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.

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 ↩
21. FinCEN, Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirements, final rule, 91 Fed. Reg. 52508 (Aug. 14, 2026), GovInfo (U.S. companies and U.S. persons exempt from beneficial-ownership reporting; 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380(b)(5)) ↩
22. FinCEN, Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirement Revision and Deadline Extension, interim final rule, 90 Fed. Reg. 13697 (Mar. 26, 2025) (domestic entities, including incorporated associations, exempt from BOI filing); see also H.R. 425, Repealing Big Brother Overreach Act, 119th Cong. (pending repeal of the Corporate Transparency Act) ↩