2026-09-12 · Minnesota · Legislation

What happened. Section 2 of Laws 2026, ch. 82 rewrites Minn. Stat. § 515B.2-119(a), the provision governing how a Minnesota common interest community is terminated. Effective 1 January 2027, and it “applies to all terminations under this section initiated on or after that date.”¹

For one specific category of community, dissolution becomes realistically achievable for the first time.

The new clause (1)

The lower threshold applies only where the community “consists entirely of detached, single-family dwellings that does not include any common elements and the association has no maintenance obligations for any building that contains a dwelling.”

Three conditions, all of which must hold. Such a community “may be terminated only by the written agreement of unit owners of units to which at least 67 percent of the votes in the association are allocated.”

The deemed-consent rule

This is the operative change, and it is unusual. Agreement “shall be deemed to have been provided by any unit owner who has not otherwise indicated a preference and whose written refusal to agree is not received by the association within 60 days after the association has provided notice of the proposed termination by certified United States mail, postage prepaid, and return receipt requested.”

An owner who does nothing is counted as a yes. In a community where turnout is the binding constraint on every vote, that inverts the usual arithmetic.

What clause (1) leaves out

Compare the threshold for everyone else, in the new clause (2): a community not within clause (1) “may be terminated only by agreement of unit owners of units to which at least 80 percent of the votes… are allocated, and 80 percent of the first mortgagees of units.”

Clause (1) carries no mortgagee consent requirement at all. That, not the drop from 80 to 67, is the change that makes these terminations achievable — assembling 80 percent of first mortgagees is the step that historically stopped them.

Section 1 of the act adds definitions of “first mortgage” and “first mortgagee” to § 515B.1-103. Those definitions took effect the day after enactment — 13 May 2026 — ahead of the rest.

1. Laws 2026, ch. 82 (S.F. 1750), full session-law text — Minnesota Revisor of Statutes ↩
2. “New Laws 2026: Chapter 82” — Minnesota House of Representatives Public Information Services ↩
3. Reed v. Highlands of Edinburgh Sixth Ass’n, No. A25-1442 (Minn. Ct. App. 27 Apr. 2026) (nonprecedential) — slip opinion ↩
4. Minn. Stat. § 500.20 — private covenants; 30-year limit and exceptions ↩