North Carolina's Homeowners Association Reform Bill is dead
North Carolina's Homeowners Association Reform Bill is dead
2026-09-12 · North Carolina · Legislation · Did not pass
House Bill 444, the bill that generated most of North Carolina's “sweeping HOA reform” coverage in 2025, never reached a floor vote and is dead. Its last recorded action is a re-referral to House Judiciary 1 on May 6, 2025 — sixteen months ago.1
It is worth saying plainly because a great deal of published material, including AI-generated summaries, describes HB 444 as enacted or as pending. It is neither.
What killed it: the crossover deadline
North Carolina runs a hard crossover rule. A bill that has not passed at least one chamber by the deadline is ineligible for consideration for the remainder of the two-year biennium, subject to narrow exceptions such as bills carrying appropriations.
The 2025 crossover deadline was Thursday, May 8, 2025. HB 444 was reported favorably twice — a committee substitute on April 17, 2025 and a second committee substitute on May 6, 2025 — and then re-referred to House Judiciary 1 on May 6, two days before the deadline. It never received a House floor vote. It carried no appropriation, so no exception applied.
Because it missed crossover, it was never eligible for the 2026 short session either. The bill has been procedurally finished since May 2025, while continuing to appear in trackers as “in committee.”
What it would have done
HB 444 was filed March 18, 2025 by Representatives Liu and Iler with fourteen co-sponsors. It would have amended G.S. 47C-2-117.1A, 47C-3-102, 47C-3-103, 47C-3-107.1, 47C-3-116 and 47C-3-118, their Chapter 47F counterparts, G.S. 7A-38.3F, and added a new G.S. 114-8.8. Among its provisions:
- Declaration amendments would bind only owners taking title after the amendment.
- Caps on managing-agent contract terms, and a bar on compensating agents out of fines.
- A bar on enforcing parking rules on public streets absent express delegation.
- Fines capped at $100 per day to a $2,500 maximum.
- No foreclosure unless the board voted on the specific unit or lot, and the lien was at least six months of assessments or $2,500 — whichever is less — and an instalment cure had been offered and refused.
- Expanded records access with fee-shifting.
- Mandatory pre-litigation mediation.
- A Department of Justice HOA complaint collection and annual report.
Where the ideas came from, and where they went
HB 444 was not invented in 2025. It is the legislative descendant of the House Select Committee on Homeowners' Associations, created by House resolution in 2023, which met four times in early 2024 and issued a final report on February 28, 2024 carrying five unanimous recommendations:2
- A 30-day deadline for responding to records requests.
- An owner vote on budget or assessment increases above 10%.
- A foreclosure floor of six months' assessments or $2,500.
- Mandatory pre-litigation mediation.
- Department of Justice complaint tracking.
Those recommendations became House Bill 959 in 2024, which died in House Judiciary 1. They were refiled as HB 444 in 2025, which died in House Judiciary 1. Recommendation 5 was refiled on its own as House Bill 1174 in 2026, which stalled in committee. Recommendation 3 appeared in Senate Bill 378, which passed the Senate 47–0 and had its text replaced.
The same committee's work has now failed in three consecutive sessions, and the same committee room has stopped it twice.
No successor committee exists
The House Select Committee on Homeowners' Associations is listed as expired. No successor was created for 2025–2026, and there is no Legislative Research Commission study or interim study committee on HOAs.
The current House select committees cover blockchain, government efficiency, Helene recovery, involuntary commitment, transportation, oversight and reform, property tax, and redistricting. None touches community associations.
This matters for a practical reason: the 2024 report is the only recent body of North Carolina-specific legislative fact-finding on HOAs, and nothing is being added to it. A 2027 bill would be built on evidence gathered three years earlier.
What actually changed in two years
Against all of that, here is the full substantive output of the 2025–2026 biennium on North Carolina community-association governance.
Chapters 47C and 47F were touched by two session laws. One is S.L. 2026-59, which repealed the covenant exceptions for flag display. The other is S.L. 2025-25, which amended G.S. 47C-3-108 and 47F-3-108 pursuant to a Revisor of Statutes instruction to replace “e-mail” with “email” and lowercase “Internet.” The codified sections now carry a 2025 session-law citation that looks substantive and has zero legal effect.3
Chapter 47A, the Unit Ownership Act, was not amended at all.
Nothing was enacted on fines, lien or foreclosure procedure, assessment caps, budget ratification, records inspection, board elections, architectural control, solar access, EV charging, short-term rentals, reserve studies, association insurance, mediation, receivership, amenity access, or declarant transition.
The one change that does reach most North Carolina associations arrived through a different chapter entirely and was not described as HOA legislation by anyone: the annual Secretary of State filing duty created by an amendment to the Nonprofit Corporation Act.
What to watch next
The 2027 long session convenes January 13, 2027, with floor business expected to begin in late January. Filing opens then; North Carolina does not pre-file for a long session, so no 2027 bill exists yet in any form.
The crossover rule is the thing to watch rather than the filing. Every North Carolina HOA reform bill of the last three sessions has died in committee before a floor vote in its originating chamber, and crossover is the deadline that converts that delay into a two-year death. For a 2027 bill, that deadline will fall in the spring.
Related North Carolina HOA Topics
- House Bill 444, Homeowners Association Reform Bill — bill history, last action 'Re-ref Com On Judiciary 1' on 5/6/2025 ↩
- Final report of the House Select Committee on Homeowners' Associations, February 28, 2024 ↩
- S.L. 2025-25 (HB 40) — General Statutes Commission recommendations, including the Revisor's style change to G.S. 47C-3-108 and 47F-3-108 ↩
- NCGA Legislative Library — the crossover deadline and its effect on bill eligibility ↩
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