Texas HOA Director Qualifications

Section 1: Overview — Who can serve on a condominium or homeowners association board in Texas

Start with the basic split. Texas governs its homeowners associations under Chapter 209 of the Property Code — the Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act. Since the 2021 reform, that chapter fixes an owner-elected-board regime and sets conflict-of-interest limits on board members. Condominiums answer to a different set of chapters: Chapter 82 for declarations recorded on or after January 1, 1994, and Chapter 81 for the ones created before that. None of these chapters hands you a director-qualification checklist. They leave most eligibility screens to the governing documents.¹

Chapter 209 covers residential subdivisions of single-family lots, and some townhomes, but by its own terms it does not reach a condominium. Chapters 82 and 81 take the condominiums. Chapter 202 sits across both, supplying the rules courts use to construe and enforce restrictive covenants.² On the board itself, Section 209.00593 requires that any board member whose term has expired be elected by the owners who are members, and Section 209.0052 keeps a board member from steering association contracts to himself or to close relatives.³

Texas does not go as far as some states. Florida makes new directors take a four-hour certification course and file a written certification within 90 days of election, caps service at eight consecutive years, and bars candidates who owe assessments or carry unrestored felony convictions. California writes its own candidate and election rules. Texas imposes no certification requirement and no statutory term limit.⁴ The sections below lay out where the qualifications come from, then walk through eligibility, disqualification, and tenure.

Section 2: Where director qualifications come from

2A. The four chapters

Four chapters of the Texas Property Code frame how an association governs itself. Chapter 209, the Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act, applies only to a residential subdivision where a property owners’ association can collect assessments and membership is mandatory; Section 209.003(d) says plainly that the chapter does not apply to a condominium as Section 81.002 or 82.003 defines one.⁵ Chapter 82, the Texas Uniform Condominium Act, draws on the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act and governs every condominium whose declaration is recorded on or after January 1, 1994; a pre-1994 condominium can opt in by amendment.⁶ Chapter 81, the older Texas Condominium Act, governs condominiums created before January 1, 1994 — though Section 82.002(c) reaches back to apply certain Chapter 82 provisions to those older regimes.⁷ Chapter 202 supplies the rules for construing and enforcing restrictive covenants, and it applies to single-family communities and condominiums alike.⁸

On the board, Chapter 209 supplies the owner-elected regime in Section 209.00593. A board member whose term has expired must be elected by the owner-members; the board may appoint someone to fill a vacancy for the unexpired term; and an appointment that violates the section is void.³ Section 209.00591 frames the development period and the handoff from declarant control, and Section 209.0051 sets the open-meeting and advance-notice rules for regular and special board meetings — including the requirement that the board vote in an open, noticed meeting to approve an annual budget, or any amendment that raises the budget by more than 10 percent.⁹ Senate Bill 1588, which the 87th Legislature passed in 2021, is the source of much of this current Chapter 209 architecture.¹⁰ None of the four chapters imposes a certification or education requirement, a statutory term limit, or an automatic disqualification of an owner just for falling behind on assessments.

2B. The corporate-law layer: the Business Organizations Code

Most Texas associations incorporate as nonprofit corporations under Chapter 22 of the Texas Business Organizations Code. That chapter works as corporate scaffolding, not as an HOA statute.¹¹ Section 22.221 tells a director to act in good faith, with ordinary care, and in a way the director reasonably believes serves the best interest of the corporation; the same section builds in the business-judgment protection by putting the burden on the challenger to prove the director fell short.¹² The Code also sets baselines that hold unless the governing documents say otherwise: Section 22.204 requires at least three directors; Section 22.208 sets the term of office absent a contrary provision; Section 22.212 governs how vacancies get filled; and Section 22.203 says a director need not be a Texas resident or a member of the corporation unless the certificate of formation or a bylaw requires it.¹³ On removal, Section 22.211 lets an association follow any procedure its certificate of formation or bylaws set out; where there is no such provision, the persons entitled to elect a director may remove that director with or without cause, and removing an elected director takes a vote equal to the vote needed to elect.¹⁴

2C. The declaration, bylaws, and management certificate

Inside that statutory frame, the declaration and bylaws add the eligibility screens the statute leaves open — residency, age, good standing — and Section 22.203 expressly lets the certificate of formation or bylaws set other qualifications for directors.¹³ Section 209.004 requires a property owners’ association to record a management certificate with the county clerk in each county the subdivision sits in, and to file it electronically with the Texas Real Estate Commission no later than the seventh day after the county filing.¹⁵ The penalty for missing this is narrow but real: an owner does not owe attorney’s fees or interest the association runs up collecting a delinquent assessment during any period the certificate is not properly recorded and filed, and a lien for amounts due on a transfer to a bona fide purchaser is enforceable only for amounts that came due after the sale.¹⁵ TREC keeps the management-certificate database, but it does not license, register, or regulate associations, and it has no say over director eligibility or association governance.¹⁶ The order of precedence runs from the applicable Property Code chapter, to the declaration and bylaws, to the Business Organizations Code defaults, to the association’s own rules. In practice, a manager first decides whether a community is a single-family HOA under Chapter 209 or a condominium under Chapter 82 or 81, applies that chapter’s board rules, then reads the governing documents for any added eligibility screen.

Section 3: Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

3A. Eligibility to serve

For a single-family HOA, Section 209.00591(a) voids any provision in a dedicatory instrument that restricts an owner’s right to run for the board, except as the section itself allows, so an owner’s right to be a candidate is broadly protected by statute (Chapter 209; HOA).¹⁷ Texas does not require by statute that an HOA director be an owner or a member; under Section 22.203 of the Business Organizations Code a director need not be a member unless the certificate of formation or bylaws say so, which makes any owner-or-member requirement a documentary one (Business Organizations Code and the governing documents; HOA).¹³ On residency, Section 209.00591(a-1) lets the bylaws require one or more board members to live in the subdivision but forbids requiring all of them to, and the residency requirement does not apply during the development period (Chapter 209; HOA).¹⁷ Age and good-standing screens, where they exist, come from the declaration or bylaws, not from Chapter 209 (declaration and bylaws; HOA). For a condominium, Section 82.103(e) says the board the unit owners elect at the end of declarant control must have at least three members, who need not be unit owners, so a condominium director need not own a unit unless the declaration or bylaws require it (Chapter 82 and the governing documents; condominium).¹⁸ Treatment of co-owners, spouses, trustees, and entity representatives is generally a matter for the governing documents, subject to the Chapter 209 limit on household co-occupancy described next.

3B. Disqualification and removal

Chapter 209 holds the principal statutory disqualifiers for single-family HOA directors. Under Section 209.00591(a-3), a person may not serve on the board while cohabiting at the same primary residence with another board member — except in an association with fewer than 10 residences, and except during the development period for anyone cohabiting with a developer (Chapter 209; HOA).¹⁷ Under Section 209.00591(b), if the board receives written, documented evidence from a governmental law-enforcement record that a member was convicted of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude not more than 20 years before the evidence is presented, that member is immediately ineligible, automatically considered removed, and barred from serving again (Chapter 209; HOA).¹⁷ The conflict-of-interest rule sits in Section 209.0052: an association may contract with a sitting board member, a relative within the third degree of consanguinity or affinity, or a company in which such a person holds at least a 51 percent profit interest only if it seeks competing bids, the interested member stays out of the discussion and the vote, the relationship is disclosed, and the disinterested members certify compliance by resolution (Chapter 209; HOA).³ That rule limits how an interested director may act on a given matter; it does not bar the person from the board. Member removal of a director runs through Section 22.211 of the Business Organizations Code and the governing documents, and removing an elected director takes a vote equal to the vote needed to elect (Business Organizations Code and the governing documents; HOA and condominium).¹⁴ Outside the felony provision in Section 209.00591(b), delinquency or criminal history disqualifies a candidate or sitting director only so far as the declaration or bylaws provide; Texas sets no blanket statutory bar on delinquent owners serving (documentary, not a statutory bar; HOA and condominium).

3C. Board composition and terms

The number of directors comes from the governing documents, inside the statutory frame. Section 22.204 of the Business Organizations Code sets a floor of three directors for an incorporated association, and Section 82.103(e) sets the same minimum of three for the owner-elected condominium board (Business Organizations Code and Chapter 82; HOA and condominium).^{13, 18} Term length, staggered terms, and any classification of directors come from the governing documents and from Sections 22.208 and 22.209 of the Business Organizations Code; Texas sets no statutory director term limit, so the term-limit question is documentary (Business Organizations Code and the governing documents; HOA and condominium).¹³ The development-period and owner-elected-board transition, by contrast, is statutory. For a single-family HOA, Section 209.00591(c) lets a declaration provide a period of declarant control but requires that control end no later than the 120th day after 75 percent of the lots that may be created are conveyed to owners other than a declarant, after which owners elect the board members whose terms have expired under Section 209.00593 (Chapter 209; HOA).^{17, 3} For a condominium, Section 82.103(c) and (d) end declarant control no later than the 120th day after 75 percent of the units are conveyed and require that non-declarant owners elect at least one-third of the board within 120 days after 50 percent of the units are conveyed (Chapter 82; condominium).¹⁸

3D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Texas requires no certification or education for HOA or condominium directors. Chapters 209, 82, and 81, and Chapter 22 of the Business Organizations Code, are all silent on any such requirement — and that silence is the point. It is the clearest contrast with Florida, where Section 718.112(2)(d) makes each new residential-condominium director file a written certification and an educational certificate within one year before, or 90 days after, being elected or appointed, and suspends a director who fails to comply until the director complies.⁴ Conflict-of-interest disclosure is tied to the Section 209.0052 process for single-family HOAs: the interested member’s relationship must be disclosed, and the disinterested members must certify compliance, before the association contracts with an interested party (Chapter 209; HOA).³ Fiduciary duty runs across community types. For incorporated associations, Section 22.221 of the Business Organizations Code requires directors to act in good faith, with ordinary care, and in the best interest of the corporation, with the business-judgment protection built into the same section; and for condominiums, Section 82.103(a) makes each officer or board member liable as a fiduciary of the unit owners for his acts or omissions (Business Organizations Code; Chapter 82; HOA and condominium).^{12, 18}

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

4A. Recent bills

The 89th Legislature, meeting in 2025, took up one bill that spoke directly to board composition — Senate Bill 1935, which would have amended Sections 209.0051 and 209.00591 to change the declarant-control transition thresholds. It did not pass.

A separate enacted bill from the 89th Legislature, Senate Bill 711 (effective September 1, 2025), expanded transparency and management-certificate requirements for condominium associations under Chapter 82, but it does not change director qualifications, board composition, or removal.²⁰

4B. Recent appellate rulings

No qualifying published opinion from the Texas Courts of Appeals or the Supreme Court of Texas in the past 36 months squarely addresses HOA or condominium director eligibility, removal, board composition, conflict of interest, or the director standard of care. Civil HOA and condominium appeals run through the fourteen Texas Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Texas — never the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which hears only criminal matters.

4C. Active legislative debates

Reform advocates have signaled interest in reopening board-eligibility and developer-transition rules in future sessions. The failed Senate Bill 1935 is the marker: the declarant-control transition thresholds remain a live topic heading into the next regular session.¹⁹

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Texas is a heavy-touch state for homeowners associations. Chapter 209 fixes an owner-elected-board regime by statute (Section 209.00593), restricts board-member self-dealing (Section 209.0052), and adds targeted disqualifiers for single-family HOA directors — a household co-occupancy bar and an automatic removal for certain felony or moral-turpitude convictions within 20 years (Section 209.00591). Yet it imposes no certification or education requirement and no statutory term limit, and it leaves residency thresholds, age, and good-standing screens to the declaration and bylaws.¹⁷ That places Texas among the heavy-touch states, but with its own mix. Florida pairs a director certification or education requirement with an eight-consecutive-year term limit and automatic ineligibility for candidates who owe any assessment or carry an unrestored felony conviction; California writes statutory candidate and election rules into Civil Code Section 5105; and light-touch states such as Oklahoma leave director eligibility almost entirely to the governing documents.⁴ For a multi-state operator, the practical point is this: Texas fixes the board-election and conflict-of-interest framework by statute, but the controlling chapter differs between HOAs (Chapter 209) and condominiums (Chapter 82 or 81), and most fine-grained eligibility screens still come from the documents. Texas also keeps two courts of last resort, so civil HOA and condominium appeals run through the Texas Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Texas, not the Court of Criminal Appeals.

HOA Weekly refreshes its Texas director-qualifications coverage each quarter, as the Legislature and the Texas courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Texas associations remain subject to federal law — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the OTARD rule — in their broader operations.

Footnotes

1. Tex. Prop. Code Ch. 209, Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act ↩
2. Tex. Prop. Code Ch. 202, Construction and Enforcement of Restrictive Covenants ↩
3. Tex. Prop. Code §§ 209.00593, 209.0052 ↩
4. Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) (director certification, term limit, candidate disqualification); Cal. Civ. Code § 5105 (statutory candidate and election rules) ↩
5. Tex. Prop. Code § 209.003, Applicability of Chapter ↩
6. Tex. Prop. Code § 82.002, Applicability (Texas Uniform Condominium Act) ↩
7. Tex. Prop. Code Ch. 81, Condominiums Created Before Adoption of Uniform Condominium Act ↩
8. Tex. Prop. Code Ch. 202 ↩
9. Tex. Prop. Code §§ 209.0051, 209.00591 ↩
10. S.B. 1588, 87th Leg., R.S. (2021) ↩
11. Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code Ch. 22, Nonprofit Corporations ↩
12. Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 22.221, General Standards for Directors ↩
13. Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code §§ 22.203, 22.204, 22.208, 22.209, 22.212 ↩
14. Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 22.211, Removal of Director ↩
15. Tex. Prop. Code § 209.004, Management Certificates ↩
16. Texas Real Estate Commission, Why TREC Maintains an HOA Management Certificate Database ↩
17. Tex. Prop. Code § 209.00591, Board Membership ↩
18. Tex. Prop. Code § 82.103, Board Members and Officers ↩
19. S.B. 1935, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025), bill history ↩
20. S.B. 711, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025), bill history ↩