Latest Legal Updates
Latest Legal Updates
HOA and condominium association legislation, court rulings and regulatory changes across every state, the District of Columbia and federal law — newest first.
Showing 97–120 of 1,989 updates
Six bills tried to cap your home's assessment. All six died
The 2026 session produced six separate attempts to limit how fast an owner-occupied assessment can rise. Four never reached a floor, one died 9-24 in the Senate, and the existing countywide 3% cap survives unchanged.
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Vermont's charger law reaches back to 2011, not 1999
Act 168 amended 27A V.S.A. § 1-204 to extend the EV-charging section to communities of 12 or more residential units created on or before January 1, 2011 — a line that leaves small communities out entirely.
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Utah lets 51% of owners strip a solar ban
H.B. 119 cut the vote needed to remove a declaration's solar prohibition on detached dwellings from a supermajority to 51%, while keeping 67% to impose one — and voided any solar ban living outside the declaration.
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A Horry and Georgetown HOA lien foreclosure that sits six months now goes to the Master in Equity automatically
Chief Justice Kittredge approved a Fifteenth Circuit local rule on March 26, 2026 automatically referring homeowners-association lien foreclosures pending six months to the Master in Equity, with mechanics' liens expressly exempt.
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Conger v. AVR: a dissolved Wyoming HOA cannot write or enforce covenants
The Wyoming Supreme Court reversed summary judgment for an association whose predecessor had been administratively dissolved two years before it recorded amended covenants, and placed the burden of proving authority on the association.
Read the full updateSouth Dakota just recognised a remedy that cancels a covenant outright
Hood v. Straatmeyer is a question of first impression: the South Dakota Supreme Court had twice addressed waiver of a covenant between parties, but never a court's power to declare one unenforceable by every owner.
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Records access tops the list of what Virginia boards get cited for
Of the determinations the Common Interest Community Ombudsman issued in its latest reporting year, records access led with 21, ahead of meetings and executive sessions at 16.
Read the full updateFour questions about your covenants land in Montpelier in November
Act 179 orders Legislative Counsel to report by November 15, 2026 on forcing Vermont associations to allow leasing, home business, accessory dwelling units and vegetable gardens.
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Tennessee court vacates a records-inspection win against an HOA
In LaMothe v. Deer Hill Village the Court of Appeals vacated summary judgment for owners seeking corporate records, holding the association was entitled to have its good-faith and prior-production defences actually adjudicated.
Read the full updateS. 903 would have ended the notarization exemption for HOA documents. It got 15 days in a House committee
The bill extending South Carolina's January 10 recording deadline to every governing document, and subjecting them to witness and acknowledgment requirements from 2027, passed the Senate unanimously and never received a House hearing.
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Reported: a Harris County HOA manager faces a felony theft charge over $53,630 in card spending
Court documents reported in May 2026 allege a former office manager of a Cypress-area homeowners' association ran $53,630.77 of unauthorised charges on association cards over roughly 18 months; the charge is an allegation and has not been proved.
Read the full updateEight chickens and a Utah accommodation request
The Court of Appeals reversed a damages award against a Utah HOA that took ten weeks to investigate a disability accommodation request — because it let the owners keep all eight chickens while it looked.
Read the full updateClark v. Fuller: CC&Rs promising access to “other surrounding lands” held ambiguous
The Wyoming Supreme Court found a subdivision's private-road easement clause ambiguous where it referred to undefined “other surrounding lands,” and weighed the claimant's failure to pay the covenant road-maintenance share against them.
Read the full updateA South Dakota subdivision is sinking, and the taking claim failed
Morse v. State affirmed summary judgment against 150-plus Hideaway Hills homeowners: the State's gypsum mining was proprietary and commercial, not a public use, so inverse condemnation could not reach it.
Read the full updateA Vermont second-home transfer now costs 3.62%
Vermont’s property transfer tax on a non-principal residence runs to 3.62% with the surcharge, up from roughly 1.45% — which reprices resale in every resort-town condominium in the state.
Read the full updateVirginia raised the tax-sale thresholds that reach association parcels
Chapter 376 of the 2025 Acts raised the nonjudicial tax-sale assessment thresholds from $10,000 to $15,000 and from $25,000 to $30,000 — bands that reach common-area parcels associations often forget they own.
Read the full updateFederal flood insurance authority expires September 30, and South Carolina has more than 5,500 condominium association policies riding on it
42 U.S.C. § 4026 bars any new flood insurance contract after September 30, 2026 unless Congress acts. FEMA data shows 132,185 active South Carolina policies, including thousands of association master policies.
Read the full updateWyoming’s drone act makes a community water system critical infrastructure
Chapter 112 of the 2025 session laws, vetoed and then overridden, criminalises drone photography and loitering over water and wastewater systems — and exempts a private landowner flying over their own property.
Read the full updateDecades of encroachment buy an easement, not title
Luzier v. Hemmah affirmed that garages standing since 1948 and 1997 across a lakefront lot line earned prescriptive easements limited to their own footprints — the adverse possession claim failed at the occupancy gate.
Read the full updateA volunteer Vermont board files its state report for free
Vermont nonprofits file a biennial report between January 1 and April 1. An association that compensated nobody in the prior calendar year is exempt from the fee — and Act 10 of 2025 renamed the certificate lenders ask for.
Read the full updateUtah lists what a declaration may no longer say
S.B. 122 moved a set of limits out of the rules provisions and into the declaration provisions, so signs, flags, drought watering and park-strip conversion are now beyond the reach of the recorded document itself.
Read the full updateA South Carolina board stripped an owner's terrace and four directors paid punitive damages personally
In Griffin v. Giovino, published July 16, 2025, the Court of Appeals affirmed a civil conspiracy verdict against an association and four directors individually, holding Section 33-31-834 immunity is removed where conduct is willful.
Read the full updateA Virginia HOA lost its challenge to a 1995 access easement
Catoctin Ridge v. Biller holds that Virginia's stranger-to-the-deed rule reaches reservations and exceptions only — not express grants — and leaves a first-impression statutory question open.
Read the full updateTexas caps condominium resale certificate fees at $375
Section 4 of SB 711 added Property Code § 82.157(f), limiting what a Texas condominium association may charge to furnish a resale certificate to a reasonable and necessary fee not exceeding $375.
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