Nobody licenses the company that runs your Mississippi HOA
Nobody licenses the company that runs your Mississippi HOA
2026-09-15 · Mississippi · Regulation
Mississippi does not license community association managers. There is no CAM licence, no registration, no state certification and no state body that hears a complaint about one. The credentials that circulate in the industry — CMCA, AMS, PCAM — are private and voluntary designations, not state authorisations.1
What the state does license
The Mississippi Real Estate Commission issues broker and salesperson licences under Miss. Code Ann. §§ 73-35-1 to 73-35-105. That is the whole of the state's real-estate licensing apparatus, and it contains no community-association-management category.
There is a complication worth knowing. The statutory definition of “real estate broker” reaches a person who, for a fee or commission or expecting one, will “list, sell, purchase, exchange, rent, lease, manage or auction any real estate.”
A third-party management company taking a fee to manage association-owned common property is therefore arguably inside the brokerage definition, while an association's own salaried on-site manager sits outside the act under its exemption for an owner's regular employees on a stated salary performing acts in the regular course of business.
The exact wording and subsection numbering of those provisions is something we would want to verify against the current statute before anyone relies on it; the licensing gap itself is not in doubt.
What the absence actually costs an association
In states with CAM licensing, a manager typically carries an education requirement, an examination, continuing education, a bond or fidelity requirement, mandatory trust-account handling rules, and — the part that matters most — a regulator that will investigate a complaint and can suspend a licence.
In Mississippi an association has none of those. Its remedies against a manager who mishandles money or abandons the job are contractual and judicial: sue on the management agreement, or report a crime. There is no regulator to call.
That places the whole burden on two documents the board controls: the management agreement and the association's own financial controls.
What it means for a Mississippi board in practice
Require a fidelity bond covering everyone who touches association money — the management company, its employees, and the association's own officers — in an amount that covers the largest balance the association ever holds, not the average one. This is the single most valuable clause a Mississippi management agreement can carry, because it is the substitute for the bond a licensing regime would have required.
Keep association funds in accounts titled in the association's name. Not in a manager's pooled operating account. That way the association can log in and see its own balances without asking anyone.
Require the bank statements to reach a director directly. Statements that arrive only at the management company, and are reported onward as a summary, are the structure in which every management defalcation happens.
Ask what happens to the records when the contract ends. An association whose books, ledgers, contracts and correspondence live on a management company's system, with no transition clause, cannot leave. That is a practical lock-in with no regulator to appeal to.
Treat CMCA, AMS and PCAM as real information. They are voluntary, but they signal training and a private code of ethics, which in an unregulated market is more than nothing.
What is moving at the Commission
MREC posted an “Amended MREC Regs Preview” on August 4, 2026, and secondary sources connect a July 1, 2026 package of brokerage-agreement changes to SB 2713 and SB 2748 — both signed and effective July 1, 2026 — plus a revision of MREC Rule 4.3.2
We found nothing indicating that package touches association management, association fees or trust accounts, and we are not asserting that it does. It appears to concern brokerage agreements and broker licensure. Its contents are worth reading when the final text is published, because MREC rulemaking is the only route by which association management could come under state supervision without new legislation.
What to watch next
No bill to license community association managers has been filed in Mississippi in recent sessions. The state's two genuine HOA bills in 2026 — SB 2644 on estoppel fees and HB 44 on condominium sale covenants — both died in committee on February 3, and neither addressed managers. The Community Associations Institute's entire stated Mississippi legislative agenda for 2026 was four words: “Disclosure document fee caps.”
Manager licensing is not on anyone's agenda in Mississippi, which means the management agreement will remain the association's only real protection for the foreseeable future.
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