Why this is the most useful single fact about Michigan association law right now

Because it tells a board where to look, and it is not Lansing's condominium file.

Everything that actually changed for Michigan associations in this window came from somewhere else:

• A brand-new standalone act. The Homeowners' Energy Policy Act, 2024 PA 68, was dropped into Chapter 559 alongside the Condominium Act rather than into it — which is also why it never defines the entity it regulates and why whether it reaches condominiums is unsettled.
• A recording statute. 2025 PA 13 rewrote the Marketable Record Title Act, defined “property owners' association” for the first time in Michigan law, and set a 29 September 2027 deadline for pre-1950 declarations.
• A civil procedure statute. 2025 PA 52, the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, effective 24 March 2026, changed the economics of a board suing a critic.
• A land division statute. 2025 PA 58 more than doubled by-right parcel splits from March 2027.
• The Michigan Supreme Court. Janini overruled nine years of premises-liability precedent in a single 2024 decision.
• The secondary mortgage market. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac imposed a 15% reserve floor and a $50,000 deductible cap that no Michigan statute requires.

Two other enacted acts boards have not noticed

2024 PA 154, effective 2 April 2025, amended MCL 565.371 to make it a felony punishable by up to 10 years to knowingly and wilfully draft or submit a document for recording with a register of deeds with intent to defraud the owner of real estate or of an interest in it. It also lets a register of deeds refer suspected violations to the county prosecutor. That cuts both ways: it is a ten-year felony for a hostile owner to record a sham instrument against association property, and the same exposure for anyone at an association who records a knowingly false assessment lien.

The source-of-income package — 2024 PA 178, 179, 180, 199 and 200, all effective 2 April 2025 — added “source of income” to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act and created a private right of action with actual damages or up to three times the monthly rent, whichever is less, plus costs and attorney fees. The prohibitions target landlords, but ELCRA's Article 5 definition of real property expressly includes an interest in a condominium, and a leasing policy that screens out voucher tenants pushes an owner-landlord into liability with the association close behind.

What a static statute means for a board

Stop waiting for it. Michigan gives associations very little by statute — no reserve mandate, no records deadline, no fee cap, no milestone inspection, no regulator, no ombudsman. What an association has is its own recorded documents, and the cases of the past two years have turned overwhelmingly on those: a spending clause, a fee provision, a who-may-enforce clause.

The documents are the only part of this a board controls, and they are the part that decides the outcomes.

What to watch next

The 103rd Legislature clears at the end of December 2026. Michigan has exactly two bills classified as “Housing: condominium” — HB 5784 and SB 272 — and both sit in the same House committee. If neither moves, the Condominium Act will have gone four consecutive years without an amendment.