Maryland more than doubles a condo owner's damage bill and orders every owner to buy insurance
Maryland more than doubles a condo owner's damage bill and orders every owner to buy insurance
2026-09-12 · Maryland · Legislation
What happened. Maryland has raised the ceiling on what a condominium unit owner can be charged when damage starts inside their unit from $10,000 to $25,000, and has for the first time made carrying a unit-owner policy a statutory duty rather than a lender's preference. Senate Bill 747 was approved by the Governor on 26 May 2026 as Chapter 717 of the Acts of 2026, amending Real Property § 11-114 of the Maryland Condominium Act and adding a new § 11-114.3.1
It does not take effect until 1 October 2027. That thirteen-month runway is the most important fact on this page, and the one most often mis-stated: nothing in Chapter 717 binds a Maryland association or owner today.
What the statute does
The bill's own title is Condominiums – Unit Owner Responsibility for Damage or Destruction and Mandatory Insurance Coverage. The legislature's synopsis describes two operative parts: requiring councils to inform owners annually of their responsibilities, and requiring owners to maintain condominium unit-owner insurance — or substantially similar property coverage — with specified provisions.1
As practitioners summarising the enrolled text describe it, the owner of the unit where a loss originates becomes responsible for the lowest of three figures: the actual cost of repair or replacement, the council's property-insurance deductible, or $25,000.2 The structure of the old rule survives — it is still a cap keyed to the deductible, not open-ended liability — but the number moves.
The reported coverage floors on the owner's own policy are loss assessment coverage of at least $25,000 and dwelling or building property coverage set at the greater of $25,000 or the cost to repair the unit and its improvements.2 Brokers have been blunt about the consequence for anyone still carrying the older limit: a policy written to the $10,000 world leaves a $15,000 gap.3
Who is outside it
Two boundaries matter. Chapter 717 reaches residential condominiums, and it does not reach a condominium composed solely of detached units.2 Maryland already treats all-detached regimes differently for master-policy purposes, and that distinction carries through here.
The votes, and why the date moved
SB 747 was Senator McKay's bill, and it was never close. It cleared Judicial Proceedings with amendments and passed the Senate 41–0 on 20 March 2026. Economic Matters amended it again; the House passed it 134–2 on 10 April, and the Senate concurred 42–0 the same day.1
Those amendments are where the 2027 date came from. The version introduced would have landed sooner; both chambers pushed the operative date back a full extra year, which is the legislature conceding that an insurance mandate needs a renewal cycle to absorb. An association whose fiscal year starts in January gets two full budget cycles before the first annual notice is due.
The House cross-file, HB 469, died in Economic Matters after a 12 February hearing and never received a committee report.4 Any summary that credits the change to “SB 747/HB 469” as jointly enacted is wrong: the Senate bill is the whole vehicle.
The two new duties that fall on the board, not the owner
Most coverage of Chapter 717 frames it as an owner obligation. Half of it is not.
- An annual written notice. The council must tell every owner, each year, what the association's property-insurance deductible actually is and what the owner's resulting exposure is.2 That is a recurring administrative task with a statutory hook, and it has to be built into the association's annual calendar alongside the budget mailing.
- Collecting proof. Owners must furnish evidence of coverage annually, which means somebody at the association has to receive, record and chase it.2 For a 300-unit building that is 300 certificates a year and a delinquency list.
Neither duty exists in Maryland law today. Both are live on 1 October 2027.
What the legislature rejected to get here
Chapter 717 is a compromise, and the alternatives it beat are worth knowing because they will be back.
HB 1211 (Delegate Tomlinson) and its cross-file SB 633 (Senator Ready) would have repealed the cap entirely, making the owner of the originating unit liable for the full cost of repair or replacement with no ceiling at all. Both died in committee without a report — HB 1211 in Economic Matters, SB 633 in Judicial Proceedings.5
Running the other way, SB 332 (Senator Kramer) proposed the $25,000 figure on its own, paired with a requirement that the resale contract disclose the owner's deductible responsibility. It died in Judicial Proceedings after a 3 February hearing — and then the identical dollar figure reached the statute book through SB 747 ten weeks later.6 SB 332 was the second consecutive session for that proposal; its 2025 versions, SB 446 and HB 449, also died.
So the session produced a bracket: uncapped liability failed, a bare cap increase failed, and the version that survived was the one that raised the number and put a matching insurance requirement behind it. The resale-disclosure element SB 332 carried did not make the cut.
What to watch next
Three things.
The state's own consumer guidance. The Maryland Insurance Administration's condominium insurance page still describes the owner's exposure as up to $10,000 under the rule that took effect in October 2020, with no reference to Chapter 717.7 That is currently accurate — the old number is the operative one until October 2027 — but it becomes wrong on the effective date, and owners reading it in 2027 will be reading a stale figure.
Policy forms. A statutory minimum for loss assessment coverage only works if carriers writing HO-6 policies in Maryland offer it at that limit as standard. Form and rate filings are the mechanism, and the fiscal analysis of the competing bills anticipated exactly that filing activity.5
A cleanup bill. Maryland's recent pattern on community-association law is that a substantive act draws a technical follow-up in the next session — and that the follow-up frequently dies. The 2025 election law got one in 2026 and it failed in both chambers. If Chapter 717's notice mechanics prove awkward in practice, the 2027 session is where that surfaces, and the fix would need to pass before the October 2027 date to matter.
Related Maryland HOA Topics
- Senate Bill 747, Maryland General Assembly 2026 Regular Session — bill record, Chapter 717, approved 26 May 2026, effective 1 October 2027 (Real Property §§ 11-114, 11-114.3) ↩
- Whiteford Taylor Preston, 2026 Maryland Legislative Update for Common Ownership Communities (coverage minimums, annual notice and proof-of-insurance duties, detached-unit exclusion) ↩
- Huff Insurance, Law change for loss assessment can cause a major gap in your condo insurance (the $15,000 gap on legacy limits) ↩
- House Bill 469 (2026), Condominiums – Mandatory Insurance Coverage — cross-file, died in House Economic Matters ↩
- House Bill 1211 (2026), Condominiums – Unit Owner Responsibility for Damage or Destruction — uncapped liability, died in committee (cross-file SB 633) ↩
- Senate Bill 332 (2026), Condominiums – Property Insurance Deductibles – Unit Owner Responsibility — died in Senate Judicial Proceedings ↩
- Maryland Insurance Administration, Condominium Insurance (consumer guidance describing the $10,000 rule in force until October 2027) ↩
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