2026-09-12 · Michigan · Legislation · Pending — not yet law

What happened. The Michigan Senate passed Senate Bill 272 on 19 March 2026 by 34 votes to 1. The bill would make a 2016 amendment to the Condominium Act retroactive, and in doing so would restore construction rights over land that, under current law as the Court of Appeals reads it, has already reverted to co-owners as general common elements.¹

It is not law. Since 19 March it has sat in the House Committee on Regulatory Reform without action.

The machinery it touches

MCL 559.167 is the provision that disposes of condominium units a developer plans but never builds. Undeveloped land in a condominium plan reverts to the co-owners as general common elements after ten years. The Legislature amended the section in September 2016 to define “undeveloped land” and to exclude units depicted on the condominium subdivision plan as containing no vertical improvements.

Then in 2019 the Court of Appeals held the 2016 amendment was not retroactive — Cove Creek Condominium Association v Vistal Land & Home Development, 330 Mich App 679 — which, in the Senate Fiscal Agency's phrase, “reinstated this confusion for condominium subdivision plans established before the 2016 amendment.”

What SB 272 would change

One sentence, surgically placed. The S-1 substitute adds to the subsection (7) carve-out the words “before or after September 21, 2016” and “regardless of the date of the creation of the condominium project or of that condominium subdivision plan.” That makes the 2016 exclusion apply backwards, to projects created before it existed.²

Sponsors: Sens. Roger Hauck (R-34) and Mark Huizenga (R-30) — two Republicans, carrying a bill through a Democratic-majority Senate to a 34–1 vote.

1. Senate Bill 272 of 2025 — bill record, roll call and history ↩
2. Senate Bill 272 (S-1) as passed by the Senate — engrossed text ↩
3. Senate Fiscal Agency analysis of SB 272, including the Cove Creek rationale ↩