The association can now record the notice itself

This is the change that makes the deadline achievable, and it is new. Before PA 13 it was legally murky whether an association could record a preservation notice on behalf of its members, or whether each owner had to file for their own parcel — a practical impossibility in a 200-lot subdivision.

PA 13 fixes it in two moves. New section 1a(d) defines “property owners' association” for the first time, reaching any person or unincorporated association with a voting membership of landowners that is responsible for operating or managing land, or is authorised to enforce a recorded document subjecting land to a use restriction or obligation — and expressly including “an association of co-owners as that term is defined in section 3 of the condominium act.” Section 1a(c) then provides that “person includes a property owners' association.” Section 3(4)(c) lets the association record the notice of claim.

So the work is one filing by one entity, not hundreds by hundreds.

What a board with an old declaration should actually do

1. Find the recording date of the original declaration, not the date of the most recent amendment. The carve-out at 4(1)(g) turns on when the instrument creating the interest was executed and recorded. An amendment recorded in 1988 does not move a 1927 declaration across the line by itself, and an opinion, not an assumption, settles whether it does.
2. Check whether an amended and restated declaration was recorded after 1950. Where a set of covenants was wholly restated and re-recorded, the restatement is a post-1950 recorded instrument and the analysis changes. This is the single most common way a nominally pre-war association turns out to be safe.
3. If the association is unincorporated, confirm it fits the new definition — it likely does, because 1a(d) was drafted to reach exactly that case, but the recording officer will want the authority to be legible on the face of the notice.
4. Record well before September 2027. Register of deeds rejections for formatting are routine and a rejected filing on 28 September 2027 is a missed deadline.

The cost of missing it

Extinguishment is not a technicality. If the restrictions go, so does the enforceable basis for architectural control, use restrictions, setbacks, and in many older subdivisions the assessment obligation itself. An association whose covenants are extinguished does not become a weaker association; in most cases it stops being one.

One thing not to rely on

PA 13 also added section 5a, which closes a loophole boards have leaned on for years. An instrument that references an interest “for the sole purpose of limiting the warranty” is not an effective notice of claim — so the boilerplate “subject to easements and restrictions of record” recital in an owner's deed preserves nothing. That is covered separately.

What to watch next

Nothing in Lansing; the deadline is fixed and the exemptions are permanent. The thing to watch is county-level: whether registers of deeds in the counties with the most pre-war platted subdivisions publish filing guidance before the 2027 rush.