Oregon HOA Reserve Studies

Section 1: Overview — Reserve study requirements in Oregon

Oregon requires both condominium associations and planned-community associations to conduct reserve studies and to keep funded reserve accounts. Two separate statutes do this work, and both bend to a single owner waiver. The Oregon Condominium Act — ORS Chapter 100 — places the reserve obligation on condominiums at ORS 100.175, which calls for an initial reserve study, a written maintenance plan, a funded reserve account, and an annual board determination of reserve requirements.¹ The Oregon Planned Community Act — ORS Chapter 94 — sets a parallel obligation on planned communities at ORS 94.595, with the same initial-study, maintenance-plan, account, and annual-review structure.² The feature that sets Oregon apart is the waiver: after the turnover meeting, a board may elect, one year at a time, not to fund the reserve account for the following year — but only with the approval of all owners, and the board may not otherwise eliminate funding unless it determines the account will be adequately funded.³

Oregon has required reserve studies and reserve funding for a long time. Its statutes date to 1981 and grew substantially stronger in 1999, which places Oregon alongside California, where Civil Code section 5550(a) requires a board to cause a reasonably competent and diligent visual inspection of major components at least once every three years.⁴ Oregon's mandate predates the post-Surfside reserve laws that Florida (Senate Bill 4-D, signed May 26, 2022 after the June 24, 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse), Maryland (House Bill 107, effective October 1, 2022), and New Jersey (S2760, signed January 8, 2024) adopted, and it does not derive from any uniform act.⁵ The sections that follow lay out the condominium framework, the planned-community framework, the corporate and fiduciary backdrop, the specific compliance obligations, recent legislative activity, and where Oregon stands nationally.

Section 2: The reserve framework under Oregon law

2A. The reserve mandate for condominiums (Chapter 100)

ORS 100.175 is the operative condominium reserve statute. It directs the declarant, acting on behalf of the association, to conduct an initial reserve study, prepare an initial maintenance plan, and establish a reserve account.¹ The association must fund that account to cover major maintenance, repair, or replacement of the common elements and other association-maintained property that will normally need such work in more than one and less than 30 years — plus exterior painting where the common elements include painted surfaces, plus any other items the declaration or bylaws require.¹ The account does not have to cover items the association can reasonably pay from the general budget, or limited common elements that fall to fewer than all owners.¹ The account stays in the association's name, and assessments against the individual units fund it.¹

The reserve-study mechanics run annually rather than on a fixed multi-year inspection cycle. Each year the board must determine reserve requirements by conducting a reserve study or by reviewing and updating an existing one, working from the account's starting balance, each item's estimated remaining useful life, the estimated replacement cost at the end of that life, the rate of inflation, and the returns on invested reserves.¹ After that review, the board may adjust payments and add reserve items without a vote of the owners.¹ The study itself must identify every reserve item, the remaining useful life of each, and the estimated cost to repair and replace it.¹ There is no statutory funding percentage or formula and no required preparer credential; the standard is study-driven. The board must also prepare and update a maintenance plan that describes the work, sets a schedule, and states the useful life of the items, reviewing and updating it as needed.¹

The reserve-study and maintenance-plan requirements do not apply to a condominium of one or two units, setting aside parking, storage, or ancillary units — though they do reach flexible or staged condominiums that may grow past two units.¹ For condominiums recorded before October 23, 1999, the requirements first attach on a board resolution or a petition signed by a majority of unit owners, with the study and plan due within one year.¹ The waiver lives in ORS 100.175(10): unless the board determines the reserve account will be adequately funded, neither the board nor the owners may vote to eliminate funding — but after the turnover meeting the board may, with the approval of all owners, elect each year not to fund the account for the following year.¹

2B. The reserve mandate for planned communities (Chapter 94)

ORS 94.595 mirrors the condominium statute for planned communities. The declarant must conduct an initial reserve study, prepare an initial maintenance plan, and establish a reserve account.² The association must fund that account for major maintenance, repair, or replacement of all common property that will normally need such work in more than one and less than 30 years, plus exterior painting where it applies, plus other association-maintained or declaration-required items.² As with condominiums, the account need not include items the association can reasonably cover from the general budget or items that fall to fewer than all owners.² The association holds the account in its own name and funds it through assessments against the individual lots.²

The study mechanics match in substance: each year the board must determine reserve requirements by conducting a study or reviewing and updating an existing one, using the same five inputs — starting balance, remaining useful life, replacement cost, inflation, and investment returns — and may adjust payments without owner action.² The maintenance-plan requirement, the reserve-study content requirements, and the rule that reserves serve only their established purposes all track Chapter 100.² The waiver in ORS 94.595(8) reads the same as the condominium version: no elimination of funding unless the board finds the account adequately funded, except that after turnover the board may, with the approval of all owners, elect each year not to fund the account for the following year.²

Where the planned-community provisions part from the condominium provisions is coverage and triggers. For planned communities recorded before October 23, 1999, the reserve-study and maintenance-plan requirements attach on a board resolution or a majority-owner petition, with completion due within one year.² Coverage also turns on the community's classification: the reserve provisions of ORS 94.595 do not apply to a Class II planned community created on or after January 1, 2002.⁶ A Class I planned community, by contrast, must address the reserve account, reserve study, and maintenance plan in its recorded declaration.² That class-based carve-out has no match in Chapter 100, where the only categorical exclusion is the one-or-two-unit condominium.

2C. The declaration, corporate law, and fiduciary backstop

The statutory reserve requirements work alongside each community's recorded declaration and bylaws, but the statute sets the floor. Both Chapter 94 and Chapter 100 let the declaration, bylaws, or rules impose additional reserve requirements, and the reserve account answers to those added restrictions.³ When a governing document conflicts with a statutory reserve obligation, the statute wins, and a board policy that clashes with Chapter 94 or Chapter 100 cannot be enforced. The declaration decides which components the association must maintain, and that in turn defines the scope of the reserve study.

Oregon associations usually organize as nonprofit corporations under the Oregon Nonprofit Corporation Act, ORS Chapter 65, and their directors answer to the general standard of ORS 65.357, which requires a director to act in good faith, with the care of an ordinarily prudent person in a like position, and in a manner the director reasonably believes serves the best interests of the corporation.⁷ Oregon has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act; Chapters 94 and 100 are Oregon's own statutes, not uniform-act adoptions, so do not read UCIOA features into them. The practical takeaway: reserve studies and funded reserve accounts are statutory obligations for both community types, with the declaration and board judgment operating inside that framework — subject only to the unanimous-owner waiver.

Section 3: Compliance obligations

(A) Study and inspection obligations

Each year the board must determine reserve requirements by conducting a reserve study or reviewing and updating an existing one. This duty is mandatory, and it applies to condominiums under ORS 100.175 and to planned communities under ORS 94.595.³ The initial reserve study and initial maintenance plan fall to the declarant at creation, and both statutes make that mandatory.³ Neither statute sets an on-site or physical-inspection interval or a preparer credential, so the board decides the cadence and the qualifications.³

(B) Funding obligations (including the waiver/election mechanism)

A funded reserve account is mandatory for both community types, paid for by assessments against units or lots, under ORS 100.175 and ORS 94.595.³ The funding amount is study-driven, with no statutory minimum percentage. The waiver is the one exception to the funding duty: after turnover, the board may, with the approval of all owners, elect each year not to fund the account for the following year, and without that unanimous election the board may not eliminate funding unless it determines the account will be adequately funded. This holds for both statutes.³ The board may borrow reserve funds for seasonal or unexpected operating needs only after turnover, by board resolution and with a written repayment plan, under both statutes.³

(C) Disclosure obligations

The annual budget must include the reserve allocations, and the board must send a budget summary to all owners within 30 days of adoption — mandatory for condominiums under ORS 100.483 and for planned communities under ORS 94.645.^8,9 On an owner's written request, the association must furnish the reserve study within 10 business days, under ORS 100.480 for condominiums and ORS 94.670 for planned communities.^10,11 Oregon has no single resale-certificate statute, but for condominiums the developer disclosure statement delivered to initial buyers references the reserve study under ORS 100.655.¹² Developer filing and sales violations carry the Real Estate Commissioner's civil and criminal penalties under Chapter 100.¹³

(D) Account and governance obligations

The reserve account must stay in the association's name, sit apart from other funds, and serve only the purposes for which the reserves were established, under both statutes.³ Paid-in reserve assessments are association property and are not refundable to sellers or owners.³ The board must prepare and update a maintenance plan that describes the scheduled work and the useful life of the components, and both statutes make that mandatory.³ Directors carry the corporate fiduciary duty of ORS 65.357 when they administer reserves, and owners can enforce it through the Oregon Circuit Courts.⁷

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

(A) Recent bills

One 2025 measure reaches Oregon reserves, and it does so indirectly. House Bill 3746 (2025 Regular Session), "Relating to real property," was chaptered as Chapter 578, Oregon Laws 2025, and takes effect January 1, 2026.¹⁴ It shortens the construction-defect statute of ultimate repose under ORS 12.135 for condominiums and planned communities created on or after January 1, 2026 from ten years to seven, adds owner-notice and board-approval steps before an association may bring or join a defect claim, and adds new Chapter 100 provisions directing the board to commission an independent moisture-intrusion inspection before the end of the second year after the condominium's substantial completion — paid for from the reserve account established under ORS 100.175 — and again before the end of the sixth year.¹⁴ The reserve connection is that inspection-funding requirement, which sends a recurring expense to the condominium reserve account.

No bill enacted in the past 24 months amended the text of ORS 100.175 or ORS 94.595 directly; the reserve statutes' operative mechanics were last amended in 2017 and 2019 respectively.³

(B) Recent appellate rulings

A review of Oregon Court of Appeals and Oregon Supreme Court opinions from the past 36 months turned up no published decision addressing reserve accounts, reserve funding, reserve studies, or board fiduciary duty in the reserve context under Chapter 94 or Chapter 100. The statutory annotations for ORS 94.595 and ORS 100.175 list no case law construing the reserve provisions. Because no qualifying case exists, there is no audience-impact table here.

(C) Active legislative debates

The condominium-construction debate that produced HB 3746 is still live, with developer and insurer interests pressing for further liability limits and community-association advocates watching the reserve-funded inspection mandate. No pending measure would change the core reserve-study or reserve-funding mechanics of ORS 100.175 or ORS 94.595.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Oregon belongs to the group of established reserve-mandate states, requiring both a reserve study process and funded reserves for condominiums and planned communities. It sits alongside California, which requires a visual reserve-component inspection at least every three years with an annual review under Civil Code section 5550.⁴ Oregon's framework predates and differs from the post-Surfside structural-reserve mandates: Florida's Senate Bill 4-D (2022) requires a Structural Integrity Reserve Study at least every ten years for condominium and cooperative buildings three or more stories, while Maryland (House Bill 107, effective October 1, 2022) requires a reserve study updated every five years and New Jersey (S2760, effective January 8, 2024) requires one reviewed at least every five years.⁵ What distinguishes Oregon is its two-statute structure — Chapter 100 for condominiums and Chapter 94 for planned communities — and its owner waiver, which lets a fully unanimous ownership decline reserve funding for a year, an option that states without a waiver do not offer. For a multi-state operator, the practical point is that an Oregon condominium portfolio and an Oregon planned-community portfolio each run under their own statute, sharing the same annual study-or-review duty but carrying distinct coverage rules — with the same unanimous-owner waiver as the only off-ramp from funding.

HOA Weekly's Oregon Reserve Studies coverage updates quarterly as the Legislature and the Oregon appellate courts act. Federal frameworks — the Fair Housing Act, the ADA, the FDCPA, the SCRA, and the OTARD rule — also apply to Oregon associations regardless of the state framework.

1. Or. Rev. Stat. § 100.175 (reserve account, reserve study, and maintenance plan; Oregon Condominium Act) ↩
2. Or. Rev. Stat. § 94.595 (reserve account, reserve study, and maintenance plan; Oregon Planned Community Act) ↩
3. Or. Rev. Stat. §§ 94.595, 94.780 and Or. Rev. Stat. § 100.175 (Oregon Planned Community Act and Oregon Condominium Act) ↩
4. Cal. Civ. Code § 5550 (reserve study requirement; Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act) ↩
5. Fla. S.B. 4-D (2022 Special Session D), Structural Integrity Reserve Studies; see also Md. H.B. 107 (2022) and N.J. S2760 (2024) ↩
6. Or. Rev. Stat. § 94.572 (applicability of certain provisions to Class I or Class II planned communities) ↩
7. Or. Rev. Stat. § 65.357 (general standards for directors; Oregon Nonprofit Corporation Act) ↩
8. Or. Rev. Stat. § 100.483 (annual budget; distribution of budget summary to owners) ↩
9. Or. Rev. Stat. § 94.645 (adoption of annual budget) ↩
10. Or. Rev. Stat. § 100.480 (maintaining documents and records; availability for examination) ↩
11. Or. Rev. Stat. § 94.670 (association duty to keep documents and records) ↩
12. Or. Rev. Stat. § 100.655 (disclosure statement; contents) ↩
13. Or. Rev. Stat. § 100.015 (regulation by Real Estate Commissioner) and Or. Rev. Stat. §§ 100.900–100.990 (civil and criminal penalties) ↩
14. Or. H.B. 3746 (2025 Reg. Sess.), ch. 578, Or. Laws 2025 (effective Jan. 1, 2026) ↩