What the resale certificate regime actually requires, since it is unchanged

Rhode Island's § 34-36.1-4.09 is more demanding than most owners realise, and it reaches condominiums created before July 1, 1982 as well as after — it is on the retroactivity list in § 34-36.1-1.02(a)(2).

The seller's duty. Before executing any contract for sale, or otherwise before conveyance, the unit owner must furnish the purchaser with the declaration (less plats and plans), the bylaws, the rules, and a certificate containing twelve enumerated items. Among them: the monthly common expense assessment and any unpaid common or special assessment currently due; any other fees payable by unit owners; “any capital expenditures anticipated by the association for the current and two (2) next succeeding fiscal years”; the amount of any reserves for capital expenditures and any portion designated for specified projects; the most recent balance sheet and income and expense statement; the current operating budget; unsatisfied judgments and pending suits in which the association is a defendant; insurance coverage provided for the benefit of unit owners; whether the board knows of alterations violating the declaration; and whether it knows of “any violations of the health or building codes”.

The association's deadline: ten days. “The association, within ten (10) days after a request by a unit owner, shall furnish a certificate containing the information necessary to enable the unit owner to comply with this section.”

The penalty, which most boards have never been told about. Section 4.09(b)(3): “In addition to those remedies as set forth in § 34-36.1-4.17, any association that fails to provide a certificate to the unit owner within ten (10) days of a written request by the unit owner is subject to a civil penalty of not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than five hundred dollars ($500) per occurrence.”

A mandatory floor of $100 per occurrence. This is one of very few places in the Rhode Island Condominium Act where a specific monetary penalty attaches to an association's own failure, and it is triggered by a calendar rather than by anyone's judgment. Our Rhode Island estoppel and resale page covers the certificate in detail.

Two protections that make the certificate a hard cap, not an estimate

The buyer's exposure is limited to the number on it. Section 4.09(c): “A purchaser is not liable for any unpaid assessment or fee greater than the amount set forth in the certificate prepared by the association.” An understated arrears figure is a permanent write-off for the association, not a correctable error.

The buyer can walk until it arrives. Also in (c): “the purchaser contract is voidable by the purchaser until the certificate has been provided and for five (5) days thereafter or until conveyance, whichever first occurs.”

And the seller is shielded from the association's mistakes: under (b)(4), a unit owner providing the certificate “is not liable to the purchaser for any erroneous information provided by the association and included in the certificate”, and under (c) is not liable for the association's delay.

Read together, the incentives are clear and they point at the association. It bears the penalty for lateness, the loss from an understatement, and the risk of a buyer exercising the exit.

A deadline distinction worth getting right

Two different clocks, deliberately worded differently. The resale certificate is due within ten days of a request under § 4.09(b)(1). The recordable statement of unpaid assessments is due within ten business days of receipt of a request under § 34-36.1-3.16(h), and that statement “is binding on the association”. A manager working from one number for both will miss one of them.

Why the $25 proposal existed, and the counter-argument

The update fee is a real cost in a slow market. A unit that goes under agreement twice pays $125 twice for a document whose substance has typically not changed, and in Rhode Island that charge lands on the seller.

The counter-position, put by the industry during the session, was in the opposite direction: rather than a reduced update fee, the existing $125 cap should rise — $185 was the figure advanced, to match Connecticut. That is an advocacy position, not a legislative fact, and neither proposal was adopted. The cap remains $125.

What a board can do

Treat the ten days as a hard deadline with a price attached. The penalty is not discretionary at the bottom end.

Keep a standing draft. Eleven of the twelve items change rarely. The arrears figure is the one that must be current, and it is the one that caps the buyer's liability if you get it wrong.

Decide your update policy in advance and write it down. The statute permits $125 for the certificate; whether to charge it again for a refresh is a board decision, and charging the full amount for a one-line update is the practice that produced this bill.

Do not put a code-violation answer in the certificate without checking. Item (11) asks whether the board has knowledge of health or building code violations. In a state with no milestone inspection requirement, a board's honest answer is often that it does not know — which is a different answer from “none”.

What to watch next

Reintroduction in January 2027, and the commission. The sixteen-member condominium law commission reporting by December 31, 2027 was directed to “[e]xamine best practices for improving purchaser understanding of condominium ownership and governance” — which is the resale certificate's entire purpose, and the mandate under which both the fee cap and the contents list would be revisited.