NC bill for an HOA complaint database stalls, opposed by the AG it would empower
NC bill for an HOA complaint database stalls, opposed by the AG it would empower
2026-09-12 · North Carolina · Legislation · Did not pass
A bill to give North Carolina its first state-level HOA complaint system stalled in committee in May 2026, opposed both by homeowner advocates who thought it too weak and by the agency that would have run it. House Bill 1174, the HOA Oversight Act, has had no action since May 28, 2026 and cannot be taken up again this session.1
North Carolina has no HOA regulator. No agency licenses associations, hears owner complaints, or has authority over how an association governs itself. HB 1174 was the most recent attempt to change the first part of that, and it was carefully drafted not to change the rest.
What the bill would have done
HB 1174 would have created a new G.S. 114-8.8 requiring the Department of Justice to:
- Receive complaints about HOA disputes by phone, by mail and through an online form.
- Forward each complaint to the association for a response.
- Publish redacted, searchable complaint summaries naming the association and the management company, with homeowner data removed.
- Report annually to the House and Senate commerce committees and to Fiscal Research, broken down by category — records access, board meetings, assessments, fines, liens, foreclosures and covenant enforcement.
It appropriated $100,000 recurring from FY 2026–27. Critically, it expressly barred the Department from promulgating rules or issuing guidelines on HOA administration or governance, and from arbitrating disputes. The database was the whole remedy.
Its sponsors were Representatives Ward, Pike, Liu and Iler with eleven co-sponsors, a bipartisan group. It is the direct descendant of Recommendation 5 of the 2024 House Select Committee on Homeowners' Associations.
Why it stopped
Filed April 30, 2026; first reading May 4; withdrawn from Rules and re-referred on May 28, 2026 to Housing and Development, then Appropriations, then Rules. It never received a committee vote.
The General Assembly adjourned its 2025 Regular Session on August 6, 2026 under Resolution 2026-6, which limits each reconvened session to a closed list of business — vetoes, appointments, redistricting, conference reports and concurrences — and adjourns sine die on December 18, 2026.2 HB 1174 fits none of those categories.
The objection from the agency itself
The notable opposition did not come from the community-association industry. It came from the Department of Justice.
A spokesman for Attorney General Jeff Jackson's office said the bill would “direct the Department of Justice to take in complaints about HOAs but give us no authority to resolve them — meaning we'd be collecting frustration without being able to provide solutions.”3
That is an unusual posture. An agency generally does not object to being handed a new function; the objection here is specifically to being handed a function with the enforcement half removed. And the criticism is structurally the same one the bill drew from the other direction: homeowner advocates argued it was “a complaint without enforcement.”
Being opposed simultaneously by the agency that would run it and by the constituency it was written for is a difficult position for any bill, and it explains the committee outcome better than a lack of sponsors does.
What this means for an owner with a complaint today
The practical answer has not changed, and it is worth stating clearly because a lot of published material implies otherwise.
There is no state complaint intake for HOA disputes in North Carolina. The Department of Justice's own HOA page states that the office has no regulatory authority over associations. The Secretary of State's HOA FAQ opens by saying it cannot help with an HOA problem and has no authority over HOAs. The Real Estate Commission licenses brokers, not community association managers — North Carolina does not license community association managers at all — so it reaches an association only where a licensed broker is managing it.
Any source telling a North Carolina owner to “file a complaint with the state” about an HOA is describing a mechanism that does not exist. The remedies available are those in the governing documents, voluntary mediation, and the courts.
What the database would and would not have fixed
It is worth being precise about the gap the bill targeted, because it is a real one and it is not an enforcement gap.
North Carolina currently has no systematic record of what owners complain about. The best evidence available on association enforcement behaviour in the state comes not from any agency but from journalists analysing the Administrative Office of the Courts' civil-case database — a workaround, and one that captures only disputes that reached a courthouse. Complaints that never become filings leave no trace anywhere.
A published complaint database would have created that record, and the annual category breakdown would have given the next legislature something the 2024 select committee did not have: North Carolina-specific data on which parts of association governance actually generate disputes. That is the argument for it, and it survives the objection that it lacks teeth — measurement and enforcement are different functions.
What to watch next
HB 1174's provisions have now been filed in some form in 2024 (as part of HB 959), in 2025 (as part of HB 444 and SB 378) and in 2026 as a standalone bill. The recurrence rate suggests it returns in the 2027 long session, which convenes January 13, 2027.
The question is whether the next version answers the Attorney General's objection. There are only two ways to do that: give the Department authority to resolve something, which expands the bill into territory that has failed repeatedly on cost and scope grounds, or move the intake function to an agency that wants it. Neither has been proposed.
Related North Carolina HOA Topics
- House Bill 1174, HOA Oversight Act — bill history and text; last action May 28, 2026 ↩
- SJR 1091 / Resolution 2026-6 — adjournment resolution limiting reconvened-session business; sine die December 18, 2026 ↩
- Ward and Smith, P.A., North Carolina legislative update on the 2026 HOA bills (reporting the Attorney General's office statement) ↩
- NC Department of Justice — Homeowners Associations page, stating the office has no regulatory authority over associations ↩
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