NC's HOA incorporation bill died — then half of it passed anyway
NC's HOA incorporation bill died — then half of it passed anyway
2026-09-12 · North Carolina · Legislation · Did not pass
A 2025 bill requiring every North Carolina condominium and planned-community association to incorporate and file annual reports with the Secretary of State never left committee. Fifteen months later, the annual-report half of it became law through an entirely different bill that nobody described as HOA legislation.1
House Bill 993, the HOA Organization and Reporting Act, was referred to House Rules on April 14, 2025 and has had no action since.
What the bill would have done
HB 993 was sponsored by Representatives Budd, Iler and Liu. It would have amended a long list of sections in both community-association chapters — G.S. 47C-1-102, 47C-2-120, 47C-3-101, new 47C-3-101.1, .2 and .3, and 47C-3-102, with parallel provisions at 47F-1-102, 47F-1-104, 47F-2-103, 47F-3-101, new 47F-3-101.1, .2 and .3, 47F-3-102 and 47F-3-120.
Its core requirement was structural: every association that collects assessments, imposes fines, or enforces architectural rules would have had to organise as a corporation or limited liability company and file annual reports with the Secretary of State, with a $200 fee and penalties for non-compliance.
It was referred to House Rules, never received a hearing, and missed the May 8, 2025 crossover deadline — which made it ineligible for the remainder of the biennium, including the 2026 short session.
Why it mattered
North Carolina has no register of its homeowners associations. No agency knows how many there are, where they are, who runs them, or whether they exist as legal entities at all. Most are incorporated under Chapter 55A, but some are unincorporated, and until 2026 nothing required any of them to tell the State anything on a recurring basis.
That absence is the reason several other things on the North Carolina reform agenda are difficult. It is hard to build a complaint database — as House Bill 1174 proposed — when there is no authoritative list of the entities complaints would be about. It is hard to serve process, hard to identify a board, and hard to determine whether an association is administratively defunct.
How half of it passed without anyone noticing
This is the genuinely interesting part, and it is a lesson about where North Carolina HOA law now comes from.
On July 7, 2026, Governor Josh Stein signed House Bill 517, a Nonprofit Corporation Act bill, as Session Law 2026-52. Its Part II creates new G.S. 55A-16-22.1, requiring every domestic nonprofit corporation to file an annual report with the Secretary of State by November 15 each year, with delinquency a ground for administrative dissolution.
Nothing in that act mentions homeowners associations. It did not need to. Because most North Carolina associations are Chapter 55A nonprofits, the reporting half of HB 993 now applies to them — arriving not through the community-association chapters and not through a bill anyone tracked as HOA legislation.
The differences between what HB 993 proposed and what actually passed are worth setting out precisely:
- The incorporation mandate did not pass. An unincorporated North Carolina association is still unincorporated, still lawful, and still outside the reporting duty entirely. HB 993 would have closed that gap; S.L. 2026-52 does not.
- The fee is much lower. HB 993 proposed $200. The enacted fees are $25 paper and $18 electronic.
- The sanction is heavier. HB 993 contemplated penalties. The enacted provision makes delinquency a ground for administrative dissolution — loss of corporate existence.
- The content is corporate, not association-specific. The report asks for the registered agent, principal office, officers and a description of activities. It does not ask about assessments, fines, reserves, or anything an association does as an association.
What this means for the data gap
From November 15, 2027, North Carolina will have something it has never had: a recurring, public, statewide record of incorporated nonprofit entities including their officers and registered agents. For the large majority of associations that are incorporated, that is effectively a register.
What it will not be is a register of associations. Nothing in the annual report identifies an entity as a community association, so extracting associations from the wider nonprofit population will require inference from names and activity descriptions. And unincorporated associations remain invisible.
So the practical answer to “how many HOAs are there in North Carolina?” will still be an estimate after 2027. It will just be a better one.
What a board can do about it
The obligation that actually exists is the Chapter 55A one, and it has a fourteen-month runway. The useful preparation is unglamorous:
- Confirm the association is in good standing with the Secretary of State now. Administrative dissolution for a lapsed registered agent is already a ground under existing law, and some associations are already dissolved without knowing it.
- Confirm the registered agent and registered office are current, including an email address the association actually monitors — the statute allows the Secretary to give notice by email where the corporation consents.
- Put November 15 on the compliance calendar for 2027, not 2026. Nothing is due next year.
For an unincorporated association, the calculus is different and worth a deliberate decision. Incorporating brings the reporting duty, and — if done on or after October 1, 2026 — the new three-director minimum. It also brings limited liability for volunteer directors, clearer contracting authority, and easier dealings with lenders and title insurers. That trade is now a live question in a way it was not before 2026.
What to watch next
Whether the incorporation mandate returns. HB 993's sponsors remain in the House, and the 2027 long session convenes January 13, 2027. With the reporting half now in place, a narrower bill requiring associations to incorporate is a smaller ask than the 2025 version was.
Whether anyone proposes an association identifier. Adding a single checkbox to the Chapter 55A annual report — is this entity a community association governed by Chapter 47C or 47F? — would convert an incidental byproduct into the register North Carolina has never had, at essentially no cost. Nobody has proposed it.
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