Montana HOA Reserve Studies
| Reserve study factor | Montana treatment |
|---|---|
| 1. Statutory reserve study required | Not required by statute. The Montana Unit Ownership Act contains no reserve-study provision; the recorded declaration and the board's fiduciary duty set reserve practice instead.1 |
| 2. Communities covered | The Unit Ownership Act reaches only condominiums that record a declaration electing into it. Montana has no general planned-community statute.2 |
| 3. Initial study deadline | Not required by statute.1 |
| 4. Study update interval | Not required by statute.1 |
| 5. On-site / physical inspection interval | Not required by statute.1 |
| 6. Preparer qualification | Not required by statute.1 |
| 7. Reserve funding required | Not required by statute. Owners are charged common expenses by percentage of undivided interest; the Act sets no minimum reserve balance.3 |
| 8. Funding standard | Not required by statute.3 |
| 9. Component / useful-life scope | Not defined by statute. The bylaws carry out maintenance, repair, and replacement of common elements.4 |
| 10. Annual member disclosure | No statutory reserve disclosure. The manager must keep records of receipts and expenditures affecting common elements open to owner examination.5 |
| 11. Resale / buyer disclosure | No general reserve resale disclosure. A limited seller disclosure applies only when one person holds a majority of the units.6 |
| 12. Reserve account protections | No statutory provision identified. The recorded declaration, the bylaws, and the board's fiduciary duty govern.7 |
| 13. Waiver or underfunding mechanism | Not applicable. With no funding mandate, the statute provides no waiver or underfunding procedure.1 |
| 14. Enforcement / penalty | No statutory reserve penalty. The Act gives associations a lien and a foreclosure remedy for unpaid common expenses.8 |
| 15. Primary statutory citation(s) | Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 et seq. (condominiums); Title 35, ch. 2 (nonprofit corporations); § 70-17-901 (HOA definition).1,7,9 |
Section 1: Overview — Reserve study requirements in Montana
Montana imposes no statutory reserve-study or reserve-funding mandate on its community associations. Reserve practice answers instead to the recorded declaration and to the board's fiduciary duty.1 The Montana Unit Ownership Act, Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 et seq., governs condominium associations — a traditional condominium statute that reaches only the properties that record a declaration electing into it.2 Montana has no general planned-community statute, and it has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, so non-condominium homeowners associations operate outside any single governing code.9 Those associations run on their recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) and, at the corporate level, on the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act in Title 35, Chapter 2.7 Set Montana against the national map and it sits among the no-mandate states — apart from the hard-mandate states that fix study intervals and funding rules, and apart from the disclosure-mandate states that require periodic reserve reporting. The sections that follow lay out the condominium framework, the missing planned-community statute, the declaration-and-fiduciary backstop, the compliance obligations by community type, and the recent legislative and judicial activity.
Section 2: The reserve framework under Montana law
2A. The Montana Unit Ownership Act and reserves
The Montana Unit Ownership Act, Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 et seq., governs how condominiums in Montana are created, managed, and operated, and it reaches a property only after a recorded declaration submits that property to the Act.2 The Act addresses common expenses, assessments, liens, records, and insurance. It does not require a reserve study, set a reserve-funding level, or mandate periodic reserve disclosure. It defines common expenses as the expenses of administration, maintenance, repair, or replacement of the common elements, the expenses all unit owners agree are common, and the expenses statute, declaration, or bylaws declare common — a definition that never mentions reserves or reserve allocations.10 Section 70-23-501 directs that owners shoulder common expenses according to each owner's percentage of undivided interest in the common elements, and it prescribes no reserve component.3 The contents-of-bylaws provision requires the bylaws to cover board elections, meetings, officer elections, maintenance of common elements, the manner of collecting assessments, use restrictions, and amendment procedures — but it does not require reserve planning.11 Read the Act in full and the absence is plain: reserves belong to the declaration, the bylaws, and the board, not to a statutory command.
2B. The absence of a general planned-community statute
Montana governs planned communities with no general statute at all, and it has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. A 2024 Local Government Interim Committee report confirmed that the Montana Code Annotated has historically said little about how homeowners associations are governed.9 The Legislature has enacted only narrow provisions that touch associations: Senate Bill 300 (2019) added the first statutory definition of "homeowners' association" at Mont. Code Ann. § 70-17-901 and limited certain use restrictions, and Senate Bill 145 (2021) added §§ 35-2-525 and 35-2-550 to permit remote meetings.9 None of these provisions reaches reserves. Non-condominium associations therefore answer to their recorded CC&Rs and, for corporate governance, to the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act in Title 35, Chapter 2, under which most Montana associations organize.7 To decide which framework governs a given community, ask the threshold question first: did the property record a declaration submitting it to the Unit Ownership Act? If it did, the condominium provisions apply. If it did not, the community is a creature of its covenants and corporate law alone.
2C. The declaration, corporate law, and fiduciary backstop
In both condominiums and non-condominium associations, the recorded declaration is the primary source of any reserve obligation. Where neither the Unit Ownership Act nor a general statute imposes a requirement, the order of precedence runs from the recorded declaration and bylaws, to the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act at the corporate level, to common-law contract and property principles. The Nonprofit Corporation Act supplies the corporate formalities — board duties, meetings, member rights, recordkeeping — but it imposes no substantive reserve obligation specific to associations.7 The practical backstop is the board's fiduciary duty. Directors of a Montana nonprofit corporation owe duties of care and loyalty, and a board that funds reserves does so as a matter of prudent judgment, not in answer to a statutory minimum. The consequence is direct: in Montana, the declaration and prudent board judgment set reserve practice, and an association that wants a reserve study, a funding plan, or component tracking must look to its own governing documents to require it.
Section 3: Compliance obligations
A. Study and inspection obligations
No Montana statute requires a reserve study, a study update, or a physical inspection of components — for condominiums or for non-condominium associations alike. Any such obligation is contractual, arising from the recorded declaration or the bylaws rather than from statute.1 For condominiums, the Unit Ownership Act directs that the bylaws carry out the maintenance, repair, and replacement of common elements, which makes the bylaws the operative source for any inspection or planning duty.4
B. Funding obligations
No statutory reserve-funding mandate or minimum balance reaches either community type; funding obligations are contractual or fiduciary. For condominiums, the Act asks only that owners shoulder common expenses by percentage of undivided interest, and it leaves the level of any reserve contribution to the declaration, the bylaws, and the board.3
C. Disclosure obligations
Montana imposes no annual reserve-disclosure requirement. For condominiums, the Act requires the manager to keep detailed records of receipts and expenditures affecting the common elements and to open them for owner examination at convenient hours on weekdays — a records-access right, not a reserve disclosure.5 A narrow resale disclosure applies only when one person or entity holds a majority of the units; in that case the seller must notify the buyer and furnish copies of the Act, the bylaws, and the rules before the agreement takes effect. That is not a general reserve resale certificate.6 Non-condominium associations carry no comparable statutory disclosure.
D. Account and governance obligations
No statute requires segregated reserve accounts or specific reserve-account protections for either community type; the declaration, the bylaws, and the board's fiduciary duty govern those controls.7 For condominiums, the Act enforces funding through a lien for unpaid common expenses and a foreclosure remedy, which secures assessments generally rather than reserves specifically.8
Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity
A. Recent bills
HB 619 · 2025 Regular Session
HB 619 would have established the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act in Montana, building a single framework for common interest communities and unit owners associations — including association financial recordkeeping and purchaser protections. It never got there. The House Judiciary committee tabled it, and the bill died in process on May 20, 2025 without becoming law.12
| Property managers | No new statewide reserve or financial rules took effect. Keep managing reserves under each association's declaration and bylaws. |
| HOA board members | The proposed uniform framework did not pass, so the board's reserve decisions still answer to the declaration and fiduciary duty. |
| Community association attorneys | Montana remains a no-mandate, non-uniform-act state. Advise clients that the UCIOA framework was not adopted. |
| Homeowners | State law still does not require the association to fund reserves; the community's own documents control. |
HB 233 · 2025 Regular Session
HB 233 created a process that lets a homeowners association petition a local governing body to take title to open spaces, parks, and common-use areas in a recorded final plat. It amended several Title 76 subdivision sections and added a definition of "homeowners' association." It does not touch reserves, reserve funding, or reserve disclosure.13
| Property managers | An association that takes title to platted open space picks up maintenance and insurance responsibility for those areas, which reshapes long-term budgeting. |
| HOA board members | A board may petition to acquire common-use areas, but doing so adds assets the board must maintain and, as a matter of prudence, fund for replacement. |
| Community association attorneys | Advise on the petition and public-hearing process and on the maintenance and insurance covenants the transfer requires. |
| Homeowners | The association may become the owner of neighborhood open spaces, which can affect future assessments for upkeep. |
B. Recent appellate rulings
No Montana Supreme Court opinion in the past 36 months has decided a case on reserve studies, reserve funding, budget adequacy, or board fiduciary duty in the reserve context. Because Montana has no intermediate appellate court, any such ruling would come straight from the Montana Supreme Court on appeal from a District Court.14 With no qualifying ruling in the window, this page carries no case metadata block or audience-implication table.
C. Active legislative debates
Montana has tried, and failed, more than once to expand association governance — among the efforts, the defeated 2025 UCIOA bill and a Local Government Interim Committee study of homeowners-association governance. None of it has produced a reserve mandate.9
Section 5: National positioning and related coverage
Montana sits in the no-mandate group of states for reserve studies, and it stands apart from the hard-mandate states that fix study intervals and funding rules. Take California, where Civil Code section 5550(a) directs that "at least once every three years, the board shall cause to be conducted a reasonably competent and diligent visual inspection of the accessible areas of the major components that the association is obligated to repair, replace, restore, or maintain" (as amended by Stats. 2024, ch. 288 (SB 900), effective January 1, 2025); Florida, which under SB 4-D (2022), codified at Florida Statutes section 718.112(2)(g), requires a structural integrity reserve study completed at least every 10 years for each condominium or cooperative building three stories or higher, with the first study for pre-July 1, 2022 associations originally due by December 31, 2024 and later extended to December 31, 2025; and Maryland, where House Bill 107 (2022), effective October 1, 2022, mandated statewide reserve studies updated at least every five years under Maryland Real Property section 11-109.4 for condominiums and section 11B-112.3 for homeowners associations.15,16,17 Montana also differs from the disclosure-oriented states such as Colorado, where the Common Interest Ownership Act requires a written reserve policy under C.R.S. section 38-33.3-209.5 and annual disclosure of any amounts held in reserve under section 38-33.3-209.4, rather than a mandatory reserve study.18 Montana keeps company with no-mandate states such as Mississippi, North Dakota, and Nebraska, relying on a traditional Unit Ownership Act and operating without an intermediate appellate court. For a multi-state operator entering Montana, the practical lesson is direct: each association's governing documents and the board's judgment drive reserve compliance, not a state schedule, so internal standards have to substitute for an absent statutory floor.
Federal frameworks also reach Montana associations regardless of the state framework — among them the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule.
Footnotes
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-101 et seq., Unit Ownership Act table of contents, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-103, Applicability — submission by declaration required, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-501, Common profits and expenses, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-504, Maintenance and improvement of common elements, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-606, Records of receipts and expenditures affecting common elements — inspection, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-613, Disclosure by seller — seller to furnish documents — delay period, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. Title 35, ch. 2, Nonprofit Corporations table of contents, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-607, Claim for common expenses — priority of lien, Montana Legislature ↩
- "HOA Governance in Montana," Local Government Interim Committee staff report, Montana Legislature (Jan. 2024, updated Feb. 2024) ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-102, Definitions, Montana Legislature ↩
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-23-308, Contents of bylaws, Montana Legislature ↩
- House Bill 619 (2025 Regular Session), Establish the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, Montana Legislature ↩
- House Bill 233 (2025 Regular Session), Provide for transfer of title of open spaces in final plat to HOA, Montana Legislature ↩
- "About Us," Montana Judicial Branch (no intermediate appellate court; direct appeals from District Courts) ↩
- Cal. Civ. Code § 5550(a), reserve study and visual inspection, California Legislative Information ↩
- Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(g), structural integrity reserve study (SB 4-D, 2022), The Florida Senate ↩
- Md. Code, Real Property § 11-109.4 (condominiums) and § 11B-112.3 (HOAs), reserve study (HB 107, 2022), Maryland General Assembly ↩
- Colo. Rev. Stat. §§ 38-33.3-209.4 and 38-33.3-209.5, reserve disclosure and reserve policy, Colorado General Assembly ↩