke 1962 statute that supplies the statutory architecture for condominium property regimes, master deeds, bylaws, common elements, assessments, and liens.² Condominiums created on or after January 1, 2011 are governed by the Kentucky Condominium Act at KRS § 381.9101 to § 381.9207, which modernized portions of the framework while leaving the Horizontal Property Law in force for older regimes.³

Non-condominium associations — single-family subdivisions, townhome communities, and most other planned developments — have historically operated without a dedicated HOA statute. They are governed primarily by recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs), the bylaws and articles of the association, and Kentucky's nonprofit corporation laws at KRS Chapter 273 and KRS Chapter 273A.⁴ The General Assembly enacted a Planned Community Act in 2023 (Senate Bill 120, codified at KRS § 381.785 to § 381.801), but it applies only to planned communities formed after June 29, 2023; older non-condo associations remain functionally CC&R-primary.⁵

Kentucky has never enacted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA); it is instead one of 14 states (alongside Alabama, Arizona, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia) that adopted the 1978 Uniform Condominium Act, on which the 2011 Kentucky Condominium Act is modeled.⁶ Property managers, board members, and community association counsel operating in the Commonwealth must therefore identify the form of the community before applying any statutory rule.

2. The statutory framework

The Kentucky Horizontal Property Law

The Horizontal Property Law, codified at KRS § 381.805 through § 381.910, was enacted in 1962 to create the legal vehicle for condominium ownership in Kentucky.^7,8 KRS § 381.805 supplies the short title; the substantive provisions follow.⁹ The statute applies to condominium regimes established before January 1, 2011, and certain provisions continue to apply to all condominiums regardless of formation date.^10,11

Scope is limited to condominiums. The statute defines "unit," "condominium," "condominium project," "co-owner," "common elements," "general common elements," "limited common elements," and "council of co-owners" at KRS § 381.810.¹² A regime is created by the recordation of a master deed (or master lease) and floor plans under KRS § 381.815 and KRS § 381.835, with individual unit conveyances governed by KRS § 381.820 and KRS § 381.840.¹³

Structurally, the Horizontal Property Law allocates governance responsibility to the council of co-owners and an administrator or board of administration acting under bylaws adopted by the council. Under KRS § 381.860, "the administration of the building or buildings constituted into a condominium property regime shall be governed by bylaws approved and adopted by the council of co-owners."¹⁴ Maintenance and pro rata contribution obligations are set at KRS § 381.870, which obligates co-owners to fund a replacement reserve for general common elements.¹⁵ Lien rights for unpaid assessments — including foreclosure procedures — are at KRS § 381.883.¹⁶ Insurance, destruction, and reconstruction are addressed at KRS § 381.885 and KRS § 381.890.¹⁷ KRS § 381.865 (the original books-of-account and inspection provision) was repealed in 2012 when the modernized Condominium Act provisions on records took over.¹⁸

The Horizontal Property Law operates supplementally with the broader KRS framework: KRS § 381.905 provides that the law is "in addition to and supplemental to all other provisions of the Kentucky Revised Statutes," with the Horizontal Property Law prevailing in case of conflict on subjects it addresses.¹⁹ The declaration (master deed) and bylaws function as the constitutive documents of the regime; statutory defaults fill gaps but cannot override mandatory provisions.

Non-condo planned communities and the role of CC&Rs

For the substantial majority of Kentucky's non-condominium associations — particularly those formed before June 29, 2023 — there is no comprehensive HOA statute. The Kentucky Attorney General's Office has stated, in the open-records context, that "Kentucky is not among the states that attempt to regulate homeowners' associations by statute," noting that such associations "are contractual in nature and bind the parties thereto in the same manner as would any other contract."²⁰

The recorded declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions is therefore the primary governing instrument. The declaration runs with the land, binds successor owners as covenants real, and is supplemented by the association's articles, bylaws, and board rules. For an association organized as a nonprofit corporation, the corporate-form rules of KRS Chapter 273 govern board composition, meeting notice, member voting, fiduciary duties, and dissolution.²¹ An association organized as an unincorporated nonprofit association is governed by KRS Chapter 273A, the Kentucky Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act adopted in 2015.²²

Order of precedence for non-condo communities created before June 29, 2023 is, in descending priority: federal law (fair housing, FDCPA, OTARD, SCRA), then Kentucky common law of real property and contract, then the recorded CC&Rs, then the bylaws, then board-adopted rules. Kentucky's nonprofit corporation statutes run in parallel and govern corporate-form questions but do not displace the declaration on substantive governance.

Common-law contract and property doctrine carry unusual weight in Kentucky's framework. Kentucky courts construe HOA covenants as ordinary contracts; ambiguities are generally resolved against the drafter, and equitable defenses such as waiver, laches, and selective enforcement are available. The practical implication for a non-condo board or property manager is that there is no Kentucky HOA statute to point to for default rules on meetings, elections, records, or fines if the community predates June 29, 2023 — those defaults must be supplied by the governing documents.

The role of corporate law and common law

Because nearly all Kentucky HOAs and condominium associations are organized as nonprofit corporations, the Kentucky Nonprofit Corporation Acts function as the entity-level operating system for the association.^23,24 KRS Chapter 273 (specifically KRS § 273.161 to § 273.390) governs nonstock, nonprofit corporations: corporate name, registered agent, member rights, board composition (a minimum of three directors), board meetings and notice (KRS § 273.217, KRS § 273.223), member meetings (KRS § 273.187 et seq.), fiduciary duties (KRS § 273.215), and dissolution (KRS § 273.300 et seq.).²⁵

KRS Chapter 273A — the Kentucky Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act — provides an alternative corporate form for associations that have not formally incorporated, with liability-shielding rules contingent on filing a certificate of association with the Secretary of State.²⁶ Some older associations exist as Kentucky business corporations under KRS Chapter 271B; the dual-form question is fact-specific and turns on the original articles of incorporation.

Common law fills gaps the statutes do not address. The Kentucky Condominium Act expressly preserves this: KRS § 381.9115 provides that "the principles of law and equity, including the law of corporations and unincorporated associations, the law of real property, and the law relative to capacity to contract, principal and agent, eminent domain, estoppel, fraud, misrepresentation, duress, coercion, mistake, receivership, substantial performance, or other validating or invalidating cause, shall supplement" the Act.²⁷ Within the Horizontal Property Law framework, the order of precedence is: statute (KRS § 381.805 to § 381.910), then the master deed (declaration), then the bylaws, then rules adopted by the council or board; the supplemental clause of KRS § 381.905 confirms statute-over-rest precedence on subjects the law addresses.²⁸

3. Compliance obligations created by the statutory framework

Governance obligations

If a condominium came into being on or after January 1, 2011, the Kentucky Condominium Act sets the rules. It requires the unit owners to form an association under KRS § 381.9165, holds executive board members to service standards under KRS § 381.9169 and KRS § 381.9170, lays out annual- and special-meeting procedures under KRS § 381.9177, and gives unit owners access to the records under KRS § 381.9197(1).²⁹ These duties are mandatory — unless the Act itself lets the declaration vary them under KRS § 381.9107.³⁰

For the older condominiums — those created before January 1, 2011 under the Horizontal Property Law — governance runs through the bylaws under KRS § 381.860 and the administrator-or-board structure laid out in the master deed.³¹ And many of the record-keeping and disclosure provisions of the post-2011 Act reach back to these older regimes by operation of KRS § 381.9103(2).³²

For non-condo planned communities, the governance duties are part contractual — sourced in the CC&Rs and bylaws — and part corporate, sourced in KRS Chapter 273 or 273A. The corporate requirements, including the default minimum of three directors, apply; but the substantive HOA governance defaults simply do not exist as state law for communities formed before June 29, 2023.³³ For communities formed after that date, KRS § 381.787, § 381.792, and § 381.793 supply statutory defaults on board organization, meetings, notice, quorum, and director standards.³⁴

Financial obligations

Under the Horizontal Property Law, KRS § 381.870 requires each co-owner to contribute pro rata to a replacement reserve fund for the general common elements — and that obligation is mandatory.³⁵ Lien rights for unpaid assessments arise under KRS § 381.883, and an association may foreclose in the same manner as a mortgage.³⁶

Under the Kentucky Condominium Act, the association's powers — including emergency assessment authority — sit at KRS § 381.9167, budget-ratification procedures at KRS § 381.9169, financial-record-keeping standards keyed to annual revenue at KRS § 381.9197, and assessment liens at KRS § 381.9193.³⁷ These provisions reach most condominiums regardless of when they were created.³⁸

For non-condo planned communities formed before June 29, 2023, the authority to assess, to lien, to set reserves, and to budget all derives from the CC&Rs. There is no statutory floor, and the absence of a clear declaration provision can defeat collection or enforcement outright. Communities formed after June 29, 2023 get statutory defaults under KRS § 381.790 (budget, assessments, insurance, financial records) and KRS § 381.799 (assessment-lien validity and priority).³⁹

Disclosure obligations

The Kentucky Condominium Act imposes a mandatory resale-certificate duty. Under KRS § 381.9203, the association must furnish a certificate — covering common expenses, insurance, litigation, and reserves — within ten days of a unit owner's written request, and the seller must hand it to the buyer.⁴⁰ The Kentucky Real Estate Commission publishes Form 404 as the standard condominium seller's certificate.⁴¹ This resale-certificate duty applies no matter when the condominium was created.⁴²

For non-condo planned communities, no statutory resale-disclosure regime exists for communities formed before June 29, 2023; disclosure runs on contract — typically buyer-requested estoppel letters and the federal seller's-disclosure regime. For communities formed after that date, KRS § 381.790 and KRS § 381.794 address financial reporting and resale-related disclosures.⁴³

Dispute resolution obligations

Neither the Horizontal Property Law nor the Kentucky Condominium Act forces parties into pre-suit ADR. Owner-association disputes move through Kentucky Circuit Court, with an appeal as of right to the Kentucky Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the Kentucky Supreme Court. Notice and hearing rights for fines or rule enforcement have to come from the declaration and bylaws; the Condominium Act's good-faith obligation at KRS § 381.9123 supplies a backstop.⁴⁴ For non-condo planned communities, the due-process-style notice and hearing rights are entirely contractual — they depend on what the CC&Rs and bylaws require.

Kentucky's Open Records Act and Open Meetings Act do not apply to HOAs, because HOAs are not public agencies — the Kentucky Attorney General confirmed as much in 15-ORD-145.⁴⁵ And Kentucky is not among the nine states (Alaska, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Virginia, and Washington) that license community association managers; no state CAM license is required to manage a Kentucky association.⁴⁶

4. Kentucky's recent legislative and judicial activity

Recent bills

Kentucky's recent HOA-related bills take aim at specific problems — failing infrastructure and owner free-speech rights — rather than rewriting the code wholesale.

Recent court rulings

Kentucky's appellate courts have stayed largely quiet on association law, leaving most disputes to play out in circuit court and in the governing documents.

Active legislative debates

The biggest open question in Kentucky is one of reach — how far its newest community-association law should extend, and whether older communities will ever fall under it.

5. National positioning and related coverage

Step back, and Kentucky sits in a small group of states. It pairs comprehensive condominium coverage with only limited statutory regulation of non-condo planned communities — company it shares with Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A few features stand out: the bespoke 1962 Horizontal Property Law, still in force for pre-2011 condominiums; the modernized 2011 Kentucky Condominium Act, drawn from the 1978 Uniform Condominium Act with state-specific deviations; the late-arriving 2023 Planned Community Act, which applies only going forward, to communities formed after June 29, 2023; and the absence of any community-association-manager licensing. If you operate across state lines and you are expanding into Kentucky, plan to lean heavily on each non-condo community's governing documents, and on KRS Chapters 273 and 273A for corporate-form questions, rather than on a single unified HOA code.

6. Closing note

HOA Weekly updates its Kentucky Governing Statute coverage every quarter, tracking amendments to KRS Chapter 381, new appellate decisions, and General Assembly bills that touch community associations. Federal frameworks apply here too — the Fair Housing Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the FCC's OTARD rule, and the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act all reach Kentucky associations, and we cover those separately at /federal/.

Footnotes

1. Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, Ky. Rev. Stat. ch. 381 (statutes index) ↩
2. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.805, Short title (Horizontal Property Law) ↩
3. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9103, Application and construction of KRS 381.9101 to 381.9207 ↩
4. Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, Ky. Rev. Stat. ch. 273 (Nonprofit Corporations, statutes index) ↩
5. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.786 (Planned Community Act, applicability) ↩
6. Community Associations Institute, Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (advocacy overview, listing UCIOA and Uniform Condominium Act states) ↩
7. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.805, Short title (Horizontal Property Law) ↩
8. Ky. Rev. Stat. ch. 381 (2024), Justia ↩
9. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.805, Short title ↩
10. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9103, Application and construction ↩
11. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9103(2) ↩
12. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.810 (definitions) ↩
13. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 381.815, 381.835, 381.840 (master deed, floor plans, unit conveyances) ↩
14. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.860 (administration governed by bylaws) ↩
15. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.870 (maintenance; replacement reserve) ↩
16. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.883 (assessment liens; foreclosure) ↩
17. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 381.885, 381.890 (insurance; destruction; reconstruction) ↩
18. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.865 (repealed 2012) ↩
19. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.905 (supplemental application) ↩
20. Ky. Att'y Gen., Open Records Decision 15-ORD-145 (Aug. 6, 2015) ↩
21. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 273.161–273.390 (Nonprofit Corporation Acts) ↩
22. Ky. Rev. Stat. ch. 273A, Kentucky Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act (2025), Justia ↩
23. Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, Ky. Rev. Stat. ch. 273 (statutes index) ↩
24. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 273.161–273.390 (Nonprofit Corporation Acts) ↩
25. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 273.187, 273.215, 273.217, 273.223, 273.300 et seq. (member meetings, fiduciary duties, board notice, dissolution) ↩
26. Ky. Rev. Stat. ch. 273A (Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act; certificate of association), Justia ↩
27. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9115 (supplemental principles of law and equity) ↩
28. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.905 (supplemental application; statute-over-rest precedence) ↩
29. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 381.9165, 381.9169, 381.9170, 381.9177, 381.9197 (association formation, board standards, meetings, records) ↩
30. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9107 (variation by declaration) ↩
31. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.860 (administration governed by bylaws) ↩
32. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9103(2) (retroactive application to pre-2011 condominiums) ↩
33. Ky. Rev. Stat. ch. 273 (corporate procedural requirements; minimum of three directors) ↩
34. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 381.787, 381.792, 381.793 (Planned Community Act governance defaults) ↩
35. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.870 (mandatory pro rata replacement reserve) ↩
36. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.883 (assessment liens; foreclosure as a mortgage) ↩
37. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 381.9167, 381.9169, 381.9193, 381.9197 (association powers, budget ratification, assessment liens, financial records) ↩
38. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9103(2) (application regardless of formation date) ↩
39. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 381.790, 381.799 (Planned Community Act budget/assessment and lien defaults) ↩
40. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9203 (resale certificate) ↩
41. Kentucky Real Estate Commission, Form 404, Condominium Seller's Certificate (Oct. 2019) ↩
42. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9201 (applicability of resale provisions regardless of formation date) ↩
43. Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 381.790, 381.794 (Planned Community Act financial reporting and resale-related disclosures) ↩
44. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.9123 (obligation of good faith) ↩
45. Ky. Att'y Gen., Open Records Decision 15-ORD-145 (Aug. 6, 2015) (HOAs not public agencies) ↩
46. Community Associations Institute, State and Federal Regulation of Community Associations; Kentucky Real Estate Commission ↩
47. 2024 Ky. HB 472, official record; Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.803 ↩
48. 2025 Ky. HB 27, official record; Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.800 ↩
49. Strause v. Bradford Grove Homeowners Ass'n, Inc., No. 2024-CA-0788-MR (Ky. Ct. App. Aug. 22, 2025) ↩
50. Ky. Rev. Stat. § 381.786 (June 29, 2023 prospective-application boundary, Planned Community Act) ↩