Reading the numbers carefully

These figures get quoted in ways the data does not support, in both directions. Three cautions.

A lien is not a foreclosure, and a foreclosure filing is not a sale. The funnel in this data is steep: about 50,000 liens, about 5,500 foreclosure filings, about 600 final account filings indicating a sale. Read as a rate, roughly 1% of liens ended in a completed sale in the period measured. An association pointing to that as evidence of restraint is on reasonable ground.

The other reading is equally fair. Five and a half thousand foreclosure proceedings against homeowners, roughly half of the sampled files over debts under $2,000, is a substantial volume of a remedy that puts a person's home at stake over a sum most people carry on a credit card. And a foreclosure that does not complete is not costless — attorney's fees and costs are typically added to the owner's balance, and the filing itself does damage.

The method has real limits. Text matching against party names will miss associations whose names do not follow recognisable patterns and may over-capture entities that are not associations. The period ends in June 2023, so nothing here reflects the last three years. And the analysis counts filings, not outcomes — it cannot say how many owners cured, settled, or were in genuine hardship.

Why this dataset carries the weight it does

Because there is nothing else.

North Carolina has no HOA regulator. The Department of Justice states it has no regulatory authority over associations. The Secretary of State's own FAQ opens by saying it cannot help with an HOA problem. The Real Estate Commission licenses brokers, and North Carolina does not license community association managers at all. No agency collects complaints, tracks enforcement, or counts foreclosures.

So when the General Assembly debates a foreclosure threshold, this is the evidence base. House Bill 444 would have barred foreclosure unless the lien was at least six months of assessments or $2,500, whichever is less. Senate Bill 378 carried a comparable floor and passed the Senate 47–0. Senate Bill 1047 would have gone further and removed foreclosure entirely for liens securing only fines.

None passed. The finding that about half of sampled foreclosure files involved debts under $2,000 is, in effect, the argument for all three — and it comes from a GitHub repository rather than from the State.

What this means for a board

Not that foreclosure is unavailable — it plainly is available, and associations depend on the credibility of collections to fund budgets that every other owner pays into. But the data points at a specific exposure.

An association that forecloses over a small balance is doing something lawful, rare, and highly visible. It is the fact pattern that produces local television coverage, and it is the fact pattern legislators cite. Practical implications:

• Have a written collections policy with a threshold in it, even though the statute imposes none. A policy that escalates to foreclosure only above a stated amount, or only after a payment plan has been offered and refused, converts an ad hoc decision into a defensible one.
• Watch the fee dynamics. A large share of small-balance cases are small only at the start; costs and attorney's fees drive the total. An association that reviews balances by original assessment debt rather than by total owed will see a different picture than its ledger shows.
• Board vote and payment-plan steps cost little and were in every reform bill. An association already doing them is aligned with where the law has repeatedly tried to go, at essentially no expense.

What to watch next

Whether anyone updates the analysis. The data ends in June 2023, and the AOC database continues. A refresh covering 2023–2026 would show whether volumes moved after the reform debate began, and the published methodology means anyone can do it.

Whether the State ever collects this itself. House Bill 1174 would have required an annual Department of Justice report broken down by category, including liens and foreclosures. It stalled, and the Attorney General's office objected that intake without authority produces little. Whatever the merits of that objection, the measurement function it would have created still does not exist.

The 2027 long session, convening January 13, 2027 — the next opportunity for a foreclosure threshold, and the fourth consecutive session in which one will have been attempted if it is filed.