2026-09-10 · Massachusetts · Legislation · Did not pass

What happened. The most ambitious rewrite of the Massachusetts Condominium Act in years did not pass. It was filed twice, under two bill numbers, in two different committees — and both copies are now out of time. Formal sessions of the 194th General Court ended on 31 July 2026.

S.980, An Act relative to the condominium owners' rights, was filed by Senator Lydia Edwards and reported favorably out of the Joint Committee on Housing on 23 October 2025, landing in Senate Ways and Means.¹ It never came out.

The second vehicle

The same eight sections were refiled in the House on 7 August 2025 as H.4826, sponsored by Representative Meghan K. Kilcoyne. That copy took an unusual route: House Rules reported it on 1 December 2025, the rules were suspended, and it was referred not to Housing but to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, with the Senate concurring on 8 December 2025.²

Judiciary held its hearing on 7 April 2026, from 1:00 to 5:00 PM in Room A-2. Nothing has happened since.

What the bill contained

Eight sections, all amending or adding to M.G.L. c. 183A:

• §§2–3 — statutory deadlines for producing association records, a per-day fine for missing them, and mandatory disclosure of engineering studies and architectural reports
• §4 — a minimum annual reserve contribution and a ten-year capital reserve study for larger associations
• §6 — a new c. 183A §10A: internal dispute procedures, a fixed board meeting cadence, open-meeting standards and minutes retention
• §7 — an Office of Condominium Ombudsman inside the Attorney General's office
• §8 — a c. 183A §24 authorising remote meetings and electronic voting under specified security standards (a section number the Affordable Homes Act had already filled in August 2024)

Any one of those would have been the largest change to Massachusetts condominium governance in a decade. None of them is law.

1. S.980, An Act relative to the condominium owners' rights — bill page and history, Massachusetts General Court ↩
2. H.4826 bill history, Massachusetts General Court ↩
3. S.980 bill text, Massachusetts General Court ↩