What the mandate they were aimed at actually says

Chapter 519 and Chapter 518 of the Acts of 2025 — cross-files HB 292 and SB 63, both signed 13 May 2025, effective 1 October 2025 — converted a decade of disclosure-only law into a funding duty across all three Maryland community-association forms.⁶

The operative requirements, from the codified text:

• The annual budget must include reserve contributions equal to the amount recommended in the most recent reserve study, and those contributions must be deposited into the reserve account on or before the last day of each fiscal year.
• The governing body must adopt a written funding plan, developed in consultation with the study's preparer, and review progress against it annually.
• The association must attain the annual funding level “within 5 fiscal years following the fiscal year in which the initial reserve study was completed” — a window the 2025 act extended from three years.
• Reserves may not be used for purposes outside the funding plan unless repaid within five years.
• Boards may raise assessments to cover required reserve funding notwithstanding any cap in the articles, bylaws or proprietary lease.

Scope limits matter here: § 11-109.2 does not apply to a condominium used solely for non-residential purposes, and the HOA track under § 11B-112.3 applies only where the association maintains common areas and the total repair or replacement cost of all identified components is at least $10,000.⁶

The relief that already exists — and why three of the four bills were partly redundant

This is the part most coverage of the 2026 session misses. Chapter 518 already contains a hardship mechanism, and reading its enrolled text explains why a hardship bill and an emergency-spending bill both struggled.

Under the 2025 act a governing body may, by a two-thirds majority vote, determine that the community and its members are experiencing a financial hardship limiting the ability to fund reserves, and may then reasonably deviate from the funding requirement. The determination may not extend more than one fiscal year beyond the determination — but it is renewable by another two-thirds vote, one additional fiscal year at a time.⁷

It comes with conditions. The board must make good-faith efforts to resolve the hardship and maintain detailed documentation of those efforts — and that documentation is open to owner examination and copying. The hardship vote may be taken only at a regular or special meeting, with advance notice. Health, safety and structural-integrity components must continue to be funded regardless.

So HB 1269's “financial hardship” determination largely duplicated a power boards already had, with a different voting threshold. HB 1615's emergency-spending fix sat next to an existing rule allowing reserves to be used outside the plan if repaid within five years. The genuinely novel proposals were the two that asked for something the 2025 law does not provide: exemption (HB 1201) and money (HB 453).

Both of those are the ones that ask the legislature to reverse itself or to spend, against a session running into a projected shortfall of at least $1.6 billion.

The pattern is three sessions deep

Reserve relief is the most-refiled and most-killed subject in Maryland community-association law, and the ledger is consistent.

Reserve-study exemptions: HB 968, HB 1208 and SB 1050 in 2024; HB 1041 in 2025; HB 1201 in 2026. All dead.

The grant fund: HB 1035 in 2024; HB 1040, HB 1411 and SB 1011 in 2025; HB 453 in 2026. Five filings across three sessions, never reported out.

Study alterations: HB 1262 in 2024; HB 1133 (annual revisions) and HB 1215 (extending the time to attain the funding level) in 2025, both withdrawn after unfavourable signals; HB 1269 and SB 615 in 2026.¹

The one thing that has ever succeeded on this subject is the 2025 act itself — which, notably, delivered relief while tightening the mandate: three years became five, and a hardship escape was written in, in the same bill that made funding compulsory. The lesson the record teaches is that Maryland will trade flexibility for obligation, and will not grant flexibility on its own.

A withdrawal is not quite a defeat, and the record disagrees with itself

Worth a note for anyone tracing HB 1269, SB 615 or HB 453. The legislature's bulk dataset characterises their final status as an unfavourable committee report followed by withdrawal; the live bill pages show only “Withdrawn by Sponsor.”³

In Maryland practice these describe the same event — a committee signals it will report unfavourably and the sponsor withdraws rather than take the vote — but the two official surfaces word it differently, and no roll call exists. The defensible statement is that the bills were withdrawn by their sponsors after their hearings were cancelled.

What to watch next

The 1 December 2026 deadline for the housing department's report on condominium buildings over 40 years old. Chapter 779 of this year requires it to state, building by building, the difference between what each reserve fund holds and what it is required to hold. That is the first official measure of the shortfall these four bills were reacting to, and it will be in legislators' hands before the 2027 session.

The timing is awkward, though: pre-file drafting requests are due 20 November 2026, ten days before the report is due. Anyone who wants a 2027 reserve bill built on the department's findings has to request the draft before the findings exist.