2. The lien and its priority

2A. Lien creation, authority, and what it secures

For condominiums, the assessment lien is statutory. Under S.C. Code § 27-31-210(a), "all sums assessed by the administrator, or the board of administration, or other form of administration specified in the bylaws, but unpaid, for the share of common expenses chargeable to any apartment shall constitute a lien on such apartment."¹ That lien attaches automatically when an assessment for common expenses comes due and goes unpaid; the statute does not require the association to record a claim of lien first, though associations commonly record one to establish a public record and a fixed date.¹

The statutory lien secures unpaid common-expense assessments. The Horizontal Property Act does not list late fees, interest, fines, collection costs, or attorney fees as part of that lien; associations can recover those amounts only if the recorded master deed, declaration, or bylaws authorize them.¹ The lien attaches to the apartment unit charged with the expense, not to other property the owner holds.¹ The same unit-by-unit structure governs third-party liens: under § 27-31-230(a), a lien arising after the master deed is recorded attaches only to each apartment and its share of the common elements, and in TCC of Charleston, Op. No. 6106 (S.C. Ct. App. refiled July 30, 2025), a contractor's mechanic's lien dissolved because it served the regime but not the individual unit owners; the owners' actual knowledge of the lien did not cure the defect.^5,6

For planned communities, there is no statutory lien. The Homeowners Association Act, § 27-30-110 et seq., is a recording, disclosure, and governance statute; it contains no lien-creation or collection provision.² A planned-community assessment lien is therefore contractual — created by the recorded declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions and enforced under common law and the South Carolina Nonprofit Corporation Act for incorporated associations.² What the lien secures, and whether it captures late fees, interest, costs, and attorney fees, turns on the recorded covenants, not on statute.² In Oak Forest v. Dennison, Unpublished Op. No. 2025-UP-443 (S.C. Ct. App. Dec. 31, 2025), the Court of Appeals held an owner bound by association covenants recorded in his chain of title and an incorporated plat even though his own deed never named them, and it treated HOA lien foreclosure as an action in equity; the opinion is unpublished and has no precedential value.⁷

2B. Lien priority and any super-priority component

South Carolina grants no super-priority. The condominium lien under § 27-31-210(a) is "prior to all other liens except only (i) tax liens on the apartment in favor of any assessing unit, and (ii) mortgage and other liens, duly recorded, encumbering the apartment."¹ That makes the association lien expressly subordinate to a recorded first mortgage and to ad valorem tax liens. No statutory portion of any month count leaps ahead of the first mortgage, so the rolling-lien question that arises in super-priority states does not arise here.¹ Section 27-31-210(b) reinforces this: a mortgagee or purchaser who takes title at the foreclosure of a recorded mortgage is not liable for common-expense assessments that accrued after the mortgage was recorded but before the acquirer took title; that shortfall becomes a common expense spread across all owners.¹

For planned communities, priority follows South Carolina's general recording rule — first in time, first in right — measured by the date the covenant or claim of lien is recorded against later-recorded interests.² Because there is no super-priority, a senior mortgage that forecloses will generally extinguish a junior association lien, and the association is left to the sale surplus, if any.

2C. CC&R interaction, corporate-law overlay, and federal overlay

Recorded covenants supplement the statutory framework. They commonly add late fees, interest, and attorney-fee recovery and set the collection procedure, but they cannot manufacture a priority the statute denies; for condominiums, covenants cannot place the association lien ahead of a recorded first mortgage given the express subordination in § 27-31-210.¹ The underlying assessment obligation is a contract debt, subject to South Carolina's three-year statute of limitations for actions on a contract under S.C. Code § 15-3-530(1).⁸ The same three-year period runs against owners: in Leonard v. WildeWood, Unpublished Op. No. 2026-UP-339 (S.C. Ct. App. July 1, 2026), homeowners' challenge to a fee assessment was time-barred because the clock ran from the assessment's adoption under § 27-30-130(B)(1)(a); the opinion has no precedential value.^9,10

Three federal frameworks operate on top of the South Carolina rules. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act reaches an association's attorneys and outside collection agents who qualify as debt collectors, and most courts treat assessments as consumer "debts," so validation notices and communication limits apply to those third parties.³ The Act itself sets no cap on the late fees, interest, or attorney fees a collector may pursue — it bars only amounts not authorized by the agreement or permitted by law, which is exactly why the Horizontal Property Act leaves those amounts to the recorded covenants rather than to federal law.¹¹ The automatic stay under the Bankruptcy Code halts collection and foreclosure on the filing of an owner's petition. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act constrains default judgments and foreclosure against active-duty servicemembers; because South Carolina forecloses association liens only judicially, typically before the Master-in-Equity, the Act's requirement of a military-status affidavit before any default judgment applies to every uncontested South Carolina foreclosure.¹² These apply regardless of the South Carolina framework.

3. The collection and foreclosure process

3A. Pre-lien collection sequence

South Carolina imposes no statutory pre-lien notice. No state law requires a condominium or planned-community association to send a notice of delinquency or a notice of intent to record a lien, observe an advance day-count, or use a particular delivery method before a lien arises or is recorded.³

Any such step is contractual, governed by the recorded covenants or bylaws, and applies only where those documents impose it. That holds for both condominiums and planned communities. Likewise, no statute gives an owner the right to demand a payment plan, dispute the debt through a defined process, or receive an itemized statement before a lien is recorded; condominium owners and purchasers do have a statutory right to obtain a statement of amounts owed in connection with a sale under § 27-31-220.¹³ Where an association uses a third-party debt collector or its attorney, the FDCPA's validation-notice and dispute mechanics apply as a federal overlay — not as a South Carolina requirement.³

3B. Recording and the pre-foreclosure sequence

For condominiums, the statutory lien exists without recording, but associations record a notice or claim of lien in the county Register of Deeds, clerk of court, or Register of Mesne Conveyance office to fix public notice; the Horizontal Property Act sets no contents checklist or recording deadline for the claim of lien.¹ For planned communities, recording the declaration and any claim of lien in the county land records is what gives the contractual lien effect and its priority date.²

No South Carolina statute currently requires a notice of intent to foreclose, an advance day-count, or mandatory mediation before an association files suit, and none requires a recorded board vote or specific delegation to counsel; those prerequisites bind an association only if its own governing documents impose them.³ A 2025–2026 bill, H.3447, would have added a rule-to-show-cause step in default cases, but it died in the Senate at the end of the session and was never enacted; its January 1, 2026 operative date never took effect (see Section 4).¹⁴

3C. Foreclosure mechanics and thresholds

Foreclosure is judicial only. The condominium lien "may be foreclosed by suit ... in like manner as a mortgage of real property" under § 27-31-210(a), and planned-community liens are foreclosed in equity under the recorded covenants.¹ The action is filed in the Court of Common Pleas and typically referred to the Master-in-Equity, who hears the matter as a bench proceeding in equity and can enter final judgment and order sale.¹ In the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit (Horry and Georgetown Counties), a local rule approved by the South Carolina Supreme Court on March 26, 2026 provides that an HOA lien or mortgage foreclosure pending six months without an order of reference “shall be automatically referred to the Master in Equity”; actions to enforce mechanics' liens are expressly exempt.¹⁵

South Carolina sets no minimum dollar threshold and no minimum delinquency duration before an association may foreclose; the figure is, by statute, zero.¹ Fines cannot support an assessment-lien foreclosure: South Carolina authority limits the lien to unpaid assessments and does not extend it to unpaid fines, so an association seeking to foreclose must base the lien on assessments, not penalties.³

During a condominium foreclosure the owner must pay reasonable rental for the unit, and the association may seek appointment of a receiver to collect rents.¹ The sale is conducted by the Master-in-Equity or other officer, typically on the first Monday of the month after the notice of sale is published for three consecutive weeks.¹⁶

3D. Post-sale: redemption, deficiency, surplus, reinstatement

South Carolina provides no post-sale right of redemption after a judicial foreclosure; an owner cannot pay off the debt to reclaim title after the sale closes.⁴ Instead, the state uses a thirty-day upset-bid period: when a deficiency judgment is demanded, the bidding does not close on the sale day but stays open until the thirtieth day after the sale, during which any person other than the high bidder may enter a higher bid, under S.C. Code § 15-39-720.⁴

If the plaintiff waives a deficiency, there is no upset-bid period and the sale closes more quickly.⁴ A deficiency judgment against the former owner is available where the foreclosing party reserved it under S.C. Code § 29-3-660; the debtor may petition for an appraisal within thirty days of the sale to limit the deficiency to the debt minus the property's appraised value.¹⁷

Surplus proceeds, after costs and secured claims are paid, are held by the officer conducting the sale and distributed under Rule 71(c) of the South Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure to junior lienholders and then the former owner.¹⁸ An owner may reinstate by paying the arrears and costs before the sale, and in practice before the upset-bid period closes, but no separate statutory reinstatement right exists. These mechanics apply to both condominium and planned-community foreclosures because both proceed as judicial sales under the same civil-procedure framework.⁴

4. Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

B. Recent appellate rulings

The two controlling South Carolina decisions on association-lien foreclosure predate a strict three-year window, but they remain the governing appellate authority and are summarized here for completeness.

C. Active legislative debates

5. National positioning and related coverage

South Carolina sits at the owner-protective, statute-light end of the collections spectrum. It is not a super-priority state: unlike Nevada, whose NRS 116.3116(2)(b) gives associations priority for "assessments ... which would have become due in the absence of acceleration during the 9 months immediately preceding the date on which the notice of default and election to sell is recorded," and unlike Connecticut and several other UCIOA states that grant priority portions, South Carolina's condominium lien ranks fully subordinate to recorded mortgages.¹

It is not a threshold-restricted state like California, Arizona, or Colorado, which bar or delay foreclosure below a dollar or time minimum; South Carolina sets no minimum debt or delinquency period by statute. It is a judicial-only foreclosure state, and for planned communities it is effectively a CC&R-primary jurisdiction with no assessment-collection statute.

For a multi-state operator, this matters: a pre-lien notice, payment-plan offer, or nonjudicial sale that is valid in another state can be unnecessary, defective, or barred in South Carolina, and any notice generator must read these exact rules from the South Carolina text. South Carolina's direction of travel points toward tighter owner protections — repeated bills have proposed adding hearings, thresholds, and notice steps, though none has yet become law.