What the association keeps

The act preserves three distinct categories of association authority, and they are drawn narrowly enough to be worth reading in order.

Reasonable restrictions on the owner's own exterior. An association “may establish reasonable restrictions concerning the number, size, placement, and manner of placement or installation” of the charging station on the exterior of the owner's property. The statute supplies no definition of “reasonable” and no procedure for adopting or contesting such a restriction.

Control of the common elements, with one carve-out. An association may prohibit or restrict installation on a common element or common area outright. The exception swallows a large share of condominium and townhome parking: if a unit owner's designated parking location is within a common element, the association “shall not prohibit” installation there. The right attaches to the designated space, not to the ownership of the slab under it.

Indemnity and insurance. The installing owner “shall indemnify and hold the association harmless from all liability, including reasonable attorney's fees incurred by the association resulting from a claim, arising out of the installation, maintenance, operation, or use” of the station. The association may require the owner to obtain and maintain insurance covering such claims and to name the association as an additional insured on the policy. The indemnity is statutory and automatic; the insurance requirement is optional and has to be imposed by the association to exist.

The act also states plainly that an association “is not responsible for the maintenance of an electric vehicle charging station installed by a unit owner or an electric vehicle for which the electric vehicle charging station is used.” Nothing in the chapter shifts the cost of the electricity, the installation or the eventual removal onto the association's common expense budget.

The applicability clause is narrower than the effective date

Section 3 is unusual and easy to skim past. The act takes effect July 1, 2026 “and applies to actions taken, and declarations entered into, renewed, or amended, on or after that date.”

That is two triggers, not one. An action taken on or after July 1, 2026 is covered — which reaches a board's denial of an application made today under a covenant recorded in 1998. The second trigger, declarations “entered into, renewed, or amended,” adds documents that change after the date. The act contains no provision requiring associations to amend a declaration that conflicts with it, and no penalty, civil or otherwise, for one that still contains a charging ban on paper.

Two acts, one set of section numbers

The enrolled text of Public Chapter 914 designates its new homeowners' association part as sections 66-27-901 and 66-27-902. Those are the same numbers the enrolled text of Public Chapter 731 — the HOA fidelity bond act — assigns to its own new part. Both were passed in the same session; the fidelity bond act was signed on April 23, 2026, eight days before this one.²

One of the two had to be redesignated in the code. Secondary compilations of Title 66, Chapter 27 report that the fidelity bond part kept Part 9 at sections 66-27-901 to 66-27-902, and that the charging provisions were moved to a new Part 10 at sections 66-27-1001 and 66-27-1002, with the condominium-side section placed at 66-27-419.⁴ We were not able to confirm those final assignments against the official code, and the acts themselves carry only the drafters' numbering — so a citation taken from the session law and a citation taken from the current code will not match for this act.

What is unresolved

No Tennessee appellate court has construed either new section, and three questions sit on the face of the text.

The first is the meaning of “designated parking location.” The term is not defined in either section. In a condominium it could describe an assigned limited common element, a deeded space, or a space allocated by board resolution and revocable at the board's discretion; the statute does not say which of those it reaches.

The second is the reach of the condominium section to pre-2009 buildings. Section 1 placed the condominium rule in Part 4 of Chapter 27. Condominiums created before January 1, 2009 remain governed by the Horizontal Property Act, and section 66-27-202 applies only an enumerated set of 2008 Act provisions back onto them. A section added to Part 4 in 2026 does not appear in that enumeration. Whether a pre-2009 condominium is instead reached by the homeowners' association part — whose definition speaks of a “residential subdivision” — is unsettled.

The third is what makes a restriction “reasonable.” Tennessee courts review covenant enforcement and architectural decisions under established covenant-construction rules, but the statute imports no standard of its own, no application deadline, and no remedy for an owner whose application is refused. The remedy question is left to general law.