Tennessee HOA Architectural Review

Quick-Reference Architectural Authority Table

Section 1: Overview — How architectural review works in Tennessee

Tennessee sorts its condominiums by age. It governs older condominiums under the Horizontal Property Act and newer ones under the Condominium Act of 2008, it gives non-condominium homeowners' associations only a handful of statutory provisions, and it anchors architectural authority in the declaration or the recorded covenants, which the board or an architectural committee administers.¹ So the first move in any professional decision is classification. A condominium created before January 1, 2009 falls under the Horizontal Property Act. A condominium created on or after that date falls under the Condominium Act of 2008. A non-condominium HOA answers to its recorded covenants, the limited provisions in Parts 6 through 8, and the Tennessee Nonprofit Corporation Act.¹ For condominiums, one statutory rule speaks directly to architectural enforcement: an association may levy a fine for a violation only after it gives notice and an opportunity to be heard.² On solar, Tennessee offers a voluntary solar-easement framework that owners negotiate between themselves rather than an override of anti-solar covenants, and a separate provision bars an association from prohibiting display of the U.S. flag.^3,4 Disputes go to the bifurcated trial courts — the Chancery Court for equity and the Circuit Court for law — with civil appeals to the Tennessee Court of Appeals and then the Tennessee Supreme Court; Tennessee has no dedicated HOA regulator to decide architectural disputes.⁵ The sections that follow lay out the framework, the compliance obligations, and the recent activity in detail.

Section 2: The architectural-review framework

2A. Source and scope of architectural authority

Architectural authority in Tennessee starts in the private governing documents, not in a general statute. For a condominium, that authority sits in the declaration — many older regimes call it the master deed. For a non-condominium HOA, it sits in the recorded covenants, conditions, and restrictions. Either way, the board of directors or a committee the documents designate — commonly an architectural review committee or architectural control committee — exercises it. The threshold question is the community's statutory classification, and that turns on the condominium's creation date. The Tennessee Horizontal Property Act, Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-27-101 et seq. (Part 1 of Chapter 27), governs condominiums created before January 1, 2009, and a developer creates such a regime by recording a master deed, lease, or plat.⁶ The Tennessee Condominium Act of 2008, Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-27-201 through 66-27-507 (Parts 2 through 5), governs condominiums created on or after January 1, 2009.¹ The two acts do not sit in watertight compartments. Under the applicability section, § 66-27-202, a set of enumerated 2008-Act provisions — including § 66-27-402(a)(11) on fines — reaches pre-2009 condominiums, but only for events and circumstances that occur after January 1, 2009, and without invalidating existing master-deed, declaration, bylaw, or plat provisions.¹

Non-condominium HOAs have no comprehensive governing code. They answer primarily to their recorded covenants, to the targeted provisions in Part 6 (Dedicatory Instruments, §§ 66-27-601 through 66-27-603, which define dedicatory instruments and homeowners' associations broadly and include the flag provision), Part 7 (Homeowners' Association, §§ 66-27-701 through 66-27-706), and Part 8 (Gated Subdivision, §§ 66-27-801 through 66-27-802), and to the Tennessee Nonprofit Corporation Act (Title 48), under which most associations organize.^7,8,9 These parts are targeted, not systematic. Part 7, for example, covers definitions, long-term-rental vested rights, and special assessments for nonessential amenities rather than a full governance scheme.⁸ So the order of precedence for a defensible decision runs like this: the applicable condominium statute or the limited HOA provisions first, then the declaration or recorded covenants, then the bylaws, then the rules and architectural guidelines. Where the declaration conflicts with the Condominium Act of 2008, the Act controls on the matters it addresses; where the Act says nothing, the declaration governs.

2B. The approval process, standards, and the condominium fine requirement

Tennessee sets no statutory deadline for deciding an architectural application, no deemed-approval rule, and no statutory written-denial requirement. Every element of the architectural process — the timeline, the form of the decision, the reasons required, and any internal appeal — comes from the governing documents.¹ On the merits, Tennessee courts enforce valid declaration and recorded-covenant terms and construe them as contracts; because restrictive covenants sit in derogation of the free use of land, courts construe them strictly and resolve ambiguities in favor of the unrestricted use of property.¹⁰ Where a declaration sets up a review committee but supplies no specific criteria, a court judges the criteria and the committee's interpretation by a standard of reasonableness, and it will not disturb the committee's decision unless the association acted unreasonably or in bad faith.¹¹

The one clear statutory contribution to enforcement is the condominium fine requirement. Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-402(a)(11), a condominium unit owners' association may impose late charges and, "after notice and an opportunity to be heard, levy reasonable fines for violations of the declaration, bylaws, and rules and regulations of the association."² That requirement is statutory, and a contrary bylaw cannot waive it away; a fine imposed on a condominium owner without notice and a hearing opportunity is defective. In non-condominium HOAs, the recorded covenants create the fine power: Tennessee sets no statutory fine cap or fine procedure for planned communities, so the governing documents supply both the authority and the process.⁸ Here is the practical guidance for a defensible decision. Classify the community first. Ground every step of the architectural process in the governing documents. For a condominium, complete notice and a hearing before you charge a violation. And recognize that Tennessee does not shield solar installations from association restrictions, so an anti-solar covenant remains enforceable.

2C. Statutory and federal limits on architectural authority

A small number of external rules limit architectural authority no matter what the governing documents say. Start with solar. Tennessee's only relevant statute is the Solar Access Law of 1979, Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-9-201 et seq., which sits in Chapter 9 (Easements and Restrictive Covenants), not Chapter 27. It is an enabling framework that lets owners create voluntary, written, recorded solar easements to protect access to sunlight; it does not limit an HOA's authority to restrict solar through covenants, and Tennessee has no HOA solar-restriction override.³ The Horizontal Property Act is not a solar-access act — a mischaracterization that shows up in at least one secondary source — and § 66-9-207 (solar power facility agreements) concerns utility-scale facilities, which the statute defines to exclude any solar-generating device or structure under five megawatts, not residential rooftop systems.³ On flags, § 66-27-602(a) provides that "no homeowners' association shall adopt or enforce a dedicatory instrument provision that prohibits, or has the effect of prohibiting, a property owner from displaying the flag of the United States of America or an official or replica flag of any branch of the United States armed forces," though the association may adopt reasonable rules on placement and manner.⁴ A companion dedicatory-instruments provision, § 66-27-603, bars an association from prohibiting signage that warns of health, safety, or dangerous natural water conditions.¹² Tennessee also carves out political signs: under the Tennessee Freedom of Speech Act, § 2-7-143(b)(2), an HOA "shall not, by covenant, condition, restriction, or rule, prohibit the display of political or campaign posters or signs placed on private property by the owner," though it may set reasonable placement and size rules (capping size in common and private areas at four square feet), and the provision reaches instruments executed or modified after July 1, 2017.¹³ As of July 1, 2026, a new state law bars a unit owners' association or HOA from prohibiting a lot owner from installing an EV charging station for personal use on the owner's own property, subject to reasonable association rules on cost, installation, maintenance, and removal.¹⁴ No standalone Tennessee drought-tolerant-landscaping carve-out for community associations is confirmed. Three federal overlays apply on top of all this: the Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005 (subject to reasonable safety restrictions), the FCC OTARD rule at 47 C.F.R. § 1.4000 (antennas and dishes one meter or less, within the rule's limits), and the Fair Housing Act reasonable-modification right at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(A) (owner-funded and subject to reasonableness).^15,16,17

Section 3: Compliance obligations in the architectural-review process

A. Adopting and maintaining architectural standards

The duty to adopt architectural standards, and the substance of those standards, comes from the governing documents, not from statute; Tennessee has no statute that prescribes architectural criteria for either condominiums or HOAs.¹ For a condominium, the board's authority to adopt and enforce rules flows from the declaration and from the Condominium Act of 2008 (Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-402), a statutory grant of association powers.² For an HOA organized as a nonprofit corporation, the board exercises rule-making authority consistent with the declaration and bylaws under the Tennessee Nonprofit Corporation Act (Title 48), a statutory corporate framework.⁹ And to bind an owner, a dedicatory instrument and its amendments must be properly recorded (Part 6, §§ 66-27-601 et seq.), a statutory recording predicate.⁷

B. Reviewing and deciding applications

The duty to review and decide an application, the timeline, and the form of the decision are governing-document obligations; Tennessee imposes no statutory application deadline, deemed-approval rule, or written-denial requirement.¹ When a committee exercises its discretion, it must act reasonably and in good faith — a standard the case law draws from the governing documents rather than from statute.¹¹ A condominium board that appoints or delegates to a committee still answers to the statutory duty of care in Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-403, which imposes fiduciary care on declarant appointees and ordinary and reasonable care on elected directors.¹⁸

C. Honoring statutory and federal owner protections

Several owner protections override contrary governing-document terms. On solar, Tennessee provides only a voluntary solar-easement framework and no override, so an anti-solar covenant is enforceable; the statutory source is the Solar Access Law of 1979 (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-9-201 et seq.), which does not limit covenant authority.³ On flags, an association may not prohibit display of the U.S. flag or an armed-forces flag — a statutory limit in Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-602, reinforced by the federal Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005.^4,15 On political signs, a statutory carve-out in Tenn. Code Ann. § 2-7-143 bars an association from prohibiting political or campaign signs on an owner's private property.¹³ On EV charging, a statutory carve-out effective July 1, 2026 bars an association from prohibiting a personal-use EV charging station on the owner's own property.¹⁴ And on antennas and reasonable disability modifications, the federal OTARD rule (47 C.F.R. § 1.4000) and the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(A)) apply additively.^16,17

D. Enforcement and dispute resolution

For condominiums, the enforcement toolkit is partly statutory: reasonable fines only after notice and an opportunity to be heard (Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-402(a)(11)), and a lien on the unit for assessments or fines from the time they become due, enforceable by judicial action or, if the declaration so provides, by a power-of-sale process (Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-415).^2,19 For non-condominium HOAs, the governing documents carry the fines, liens, and enforcement; Tennessee prescribes no statutory fine or lien procedure for planned communities, so covenant enforcement proceeds as a private contractual action.⁸ Both types litigate in the Chancery Court or the Circuit Court, with civil appeals to the Tennessee Court of Appeals and the Tennessee Supreme Court; no state HOA agency exists to decide architectural disputes.⁵

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Three recently enacted Tennessee laws bear on architectural review — one directly, and two at its financial edges.

B. Recent rulings

Two recent Court of Appeals decisions sharpen how far architectural authority reaches and who controls it.

The controlling recent Tennessee Supreme Court authority on amending covenants is Pandharipande v. FSD Corp., No. M2020-01174-SC-R11-CV (Tenn. Oct. 17, 2023). It holds that "[a]mendments to restrictive covenants are subject to review under the arbitrary-and-capricious standard," and it describes an arbitrary or capricious decision as "one that is not based on any course of reasoning or exercise of judgment, or one that disregards the facts or circumstances of the case without some basis that would lead a reasonable person to reach the same conclusion"; later covenant-enforcement opinions cite it repeatedly.²³

C. Active legislative debates

The General Assembly enacted no comprehensive "Tennessee Homeowners Association Act," and none was pending in the 114th General Assembly; earlier comprehensive bills — SB0405 in the 109th General Assembly and SB2000 in the 113th, which its sponsor withdrew — never became law, so non-condominium HOAs remain covenant-primary.⁸ The recent enacted activity has stayed targeted — EV charging, nonessential-amenity assessments, reserve studies — rather than a general HOA code.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Tennessee is a two-statute-condominium, covenant-primary state built around a January 1, 2009 divide: the Horizontal Property Act governs older condominiums, the Condominium Act of 2008 governs newer ones, and both leave the architectural process itself to the declaration or the recorded covenants. The state supplies only limited statutory HOA provisions and no comprehensive HOA act, it pairs a condominium notice-and-hearing fine requirement with a private, court-based enforcement model, and it offers a voluntary solar-easement framework rather than a solar override — all of it litigated through bifurcated trial courts that feed a single civil intermediate court. For multi-state operators, the implications are concrete: the condominium creation date determines the governing statute, most HOA governance sits in the recorded covenants, Tennessee does not void anti-solar covenants, and a civil dispute is appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. That places Tennessee well toward the deregulated end of the spectrum, compared with comprehensive or carve-out-rich states such as California and Texas — though the recent EV-charging, political-sign, and flag carve-outs show the carve-out list slowly growing.

HOA Weekly's Tennessee Architectural Review coverage updates quarterly as the General Assembly, the Tennessee Court of Appeals, and the Tennessee Supreme Court act, and the federal frameworks — the Freedom to Display the American Flag Act, the FCC OTARD rule, and the Fair Housing Act — apply to Tennessee associations in addition to state law.

1. Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-27-201, 66-27-202 (Condominium Act of 2008; short title and applicability), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
2. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-402(a)(11) (Powers of unit owners' association; reasonable fines after notice and an opportunity to be heard), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
3. Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-9-201 through 66-9-207 (Solar Access Law of 1979; § 66-9-207 solar power facility agreements, excluding devices under five megawatts), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
4. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-602 (Display of flags by property owners; added by 2017 Tenn. Acts, ch. 331; amended by 2021 Tenn. Acts, ch. 80), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
5. Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts (structure of the Chancery Court, Circuit Court, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court) ↩
6. Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-27-101 through 66-27-123 (Tennessee Horizontal Property Act), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
7. Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-27-601 through 66-27-603 (Dedicatory Instruments; definitions, flags, and health/safety/water signage), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
8. Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-27-701 through 66-27-706 (Homeowners' Association; definitions, long-term-rental rights, nonessential-amenity assessments), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
9. Tenn. Code Ann. tit. 48, chs. 51-68 (Tennessee Nonprofit Corporation Act), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
10. Williams v. Fox, 219 S.W.3d 319 (Tenn. 2007), and Hughes v. New Life Dev. Corp., 387 S.W.3d 453 (Tenn. 2012) (restrictive covenants construed as contracts and strictly construed), as applied in Tennessee Court of Appeals authority ↩
11. Avalon Sections 4, 6 & 7 Homeowners Ass'n v. Chaudhuri, No. M2013-02346-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. 2014) (reasonableness standard for architectural committees), as applied in Royalton Woods Homeowner Ass'n v. Soholt (Tenn. Ct. App. 2019) ↩
12. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-603 (signage warning of health, safety, or dangerous natural water conditions), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
13. Tenn. Code Ann. § 2-7-143(b)(2) and (d) (Tennessee Freedom of Speech Act; political/campaign signs; applies to instruments executed or modified after July 1, 2017), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
14. 2026 Tenn. Acts, Pub. Ch. 914 (SB1787 / HB1875, electric vehicle charging stations; effective July 1, 2026), Tennessee General Assembly ↩
15. Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109-243, Congress.gov ↩
16. 47 C.F.R. § 1.4000 (Over-the-Air Reception Devices rule), Electronic Code of Federal Regulations ↩
17. 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(A) (Fair Housing Act reasonable-modification right), U.S. Code ↩
18. 2023 Tenn. Acts, Pub. Ch. 205 (SB863 / HB750), amending Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-403(g) (board of directors; reserve studies), Tennessee General Assembly ↩
19. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-415 (Lien for assessments), Tennessee Code (official free public access) ↩
20. 2024 Tenn. Acts, Pub. Ch. 691 (SB2150 / HB2249), adding Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-706 (nonessential-amenity special assessments), Tennessee General Assembly ↩
21. Driftwood Estates Property Owners Ass'n, Inc. v. Sweeney, No. E2023-00463-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 14, 2024) ↩
22. Timberlake Homeowners Ass'n, Inc. v. Timberlake Development, LLC, No. E2023-00808-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 3, 2024) ↩
23. Pandharipande v. FSD Corp., No. M2020-01174-SC-R11-CV (Tenn. Oct. 17, 2023) (amendments to restrictive covenants reviewed under arbitrary-and-capricious standard) ↩