The bill to halve Maryland's resale-package fee got a favourable Senate report on the last day and never reached a vote
The bill to halve Maryland's resale-package fee got a favourable Senate report on the last day and never reached a vote
2026-09-12 · Maryland · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. Maryland came closer to cutting resale-package charges than at any point in three attempts, and then ran out of clock. The Keeping Affordable Housing Affordable Act passed the House of Delegates 130–0 on 21 March 2026. On 13 April — sine die day — Senate Judicial Proceedings reported it favourably, the favourable report was adopted, and it passed second reading.
Third reading never came. The session ended that day and House Bill 1132 did not become law.1
One point of confusion worth clearing immediately: the bill page shows an effective date of 1 October 2026. That is the date the bill proposed. It has no chapter number and no gubernatorial approval. Maryland's resale fee caps and delivery windows are unchanged.
What it would have changed
The fiscal note sets the four changes out against current law, for both condominiums (§ 11-135) and homeowners associations (§§ 11B-106 and 11B-108):2
- The response window: 20 days to 10. A council of unit owners or association currently has 20 days from a written request and payment to produce the certificate.
- The request fee cap: $250 to $100. Current law allows up to $250, but not more than actual cost.
- The rush fees, repealed and replaced. Today an association may charge up to $50 for delivery within 14 days or up to $100 within 7. The bill would have permitted only $50 for delivery within 5 days, plus $50 for a financial update ordered by a settlement agent.
- The inflation escalator, repealed. The maximum certificate fee is currently adjusted biennially by the state housing department, indexed to the two-year change in CPI-U for the Washington metropolitan area and posted on its website. The bill would have ended that.
It also added a disclosure duty running the other way: the seller would have had to give written notice of any change in mandatory fees or payments exceeding 10 percent of the amount previously stated, or any other substantial and material change, once it became known.
Why halving the fee and halving the clock is one change, not two
The two headline numbers pull in opposite directions for an association, and that is the crux of the opposition.
A resale certificate is a compiled document: current and prior-year assessments, delinquency status, the management agent's details, knowledge of unsatisfied judgments and pending claims, approved capital expenditures, governing documents. Someone has to assemble it, and for a self-managed association that someone is a volunteer. Cutting the deadline to 10 days while cutting the fee to $100 compresses the time and the budget simultaneously.
Repealing the escalator compounds it over time. The current $250 ceiling is indexed; a fixed $100 with no adjustment mechanism erodes with inflation by design. For associations in expensive markets the practical figure matters: Ocean City resale packages have been reported at $250 to $300, right at or above the existing cap.3
The Department of Legislative Services found no material state or local fiscal effect and a minimal small-business effect — so this was a distributional fight between sellers and associations, not a budget question.2
The two trade bodies, on the record and opposed
Maryland REALTORS supported it, recording HB 1132 as “DID NOT PASS” with position “Support,” and describing the changes as cutting turnaround from 20 to 10 days, the base fee from $250 to $100, and removing rush fees and the automatic inflation adjustment.4
CAI's Maryland Legislative Action Committee opposed it, and its end-of-session report records the bill as having died in the Senate.5
That both organisations agree on the outcome while disagreeing on the merits is the useful part: the procedural record is not in dispute.
The procedural detail that separates this death from the others
Nine community-association bills reached the Senate from the House this session and none of them became law. HB 1132 died differently from most, and the difference is documentable.
Maryland publishes a committee voting record only where a committee actually voted. For the House-passed bills that stalled in Senate Judicial Proceedings — the oversight division, the recording mandate, statewide board training, the new-owner fee cap, the Baltimore County commission — no committee vote record exists. Those bills were never brought to a vote.
HB 1132 has one.6 The committee voted, reported it favourably, and sent it to the floor, where it cleared second reading. It failed at the last procedural step available, on the last day, in a chamber working through a sine die backlog.
That is a meaningfully better position to fail from, and it is the strongest argument that this proposal returns.
Third time, first floor vote
The resale-notice bill has been filed before. In 2024 it appeared as HB 1039 and SB 898, both titled Condominiums and Homeowners Associations – Resale Contracts – Notice Requirements; both died after committee hearings without reaching a floor vote in either chamber.1
2026 was the first year any version passed a chamber, and it did so unanimously.
A companion measure went nowhere. HB 1260, Common Ownership Communities – Online Publication of Resale Disclosures, would have required associations to post community-wide documents on their websites free and downloadable — expressly excluding unit-specific information — and would also have repealed the housing department's fee escalator. It was heard on 5 March 2026, in the same hearing block as HB 1132, and died in Economic Matters without a report. It was its second filing; the 2025 version, HB 1221, died the same way.7
Maryland REALTORS supported that one too.
What to watch next
The 2027 session convenes 13 January 2027, the first of a new four-year term after the 3 November election. Pre-file drafting requests are due 20 November 2026 and pre-file approval 10 December 2026 — so whether this comes back is decided in the next ten weeks, by legislators who have to win in November first.
The question on a refile is whether the fee and the deadline stay coupled. Halving the cap and halving the clock together is what unified the association lobby against a bill that the House passed 130–0. Splitting them — a 10-day deadline at the existing $250, say, or $100 with the current 20 days — is the obvious way to break that coalition, and nothing in this session's record suggests anyone tried it.
Related Maryland HOA Topics
- House Bill 1132, Maryland General Assembly 2026 Regular Session — bill record; House third reading passed 130-0 on 21 March 2026, Senate Judicial Proceedings favourable report and second reading passed 13 April 2026, no third reading, no chapter number ↩
- Department of Legislative Services fiscal and policy note (Third Reader, Revised), HB 1132 (2026) — current law versus the bill on the 20-to-10-day window, the $250-to-$100 cap, the rush-fee repeal and the CPI escalator repeal ↩
- Lauren Bunting, OC Today-Dispatch, 19 February 2026 — Ocean City resale packages reported at $250 to $300 ↩
- Maryland REALTORS, Summary of 2026 Real Estate Legislation — HB 1132 recorded as "DID NOT PASS", position "Support" ↩
- CAI Advocacy, 2026 Maryland End of Legislative Session Report — HB 1132 opposed, recorded as died in the Senate ↩
- Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee voting record, HB 1132 (2026) — the committee vote that the other stalled House-passed bills never received ↩
- House Bill 1260 (2026), Common Ownership Communities – Online Publication of Resale Disclosures — heard 5 March 2026, died in House Economic Matters without a report ↩
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