Maryland HOA Director Qualifications

Section 1: Overview — Who can serve on an HOA or condominium board in Maryland

Maryland sets director qualifications mostly through each association’s own governing documents and through the Maryland Non-Stock Corporation Act. Two statutes supply the governance frame around that. The Maryland Homeowners Association Act covers homeowners associations, Md. Code, Real Property § 11B-101 et seq.¹, and the Maryland Condominium Act, Real Property § 11-101 to § 11-143, covers condominiums, where it calls the governing entity the “council of unit owners.”² Most Maryland associations incorporate as nonstock corporations under the Maryland Non-Stock Corporation Act, Md. Code, Corporations & Associations § 5-201 to § 5-208, read together with the general corporation provisions of the same article.³

So the state requires no certification, sets no statutory term limit, and disqualifies no one automatically for unpaid dues or a criminal record. Director removal usually follows the bylaws. That structure sets Maryland apart from heavy-touch states such as Florida, which loads director service with statutory certification, mandatory education, term limits, and automatic disqualification rules.⁴ The sections that follow show where Maryland’s director rules come from, lay out eligibility, disqualification, and tenure by source layer, and review the recent legislative and judicial activity that bears on director qualifications.

Section 2: Where director qualifications come from

2A. The two statutes: the MHAA and the Condominium Act

The MHAA, Real Property § 11B-101 et seq., governs homeowners associations — it defines one as a person with authority to enforce a declaration — and it handles meetings, records, disclosures, the transition of control from a declarant, and dispute settlement. It leaves the detailed structure of the board to the declaration and bylaws.¹ The Condominium Act, Real Property § 11-101 to § 11-143, hands the affairs of a condominium to a council of unit owners made up of all the owners, and it lets the bylaws delegate the council’s powers to a board of directors under § 11-109.⁵ The Act reaches every condominium, except that under § 11-142 a condominium established before July 1, 1982 need not amend its declaration, master deed, bylaws, or plat to comply.⁶

Neither statute requires director certification or education, sets a term limit, or automatically disqualifies a delinquent owner or a person with a criminal history. Those subjects simply do not appear in either title. Neither one sets a general candidate-eligibility screen, and neither one supplies a stand-alone procedure for removing a sitting director. The Condominium Act touches board composition only at the developer-transition stage under § 11-109, and the MHAA addresses the transition meeting under § 11B-106.1⁷, which leaves ongoing eligibility and removal to the governing documents and the corporate statute. Maryland also runs no statewide HOA regulator. Some counties do their own work — Montgomery County, for instance, runs education and binding dispute-resolution programs through its Commission on Common Ownership Communities — but those are county programs, not a statewide regulator.⁸

2B. The corporate-law layer: the Maryland Non-Stock Corporation Act

Most Maryland associations are nonstock corporations under the Maryland Non-Stock Corporation Act, Corporations & Associations § 5-201 to § 5-208, read together with the general corporation provisions of Title 2 of the same article.³ The label matters. Maryland uses a “Non-Stock Corporation Act,” not a separately titled “nonprofit corporation act,” and getting that right matters because the director provisions flow from this corporate framework rather than from a nonprofit-specific code. Section 5-201 applies the Maryland General Corporation Law to nonstock corporations except where the two conflict, and the Condominium Act confirms that an incorporated council answers to Title 5, Subtitle 2 so far as that subtitle does not conflict with the Condominium Act.⁵ Section 5-202 lets the charter or bylaws of a nonstock corporation divide directors into classes, prescribe the tenure and conditions of director service, and prescribe the rights, privileges, and qualifications of its members.⁹

The general corporation provisions supply the baselines. Section 2-402 requires at least one director.¹⁰ Section 2-403 provides that, unless the charter or bylaws require it, a director need not be a stockholder.¹¹ Section 2-404 sets the election and tenure rules, including a five-year ceiling on a classified director’s term.¹² And § 2-406 supplies the removal default.¹³ This corporate layer is the scaffolding each association’s bylaws build on.

2C. The declaration and bylaws as the source of eligibility and removal

In practice, the candidate-eligibility screens come from the declaration and bylaws. They may require a director to be a member or unit owner, and they may add residency, age, or good-standing conditions, because § 5-202 expressly lets the governing documents prescribe those member qualifications and conditions of director service.⁹ Director removal commonly follows the bylaws too, usually by a majority vote of the voting members entitled to elect the director, with or without cause and with notice to the director — a pattern that tracks the corporate default in § 2-406.¹³ The order of precedence runs from the MHAA or Condominium Act, to the declaration and bylaws, to the Non-Stock Corporation Act defaults, and then to board-adopted rules. So the binding director rules in a Maryland association are really the bylaws read against the Non-Stock Corporation Act, with the MHAA or the Condominium Act supplying the surrounding governance frame rather than the eligibility screen itself.

Section 3: Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

A. Eligibility to serve

The declaration and bylaws — not either real-property statute — decide whether a director must be a member or unit owner. The Non-Stock Corporation Act default is permissive: under § 2-403 a director need not be a stockholder unless the charter or bylaws require it¹¹, and the nonstock analog runs through § 5-202, which lets the charter or bylaws prescribe the qualifications of members and the tenure and conditions of director service.⁹ Source layer: the Non-Stock Corporation Act default, which most associations override through the declaration and bylaws. Applicability: both HOAs and condominiums. Residency, age, and good-standing requirements, where they exist, come from the governing documents, and so does the treatment of co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives, because the MHAA and the Condominium Act say nothing about those points for association directors.

B. Disqualification and removal

Director removal commonly follows the bylaws, and the typical pattern is a majority vote of the voting members entitled to elect the director, with or without cause and with notice. The Non-Stock Corporation Act default in § 2-406 lets members remove any director, with or without cause, by the affirmative vote of a majority of all the votes entitled to be cast generally for the election of directors, except as the charter provides otherwise and subject to limits where directors are classified or elected by a class or series.¹³ The mechanics of a removal meeting — notice, quorum, balloting — sit outside this page; here we state only the qualification-side and removal-threshold rule. Neither the MHAA nor the Condominium Act disqualifies a candidate or sitting director for assessment delinquency or a criminal record, so any such bar is documentary: it arises from the declaration or bylaws, not from statute. Conflict-of-interest limits on directors come from the corporate framework, including the interested-director-transaction provision at § 2-419, and from the governing documents, rather than from a community-association-specific statute.¹⁴ Source layer: the Non-Stock Corporation Act default and the bylaws. Applicability: both HOAs and condominiums.

C. Board composition and terms

The Non-Stock Corporation Act sets the minimum number of directors: § 2-402 requires at least one, with the actual number fixed by the charter and then the bylaws.¹⁰ Maximum size and the precise number come from the governing documents. The bylaws set term length and staggered terms within the corporate ceiling: § 2-404 ties a director’s basic term to the interval between annual meetings, and where directors are divided into classes the bylaws may set terms no longer than five years, with the term of at least one class expiring each year.¹² Maryland imposes no statutory term limit on association directors; the absence of any term-limit provision in the MHAA, the Condominium Act, and the Non-Stock Corporation Act is what supports that statement. The corporate framework and the bylaws govern vacancy filling. The two acts handle declarant and developer board representation and the transition of control: under Condominium Act § 11-109, a developer-controlled council holds a transition meeting within 60 days after units representing 50 percent of the votes have been conveyed to members of the public for residential purposes (or a lesser percentage set in the governing documents), and the terms of developer-appointed board members end 10 days after a replacement is elected at that meeting.⁵ The MHAA handles the parallel transition meeting for homeowners associations at § 11B-106.1.⁷ Source layer: the Non-Stock Corporation Act baselines, the governing documents, and the developer-transition provisions of the two acts. Applicability: both HOAs and condominiums, with the cited transition provisions specific to each act.

D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Maryland requires no director certification or education as a condition of serving on an association board. Florida takes the opposite tack: a residential-condominium director there must, within 90 days of election or appointment, file a written certification that the director has read the association’s governing documents and current written policies and complete a division-approved education course, and a director who misses the deadline is suspended from the board until compliant.⁴ In Maryland, conflict-of-interest disclosure expectations flow from the corporate framework rather than from any community-association training mandate. Section 2-405.1 sets the standard of care for a nonstock-corporation director: the director must act in good faith, in a manner the director reasonably believes serves the best interests of the corporation, and with the care of an ordinarily prudent person in a like position under similar circumstances; a director who meets that standard earns the immunity described in § 5-417 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article.¹⁵ Maryland’s appellate courts apply the business judgment rule to community-association boards, treating a legitimate board decision as presumptively valid absent fraud or bad faith, with the challenger bearing the burden of rebutting the presumption.¹⁶ Source layer: the Non-Stock Corporation Act and Maryland case law. Applicability: both HOAs and condominiums.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted in the past 24 months amended the MHAA, the Condominium Act, or the Non-Stock Corporation Act to change director qualifications, board composition, or director removal. Maryland’s recent community-association legislation has centered on reserve studies, condominium insurance, election administration, and disclosures — none of which touches director eligibility, composition, or removal — and reserve-study, insurance, and dispute-settlement bills fall outside the scope of this page. No qualifying enacted bill exists for the period.

B. Recent appellate rulings

No reported opinion of the Supreme Court of Maryland or the Appellate Court of Maryland decided in the past 36 months squarely addresses director eligibility, director removal, board composition, or the standard of care for community-association directors. The leading Maryland authority on the business judgment rule as applied to association boards, Black v. Fox Hills North Community Association, 90 Md. App. 75 (1992), predates this window.¹⁶ No qualifying reported ruling exists for the period.

C. Active legislative debates

House Bill 299 of the 2025 regular session would have required certain condominium board members and council officers, and certain homeowners association governing-body members, to complete a training curriculum covering the Maryland Homeowners Association Act, the Maryland Condominium Act, and the Maryland Cooperative Housing Corporation Act within 90 days of a proposed October 1, 2025 effective date. It did not advance beyond its February 4, 2025 committee hearing, and it was not enacted.¹⁷ Lawmakers have reintroduced similar member-training proposals, including county-specific versions for Charles County such as SB 728 (2025) and HB 913 (2026).¹⁸

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Maryland is a moderate-touch state for director qualifications. Two governance statutes, the MHAA and the Condominium Act, plus the Non-Stock Corporation Act, set the framework, but director eligibility and removal rest largely on the governing documents, with removal commonly accomplished by a majority vote of the members entitled to elect the director under the bylaws. That places Maryland between heavy-touch states such as Florida, which layers on statutory certification, mandatory education, term limits, and automatic disqualification of delinquent owners and certain felons, and light-touch states such as Iowa, where director eligibility is essentially documentary. For a multi-state operator, the practical point is that in Maryland the binding director rules live in the bylaws and the nonstock corporate framework, and counsel should use the current court names — the Supreme Court of Maryland and the Appellate Court of Maryland — when researching case law, because those names took effect on December 14, 2022.¹⁹ Maryland imposes no director certification requirement and no statutory term limit.

HOA Weekly’s Maryland Director Qualifications coverage updates quarterly as the General Assembly and the Maryland courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Maryland associations still answer to federal law — the Fair Housing Act, the ADA, the FDCPA, the SCRA, and OTARD — in their broader operations.

1. Md. Code, Real Prop. § 11B-101 et seq. (Maryland Homeowners Association Act), Maryland General Assembly ↩
2. Md. Code, Real Prop. §§ 11-101 to 11-143 (Maryland Condominium Act), § 11-109 (“council of unit owners”), Maryland General Assembly ↩
3. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns §§ 5-201 to 5-208 (Maryland Non-Stock Corporation Act), Maryland General Assembly ↩
4. Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) (director written certification and division-approved education course; suspension for noncompliance), Florida Statutes ↩
5. Md. Code, Real Prop. § 11-109 (council of unit owners; delegation to board of directors; developer transition meeting and end of developer-appointed terms), Maryland General Assembly ↩
6. Md. Code, Real Prop. § 11-142 (applicability to existing condominiums; pre-July 1, 1982 condominiums), Maryland General Assembly (PDF) ↩
7. Md. Code, Real Prop. § 11B-106.1 (meeting to elect governing body of homeowners association; developer transition), Maryland General Assembly ↩
8. Montgomery County Commission on Common Ownership Communities (county education and dispute-resolution program under Chapter 10B of the County Code), Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs ↩
9. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns § 5-202 (charter or bylaw provisions; tenure and conditions of director service; member qualifications), Maryland General Assembly ↩
10. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns § 2-402 (number of directors; minimum of one), Maryland General Assembly ↩
11. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns § 2-403 (qualifications of directors; director need not be a stockholder unless required by charter or bylaws), Maryland General Assembly ↩
12. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns § 2-404 (election and tenure of directors; five-year ceiling for classified directors), Maryland General Assembly ↩
13. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns § 2-406 (removal of director by majority vote, with or without cause, subject to charter and classification limits), Maryland General Assembly ↩
14. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns § 2-419 (interested director transactions), Maryland General Assembly ↩
15. Md. Code, Corps. & Ass’ns § 2-405.1 (standard of care required of directors; immunity under § 5-417 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article), Maryland General Assembly ↩
16. Black v. Fox Hills N. Cmty. Ass’n, 90 Md. App. 75 (1992) (business judgment rule applied to community associations), Maryland Judiciary ↩
17. Md. H.B. 299 (2025 Reg. Sess.), Real Property – Governing Bodies of Common Ownership Communities – Member Training (hearing held Feb. 4, 2025; not enacted), Maryland General Assembly ↩
18. Md. S.B. 728 (2025) and H.B. 913 (2026), Charles County common-ownership-community member training, Maryland General Assembly ↩
19. Voter-Approved Constitutional Change Renames High Courts to Supreme Court of Maryland and Appellate Court of Maryland (effective Dec. 14, 2022), Maryland Judiciary ↩