Nebraska HOA Governing Statute

1. Overview — How HOAs are governed in Nebraska

Nebraska runs a hybrid common-interest framework, and which rules you follow depends on two things: the type of community and the date it came into being. The state built its modern condominium statute on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, it kept an older predecessor act for condominiums created before 1984, and it never enacted a comprehensive statute to govern non-condominium planned communities.¹

Condominiums created on or after January 1, 1984 fall under the Nebraska Condominium Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-825 to § 76-894. The Legislature enacted it through Laws 1983, LB 433, and drew it from the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act.² Condominiums created before that date remain under the older Nebraska Condominium Property Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-801 to § 76-823, which the state first adopted in 1963.³

Planned communities that aren't condominiums get no dedicated statute. They operate under their recorded declarations of covenants, conditions, and restrictions — the CC&Rs — and, where the association incorporated, under the Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-1901 et seq. That makes them functionally CC&R-primary.⁴

One caution for practitioners: Nebraska is not a UCIOA state. Its condominium statute derives from the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, not the later Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, so don't assume UCIOA features apply.⁵ The practical result is a document-driven regime, and the threshold compliance question never changes — identify the correct governing instrument by community type and creation date.

2. The statutory framework

The Nebraska Condominium Act sits at Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-825 to § 76-894, and section 76-825 says these sections "shall be known and may be cited as the Nebraska Condominium Act." The Legislature enacted it through Laws 1983, LB 433, and it applies to every condominium created in Nebraska on or after January 1, 1984. Section 76-826 sets the scope: the Act governs condominiums created after January 1, 1984, while a defined list of sections — including § 76-827, § 76-874, § 76-876, and § 76-884 — reaches pre-1984 condominiums only for events that occur after that date, and it does so without invalidating existing master deeds, bylaws, or plans.⁶

The Act moves in a logical order, from general provisions and definitions, through creation, management, and the unit owners association, to consumer-protection rules on public-offering statements, resale, and warranties. Section 76-827 carries the key definitions — "condominium," "common elements," "common expenses," "declarant," "declaration," "development rights," and "executive board," among others. The executive board is the body the declaration designates to act on behalf of the association.⁷

The Act also tells courts how to read it. Section 76-834 directs that the Act "shall be applied and construed so as to effectuate their general purpose to make uniform the law with respect to the subject of sections 76-825 to 76-894 among states enacting such sections," and section 76-833 adds that the Act is "a general act intended as a unified coverage of its subject matter."⁸ Section 76-828 then makes most of it mandatory: except where the Act expressly provides otherwise, its provisions "may not be varied by agreement, and rights conferred ... may not be waived."⁹

The declaration controls. Section 76-842 lists what the declaration must contain, and for condominium projects with more than fifteen units it requires a professionally prepared preventive maintenance plan — one that includes depreciation studies, reserve analyses, an annually updated five-year capital plan, and minimum financial reserves. When the declaration and the bylaws conflict, the declaration prevails, except where it runs inconsistent with the Act.¹⁰

The older statute is the Nebraska Condominium Property Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-801 to § 76-823. Section 76-801 states that "[s]ections 76-801 to 76-823 shall be known as the Condominium Property Act," adopted by Laws 1963. It governs condominium regimes created before January 1, 1984, and a regime comes into being under that Act when someone records a master deed submitting the property to the regime. This split produces a bifurcated body of law: older cases construing pre-1984 condominiums cite the Condominium Property Act, while disputes over modern condominiums cite the Condominium Act. To decide which Act governs, look to one fact — the date the master deed or declaration was recorded.¹¹

Non-condominium planned communities stand apart, because Nebraska never passed a comprehensive planned community statute to match its condominium acts. For these HOAs, the recorded declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions is the primary governing document, and Nebraska courts treat restrictive covenants as enforceable contracts that run with the land. Common-law contract and property doctrine — including the rules on interpreting and waiving restrictive covenants — supplements these documents wherever the statutes and instruments stay silent.¹²

Most Nebraska associations organize as nonprofit corporations, and when they do, the Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-1901 to § 21-19,177, supplies the corporate rules on members, directors, meetings, and records. For a non-condo HOA, the order of precedence generally runs from Nebraska statutes of general application, to the recorded CC&Rs, to the articles of incorporation, to the bylaws, to board rules, with the Nonprofit Corporation Act filling the procedural gaps.¹³

3. Compliance obligations created by the statutory framework

Governance obligations

For condominiums, the Condominium Act requires the association to hold an annual meeting under section 76-866, and it must send notice to unit owners no less than ten and no more than fifty days before the meeting. Section 76-867 sets a default quorum of 35 percent: "[u]nless the bylaws provide otherwise, a quorum is present throughout any meeting of the association if persons entitled to cast thirty-five percent of the votes which may be cast for election of the executive board are present in person or by proxy at the beginning of the meeting," and section 76-868 governs voting and proxies.¹⁴

Section 76-861 lets the executive board act for the association in most situations, and it holds the board's officers and members to a mandatory standard — they "are required to exercise ordinary and reasonable care." Many condominium governance provisions are defaults the declaration or bylaws can change; this standard of care is not one of them.¹⁵ The association must also keep its records "reasonably available for examination by any unit owner" under section 76-876, a duty that also reaches pre-1984 condominiums for post-1984 events.¹⁶ For non-condo HOAs, the obligations on meetings, director duties, and records come from the Nonprofit Corporation Act and the association's own documents, not the Condominium Act.

Financial obligations

Section 76-873 lets the association assess unit owners for common expenses, allocated according to the declaration.¹⁷ Budget ratification is both procedural and mandatory under section 76-861(c), which provides: "Within thirty days after adoption of any proposed budget for the condominium, the executive board shall provide a summary of the budget to all the unit owners, and shall set a date for a meeting of the unit owners to consider ratification of the budget not less than fourteen nor more than thirty days after mailing of the summary." The Act handles reserve funding indirectly — section 76-842 requires condominium projects with more than fifteen units to fold reserve analyses and minimum reserves into the declaration's maintenance plan, but Nebraska imposes no general statutory reserve-funding mandate on all associations.

These obligations apply to condominiums under the Condominium Act. For non-condo HOAs, assessment authority flows from the CC&Rs, and Nebraska's separate HOA lien statute, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 52-2001, supplies a recorded assessment lien that the association can enforce by foreclosure.¹⁸

Disclosure obligations

The Condominium Act sets up two distinct disclosure regimes. When a declarant sells, sections 76-879 to 76-883 require delivery of a public-offering statement before conveyance, and a buyer who receives it fifteen days or fewer before signing may cancel within fifteen days of receipt.¹⁹ When an existing owner resells, section 76-884 requires the seller to hand over the declaration, bylaws, rules, and a statement of assessments and pending litigation, and it obligates the association to provide the necessary information within ten days of a request.²⁰

These are largely mandatory consumer-protection duties, and they apply to condominiums. Non-condo HOAs carry no equivalent statutory resale-disclosure requirement; whatever disclosure duties they have arise from the CC&Rs or from general real-estate law.

Dispute resolution obligations

The Condominium Act does not set up a mandatory administrative or alternative dispute-resolution (ADR) process for associations, and Nebraska has no condominium ombudsman. Associations may use ADR where the declaration or bylaws provide for it, but no statute requires it.²¹

Notice-and-opportunity-to-be-heard protections come mainly through specific procedural provisions — the assessment-lien foreclosure notice to lienholders under section 76-874, and the budget-ratification meeting under section 76-861. Parties resolve disputes in court, and the lien-enforcement framework in section 76-874 for condominiums and section 52-2001 for HOA liens generally requires reasonable notice before foreclosure. These obligations apply across community types depending on which lien statute governs.

4. Nebraska's recent legislative and judicial activity

Recent bills

Nebraska isn't overhauling its condominium code. The recent legislative work is narrow, sharpening how lender-consent rights fit into association decisions.

Recent court rulings

Nebraska's courts are drawing clear lines on who may enforce a covenant and when. Two recent decisions turn on standing and on whether an association waived its rights.

Active legislative debates

Nebraska's unicameral Legislature has little HOA-specific action underway. The energy right now sits with property-tax relief, not association governance.

5. National positioning and related coverage

Nebraska sits among the hybrid states — those that pair condominium coverage derived from the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act with CC&R-primary treatment of non-condominium planned communities. The condominium provisions of states such as Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Texas fall into the same camp. What sets Nebraska apart is the combination: a Condominium Act that governs condominiums created on or after January 1, 1984, an older 1963 Condominium Property Act that still governs pre-1984 regimes, and the absence of any comprehensive planned community statute. For multi-state operators, the takeaway is direct — Nebraska condominiums follow a defined statutory code, while Nebraska non-condo HOAs demand a close reading of each community's recorded declaration, because no statute supplies the default governance terms.²⁸

HOA Weekly updates its Nebraska Governing Statute coverage quarterly, tracking new legislation from the unicameral Legislature and new appellate decisions. Federal frameworks also apply to Nebraska associations alongside the state statutes described here — among them the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

6. Closing note

All statute citations here were verified against the current text on nebraskalegislature.gov. Two points deserve a reader's caveat.

First, LB1073 (2024) was an omnibus insurance, real estate, and deceptive-trade-practices bill; its source note now appears in the history of § 76-856 (Laws 2024, LB1073), and the July 18, 2024 effective date reflects Nebraska's default rule — three calendar months after the Legislature's April 18, 2024 sine die adjournment for bills without an emergency clause.

Second, the appellate decision in Macrino v. Bloomfield Townhomes (Neb. Ct. App., April 2, 2024, Nos. A-23-239, A-23-254) arose in an HOA assessment-lien setting, but the court decided it on procedural grounds — unauthorized practice of law, attorney fees, and a supersedeas bond — rather than on any interpretation of the Condominium Act or the governing documents, so we leave it out of Section 4.

Finally, Nebraska does not require a state community association manager (CAM) license; the Nebraska Real Estate Commission regulates real-estate brokerage and certain third-party property management, not condominium or HOA management as such.

Footnotes

1. Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 76-825 et seq., 76-801 et seq. (hybrid common-interest framework) ↩
2. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-825 (Nebraska Condominium Act; Laws 1983, LB 433) ↩
3. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-801 (Nebraska Condominium Property Act; Laws 1963) ↩
4. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-1901 et seq. (Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act) ↩
5. Nebraska Condominium Act, Laws 1983, LB 433 (derived from the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, not UCIOA) ↩
6. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-826 (applicability; pre- and post-1984 condominiums) ↩
7. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-827 (definitions) ↩
8. Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 76-833, 76-834 (unified coverage; uniformity of construction) ↩
9. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-828 (variation by agreement; waiver of rights) ↩
10. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-842 (contents of declaration; preventive maintenance plan and reserves) ↩
11. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-803 (creation of a condominium property regime by recorded master deed) ↩
12. Pine Tree Neighborhood Ass'n v. Moses, 314 Neb. 445 (2023) (restrictive covenants enforceable as contracts running with the land) ↩
13. Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 21-1901 to 21-19,177 (Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act) ↩
14. Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 76-866 to 76-868 (annual meeting; quorum; voting and proxies) ↩
15. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-861 (executive board; standard of care; budget ratification) ↩
16. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-876 (association records; examination by unit owners) ↩
17. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-873 (assessments for common expenses) ↩
18. Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 76-874, 52-2001 (assessment-lien foreclosure; HOA lien statute) ↩
19. Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 76-879 to 76-883 (public-offering statement; declarant sales) ↩
20. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-884 (resale certificate; information furnished by association) ↩
21. Nebraska Real Estate Commission (no statutory condominium ADR or ombudsman) ↩
22. Laws 2024, LB1073 (amending Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-856) ↩
23. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-856 (rights of secured lenders; mortgagee approval) ↩
24. Hillsborough Homeowners Ass'n v. Karnish, 33 Neb. App. 228 (2024) ↩
25. Pine Tree Neighborhood Ass'n v. Moses, 314 Neb. 445 (2023) ↩
26. Nebraska Legislature (legislative docket; no pending comprehensive HOA or condominium overhaul) ↩
27. Nebraska Legislature, 2024 Session (property-tax relief focus) ↩
28. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-825 (1980 Uniform Condominium Act hybrid states; national positioning) ↩