Nobody in Ohio licenses the person managing your association
Nobody in Ohio licenses the person managing your association
2026-09-15 · Ohio · Regulation
In Ohio, anyone may manage a homeowners or condominium association. There is no licence, no examination, no registration, no bond and no state complaint desk. This is not an oversight in the statute; it is what the statute says.1
The phrase “community association manager” does not appear as a licensed occupation anywhere in R.C. chapter 4735 or in Ohio Administrative Code division 1301:5. The only licence that could reach the work is the real estate broker or salesperson licence, and the trigger is narrower than most boards assume.
The words that decide it
R.C. 4735.01(A) defines a real estate broker as a person who, for another and for compensation, does any of nine listed things. Eight of them are sale, exchange, purchase, lease, auction, option, advertising and referral-fee activity. The ninth is the only candidate:
“(5) Operates, manages, or rents, or offers or attempts to operate, manage, or rent, other than as custodian, caretaker, or janitor, any building or portions of buildings to the public as tenants”
The load-bearing words are the last four. An association manager collects assessments from owner-members, administers common elements the association itself controls, runs board meetings, enforces covenants and contracts with vendors. None of that rents a building to the public as tenants.
The Division of Real Estate and Professional Licensing's own property management brochure confirms the boundary by listing what it regulates: negotiating leases, varying rental price or lease terms, approving rental applications, setting lease conditions, offering inducements to prospective tenants, finding tenants, advertising the property, showing it, “[c]ollecting rent” and “[o]therwise representing another in a lease or rent transaction.”
Every listed task is a leasing task. Assessments, reserve budgeting, covenant enforcement, board meetings, vendor contracting and common-element maintenance appear nowhere on the list.
The exemptions close the question
R.C. 4735.01(I)(1) independently exempts anyone acting “with reference to real estate situated in this state owned by such person, partnership, association, limited liability company, limited liability partnership, or corporation.” A planned-community association typically owns its common areas outright and a condominium association controls the common elements, so a self-managed Ohio association is outside the statute twice over.
With no licensing regime, vetting falls to the board. Our Ohio director qualifications page covers the duties that come with that.
What Ohio gives a board instead of a licence
There is exactly one state-mandated protection against a manager, and it is insurance rather than licensure. R.C. 5312.06, in the Ohio Planned Community Law, requires the association to carry
“Blanket fidelity, crime, or dishonesty insurance coverage for any person who controls or disburses association funds.”
The policy must “include in its definition of 'employee' the manager and the managing agent of the association's funds or provide for this inclusion by an endorsement to the policy,” and the statute defines the covered person as “any individual with authority or access to sign checks, conduct electronic transfers, or otherwise withdraw funds from any association account or deposit.”
The amount is specified: “the maximum amount of funds that will be in the custody of the association or its designated agent at any one time plus three months of operating expenses.”
Condominiums do not get this. The Condominium Property Act leaves it discretionary — R.C. 5311.081(B)(19) says the board may “[p]urchase insurance and fidelity bonds the directors consider appropriate or necessary.” Same risk, same manager, different statute, and one of them says shall while the other says may. Our Ohio insurance requirements page covers what that gap looks like in a real policy.
The one place a licence does attach
If the same firm that manages your association also leases units for individual owners — a very common arrangement in Ohio condominium buildings — that side of its business does require a broker's licence, and with it the Division's trust-account rules. OAC 1301:5-5-11 requires that “[a]ll brokerages engaging in the management of property for another shall establish and maintain a separate trust account(s),” with a separate ledger per owner and accountings “on a regular basis, but in no event not less than on a quarterly basis.”
The Commission may assess “a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per violation, per day against any person found to be engaging in unlicensed activity,” with each act a separate violation. A salesperson cannot run that business outside their brokerage.
So a board can ask a useful question: does your firm lease units for owners in this building, and if so, under whose licence and in whose trust account? The answer tells you whether any state body is looking at the money at all.
Vetting is entirely the board's job
Ask for the fidelity policy and read the definition of employee. If the manager is not named or endorsed in, the coverage does not reach the person most able to take the money. For a planned community that is a statutory failure; for a condominium it is merely a board decision, which is why it is so often wrong.
Confirm the limit against the formula. Maximum funds on hand at any one time, plus three months of operating expenses. Associations that set a limit years ago and never revisited it are frequently underinsured by a wide margin after a decade of assessment increases and a reserve balance that has grown.
Do not assume a credential means a regulator. Voluntary industry designations exist and some are demanding, but none of them is an Ohio licence, and none of them gives an owner a state complaint to file. The Division of Real Estate will not take a complaint about how an association manager handled a reserve fund, because it has no jurisdiction over that conduct.
Control the bank relationship. With no licensure and no trust-account rule on the association side, the only structural protection a board can create is one it builds itself: association accounts in the association's name, two signatures, board-level read access to the statements, and no sole authority over transfers in the manager's hands.
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