Oregon condo boards got the fire-hardening rule without the clock
Oregon condo boards got the fire-hardening rule without the clock
2026-09-15 · Oregon · Legislation
Senate Bill 1551 was drafted in two pieces, and only one of them reaches Oregon condominiums. The result, in force since June 5, 2026, is that a condominium declaration cannot prohibit fire hardening — but a condominium board that simply does not answer an owner's application faces none of the consequences a planned-community board does.1
Two sections, two homes in the statute books
Section 2 of chapter 86, Oregon Laws 2026 was added to ORS chapter 93, the chapter on recorded instruments. It voids a prohibition on fire-hardened materials in “a recorded document, including a declaration as defined in ORS 94.550.” A condominium declaration is a recorded document, so section 2 reaches it.
Section 4 — the section carrying the substantive architectural-review test and the 90-day deemed-approval rule — was added to ORS 94.550 to 94.783, the Oregon Planned Community Act. It opens: “A provision in a planned community's governing documents is void and unenforceable to the extent that it…”2
There is no parallel section in ORS chapter 100, the Oregon Condominium Act. The Act's relating clause confirms it: “Relating to fire hardening of residential properties; creating new provisions; amending ORS 94.572, 94.573 and 94.630; and prescribing an effective date.” Three amendments, all in chapter 94.
What a condominium owner does and does not get
They get the covenant override. A declaration provision prohibiting the installation, use or maintenance of fire-hardened building materials, or prohibiting removal of non-hardened materials including fences and other structures, is void as against them under section 2, retroactively, on the same terms as in any planned community.
What they do not get is section 4: the “practical effect of prohibiting” test, the cost-comparison test, and the rule that an unanswered application is approved after 90 days.
Why the difference is more than drafting tidiness
The two sections do different work. Section 2 strikes down an outright prohibition. Section 4 goes after the softer refusal — the design standard that technically permits hardened materials but specifies a colour, profile or product that no manufacturer supplies, or one that costs substantially more than a similar-quality alternative.
That second category is how architectural review actually says no. A condominium board operating an appearance standard that has “the practical effect of prohibiting the use of all fire-hardened building materials” is doing something the Legislature expressly voided in planned communities and did not address in condominiums. An owner in that position is left arguing from section 2's plain prohibition language and from the ordinary reasonableness standard that Oregon courts apply to covenant enforcement, rather than from a statutory test written for the problem.
The deemed-approval gap is sharper still. In a planned community, board inaction resolves in the owner's favour after 90 days. In a condominium, inaction resolves in nobody's favour; the application simply sits. The only approval clock in the Condominium Act remains the 60-day electric-vehicle-charging mandate at ORS 100.627.
The practical position for a condominium board
Three things follow, and none of them is an invitation to slow-walk applications.
First, the prohibition limb binds. A board relying on a declaration clause that bans metal roofing, cement-fibre siding or non-combustible fencing outright is relying on a provision the Legislature has declared void, and has been since June 5, 2026.
Second, exterior surfaces in a condominium are usually common elements or limited common elements rather than the owner's property, which is a genuinely different starting point from a planned community where the owner holds the lot and the structure. Section 2 addresses what a recorded document may prohibit; it does not reallocate maintenance responsibility or ownership of the building envelope. Where the association owns and maintains the siding, the decision to re-side is the association's to make and fund in the first place.
Third, ORS 100.538 — enacted the year before by House Bill 3746 — already carves out condominiums “for which each unit owner is responsible for the interior and exterior of the owner's unit” from the moisture-inspection and shortened-repose regime.3 Those site and detached condominiums are the ones where an owner's fire-hardening application looks most like a planned-community application and least like a common-element repair, and they are exactly the population section 4 does not cover.
What to watch next
Whether the 2027 session extends section 4 to chapter 100. Nothing in the 2026 record indicates the omission was deliberate, and the Act passed 28–0 and 44–0 with no recorded floor debate on the point. A conforming amendment would be a small bill. Until one passes, Oregon has two different answers to the same question depending on the form of ownership — which is the recurring structural feature of Oregon association law, and the reason the classification question comes first. Our Oregon condominium inspection page covers the other place where the two Acts diverge sharply.
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