Virginia HOA Director Qualifications
Section 1: Overview — Who can serve on an HOA or condominium board in Virginia
Start with the architecture. Virginia runs its homeowners associations under the Property Owners’ Association Act and its condominiums under the Condominium Act — two statutes the legislature recodified into Title 55.1 back in 2019. It regulates the people who manage these communities through a Common Interest Community Board. But when it comes to who may actually sit on a board, the state mostly steps back, leaving that question to the governing documents and the Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act. No statutory certification. No term limit. No automatic disqualification.
The Property Owners’ Association Act sits at Title 55.1, Chapter 18 (§§ 55.1-1800 through 55.1-1836), and it governs planned-community homeowners associations.1 The Virginia Condominium Act sits next door at Chapter 19 (§§ 55.1-1900 through 55.1-1995), and it governs condominiums.2 Because the 2019 recodification lifted both out of the old Title 55, older citations such as § 55-508 et seq. and § 55-79.39 et seq. no longer point anywhere useful.
The Common Interest Community Board, housed within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, registers associations and licenses the common interest community managers who run them.3 A separate Common Interest Community Ombudsman fields certain owner complaints.4
That sets Virginia apart from a heavy-touch state like Florida. There, Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) tells a newly elected or appointed condominium director to certify in writing, within 90 days, that they have read the governing documents and will uphold them — or else complete a state-approved certification course. Florida also bars anyone convicted of a felony from the board unless their civil rights have been restored for at least five years, and it keeps an owner who is delinquent on any assessment off the ballot.5 Virginia’s two acts impose no comparable screens.
The sections that follow trace where Virginia’s director-qualification rules come from, lay out the operative eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules, and round up the recent legislative and judicial activity that bears on who sits on a board.
Section 2: Where director qualifications come from
2A. The two statutes
Virginia runs two parallel common interest community statutes. The Property Owners’ Association Act, Title 55.1, Chapter 18 (§§ 55.1-1800 et seq.), governs planned-community homeowners associations.1 By its own terms in § 55.1-1801(D), the Act steps aside for condominiums created under the Condominium Act, and for cooperatives, time-shares, and membership campgrounds.6 The Virginia Condominium Act, Chapter 19 (§§ 55.1-1900 et seq.), governs condominiums.2 Two more statutes fill out the map: a Horizontal Property Act (§ 55.1-2000 et seq.) still governs pre-1974 condominium regimes, and the Virginia Real Estate Cooperative Act (§ 55.1-2100 et seq.) governs cooperatives. The 2019 recodification carried the old Title 55 provisions forward without changing what they say, so practitioners should cite the current Title 55.1 sections.
Each act builds an operating framework for the board; neither builds a system for screening candidates. Under the Property Owners’ Association Act, § 55.1-1816 sets the open-meeting rules for the board of directors,7 and § 55.1-1804 governs the documents a declarant must hand over when control transfers to an owner-elected board.8 The Condominium Act runs parallel, with § 55.1-1943 governing the period of declarant control over the condominium and its executive board.9 Both acts spell out lot-owner and unit-owner rights, assessment authority, and reserve duties.
What neither act does is just as important. Neither imposes a director certification or education requirement. Neither sets a term limit. Neither automatically disqualifies a delinquent owner or a person with a criminal history. The acts simply say nothing on these points — which is why the eligibility screens come from the corporate code and the governing documents rather than the property statutes.
2B. The corporate-law layer and the regulator
Most Virginia associations incorporate as nonstock corporations under the Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act, Title 13.1, Chapter 10 (§ 13.1-801 et seq.).10 That Act is the corporate scaffolding for the association, and it is the principal source of the rules on who may serve. It speaks to director qualifications (§ 13.1-854),11 the number and election of directors (§ 13.1-855), terms (§ 13.1-857) and staggered terms (§ 13.1-858), and the removal of directors (§ 13.1-860),12 and it sets the general standard of conduct directors owe (§ 13.1-870).13 It is a general corporate-governance statute rather than an HOA statute, but it governs incorporated associations precisely because they are nonstock corporations.
The Common Interest Community Board sits alongside these statutes, again within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. Under § 54.1-2349, the Board licenses common interest community managers, sets the training and credential criteria for that license, and registers associations.3 A separate Common Interest Community Ombudsman, established under § 54.1-2354.3, assists association members and takes in notices of final adverse decisions through an association complaint process.4 Notice the boundary here: this regime regulates managers and registration. It does not license, certify, or screen the volunteer directors who serve on the board.
2C. The declaration and bylaws
Inside that statutory frame, the declaration and bylaws supply the specific eligibility screens. The Nonstock Corporation Act confirms the arrangement: § 13.1-854 provides that the articles of incorporation or the bylaws may prescribe qualifications for directors, and that unless they do, a director need not be a resident of the Commonwealth or a member of the corporation.11 A community-association-specific provision, § 13.1-814.1, lets the director-related provisions of several Nonstock Corporation Act sections live in the bylaws rather than the articles.14
The order of precedence runs in a straight line: the applicable property statute first — Chapter 18 for a homeowners association, Chapter 19 for a condominium — then the declaration and bylaws, then the Nonstock Corporation Act’s default rules, and finally any board-adopted rules. So a manager or attorney works from the top down. Decide first whether the community is a homeowners association under Chapter 18 or a condominium under Chapter 19. Apply that act’s board provisions. Then read the declaration, the bylaws, and the Nonstock Corporation Act to find the eligibility screens for owner-elected directors.
Section 3: Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules
3A. Eligibility to serve
Virginia imposes no statutory requirement that a director own a lot or a unit. The default under the Nonstock Corporation Act, § 13.1-854, runs the other way: a director need not even be a member of the corporation unless the articles or bylaws say so.11 Where a membership or ownership requirement does exist, then, it is documentary and corporate rather than a property-statute mandate — and it applies to homeowners associations and condominiums alike.
Both acts confirm that owner status feeds eligibility, but both hand the detail back to the governing documents. Under the Property Owners’ Association Act, § 55.1-1807 lists, among the statutory rights of a lot owner, the right to serve on the board of directors if duly elected and a member in good standing — unless the declaration provides otherwise.15 The Condominium Act states the same rule for unit owners in § 55.1-1939, where the right to serve on the executive board is subject to the condominium instruments.16 Neither act defines “good standing,” so an association has to look to its own documents, which usually tie the phrase to the absence of delinquent assessments or pending rule violations.
Residency, age, and similar screens are not the property acts’ work either. Where they appear, they come from the declaration and bylaws, backed by the Nonstock Corporation Act default in § 13.1-854.11 How an association treats co-owners, spouses, trustees, and the representatives of entity owners is, again, a matter for the governing documents; some declarations expressly open eligibility to the spouse of an owner or to a designated representative of an entity that owns a lot.
3B. Disqualification and removal
For an incorporated association of either type, the Nonstock Corporation Act, § 13.1-860, governs how the members remove a director. The members may remove one or more directors with or without cause, unless the articles of incorporation say removal must be for cause only. Where cumulative voting is not authorized, a director comes off the board if the votes cast to remove make up a majority of the votes entitled to be cast at an election of directors, unless the articles demand a greater vote.12 The mechanics of calling and running that removal vote are taken up separately; the point on the qualification side is simply that the power to remove rests with the members, under § 13.1-860 and the governing documents.
Virginia keeps no statutory bar that disqualifies a delinquent owner, or a person with a criminal history, from running or from staying on the board. Any such disqualification is documentary — it grows out of a governing-document “good standing” requirement of the kind § 55.1-1807 and § 55.1-1939 point to,15,16 not out of a statutory screen. The limits on a sitting director come instead from conflict-of-interest law: the Nonstock Corporation Act, § 13.1-871, sets the conditions under which a transaction in which a director holds a personal interest is not voidable, including disclosure and approval by the disinterested directors or the members.17 That section polices conflicted transactions; it does not, by itself, knock a director off the board.
3C. Board composition and terms
The governing documents set the number of directors, within the statutory frame. Under the Nonstock Corporation Act, § 13.1-855, the board is made up of one or more individuals, with the number fixed in the bylaws or in accordance with them.12 Section 13.1-814.1 confirms that, for community associations, these provisions can ride in the bylaws.14
Term length and staggering are corporate and documentary too. Section 13.1-857 provides that, absent a provision fixing a term, a director serves one year, and § 13.1-858 authorizes staggered terms.12 Virginia sets no statutory term limit on association directors. The property acts and the Nonstock Corporation Act say nothing about it, so any limit has to come from the declaration or the bylaws.
The handoff from declarant to an owner-elected board belongs to the property statutes. Under the Property Owners’ Association Act, § 55.1-1804 fixes the declarant’s duty to deliver the association’s books and records once a majority of the board other than the declarant are owners of improved lots and the declarant no longer holds a majority of the votes.8 Under the Condominium Act, § 55.1-1943 governs the period of declarant control, and it provides that no declarant-control authorization survives past the time limit set in the condominium instruments, or past the point where units representing three-fourths of the undivided interests in the common elements have been conveyed — whichever comes first.9
3D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties
Virginia requires no certification and no course as a condition of serving on a board. That is a clean contrast with Florida, where Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) conditions service on a written certification or a state-approved course within 90 days of election.5 Virginia’s property acts and its Nonstock Corporation Act carry no such requirement, for homeowners associations or condominiums.
The main ongoing duty is disclosure of conflicts, and it flows from the Nonstock Corporation Act, § 13.1-871, which expects a director to disclose the material facts of an interested transaction.17 The fiduciary baseline beneath that comes from § 13.1-870, which requires a director to discharge the role in line with the director’s good-faith business judgment of what best serves the corporation.13 And a related provision, § 13.1-870.1, caps the damages a court may assess against a director who serves a community association at the compensation that director received in the prior 12 months — with an exception for willful misconduct or a knowing violation of the criminal law.18
The Common Interest Community Board’s manager-licensing regime, under § 54.1-2349, touches the board only at the management layer. It licenses the common interest community manager the association hires; it does not license or certify the directors.3 So a manager vetting a candidate, or running a removal vote, should keep the manager-licensing rules and the director-eligibility rules on separate tracks.
Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity
4A. Recent bills
Two enacted measures bear on director qualifications here — one rewriting the corporate statute that sits beneath most associations, the other clarifying how the homeowners-association meeting rules apply.
SB 246 / HB 439 · 2026 Regular Session
Companion bills SB 246 and HB 439 cleared the 2026 Regular Session and make numerous revisions to the Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act.[19] The legislation lets members bring derivative proceedings and lets courts remove directors in certain circumstances; the Virginia Legislative Action Committee amended the language to keep community-association covenants superior to any inconsistent corporate documents.[20] Because most Virginia associations are nonstock corporations, that new judicial power to remove a director will reach incorporated homeowners associations and condominiums once the Act takes effect on January 1, 2027.
| Property managers | From January 1, 2027 a new judicial route to remove a director will exist, separate from member removal, widening the escalation options when a board member is accused of serious misconduct. |
| HOA board members | Expect the revised Act to add a court-ordered removal mechanism and member derivative actions, and review your bylaws against it before the effective date. |
| Community association attorneys | Map the 2026 revisions against existing articles and bylaws, especially the new director-removal and derivative-proceeding provisions, ahead of January 1, 2027. |
| Homeowners | You gain an additional path through the courts to address a director’s serious misconduct, on top of the member-removal vote. |
HB 723 · Chapter 82 · 2024 Regular Session
HB 723, enacted as Chapter 82, amended § 55.1-1816 of the Property Owners’ Association Act so that the Act governs how board-of-directors meetings are conducted whether or not the association is incorporated — while making clear that those requirements do not override corporate authorities otherwise set by law or the governing documents.[21] The change speaks to how the board-governance rules reach incorporated associations; it does not touch who may serve as a director.
| Property managers | The Act’s open-meeting and board-conduct rules apply regardless of incorporation status, clearing up a prior point of confusion. |
| HOA board members | An incorporated board cannot lean on the Nonstock Corporation Act to dodge the Act’s meeting requirements, though it keeps its other corporate authorities. |
| Community association attorneys | The amendment confirms how the Property Owners’ Association Act and the Nonstock Corporation Act interact on board-meeting conduct. |
| Homeowners | Your rights to notice of and participation in board meetings apply whether or not the association is incorporated. |
4B. Recent appellate rulings
No published decision from the Court of Appeals of Virginia or the Supreme Court of Virginia in the past 36 months squarely takes up HOA or condominium director eligibility, director removal, board composition, or the director standard of care. The closest the courts have come is Leggett v. The Sanctuary at False Cape Condominium Association, Inc., Record No. 240270 (Va. May 2, 2024).
Leggett v. The Sanctuary at False Cape Condominium Association, Inc.
The dispute began when unit owners petitioned for a special meeting to remove the board and rescind a special assessment, the board turned the petition down, and the owners sued. The Court held that “the circuit court committed reversible error because it determined that Code § 8.01-189 precluded it from even considering whether to issue an injunction,” granted the petition, reversed, and remanded so the lower court could weigh the merits of the owners’ injunction request.[22] The holding turns on injunctive-relief procedure in a declaratory-judgment case, not on the substantive law of director removal, so it lays down no director-qualification rule. It earns a place here only because it grew out of a board-removal effort.
| Property managers | No decision in this window shifts director eligibility or removal, so the governing documents and the Nonstock Corporation Act stay controlling. |
| HOA board members | Deny an owner petition tied to a removal effort and you can face litigation — and a court may reach the merits of an injunction request. |
| Community association attorneys | Qualification and removal disputes still run on statute and the documents; Leggett bears on injunction procedure, not director eligibility. |
| Homeowners | Pursue board removal under the governing documents and the corporate code, and you may seek injunctive relief in the right procedural posture. |
4C. Active legislative debates
No active proposal in the current period would add a Florida-style director certification, a statutory term limit, or an automatic disqualification under either act. The most consequential change on the horizon is still the 2026 Nonstock Corporation Act revisions, which take effect January 1, 2027.
Section 5: National positioning and related coverage
Virginia is a heavy-touch state for common interest community regulation. Two comprehensive statutes and a real common interest community regulator govern how associations operate — and yet the question of who may serve on a board is left largely to the governing documents and the Nonstock Corporation Act, with no statutory certification, no term limit, and no automatic disqualification. So Virginia is heavy-touch in structure but light-touch on the narrow question of eligibility. Compare Florida, also heavy-touch, which piles on a statutory director certification or education requirement, automatic disqualification of certain delinquent owners and felons under Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d), and the loss of office by a director more than 90 days delinquent on a monetary obligation under Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(n).5,23 Compare, at the other end, a light-touch state like Wyoming, where director eligibility is documentary and corporate. For an operator working across several states, the practical takeaway is this: Virginia regulates managers and registration heavily and runs two parallel acts, but the eligibility screens for directors come from the declaration, the bylaws, and the corporate code. One structural note for litigation planning: the Court of Appeals of Virginia took jurisdiction over most civil appeals on January 1, 2022, so association-governance appeals now pass through that court before they reach the Supreme Court of Virginia.24
HOA Weekly refreshes its Virginia director-qualifications coverage each quarter, as the General Assembly, the Common Interest Community Board, and the Virginia courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Virginia associations still answer 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 — across their broader operations.
Footnotes
- Code of Virginia, Title 55.1, Chapter 18 (Property Owners’ Association Act), §§ 55.1-1800 through 55.1-1836 ↩
- Code of Virginia, Title 55.1, Chapter 19 (Virginia Condominium Act), § 55.1-1900 ↩
- Code of Virginia § 54.1-2349, Powers and duties of the Common Interest Community Board ↩
- Code of Virginia § 54.1-2354.3, Common Interest Community Ombudsman; appointment; powers and duties ↩
- Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d), director certification and disqualification (felony and assessment delinquency) ↩
- Code of Virginia § 55.1-1801(D), Applicability of the Property Owners’ Association Act ↩
- Code of Virginia § 55.1-1816, Meetings of the board of directors ↩
- Code of Virginia § 55.1-1804, Documents to be provided by declarant upon transfer of control ↩
- Code of Virginia § 55.1-1943, Control of condominium by declarant ↩
- Code of Virginia, Title 13.1, Chapter 10 (Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act), § 13.1-801 et seq. ↩
- Code of Virginia § 13.1-854, Qualification of directors ↩
- Code of Virginia, Title 13.1, Chapter 10, Article 8 (Directors and Officers), §§ 13.1-855, 13.1-857, 13.1-858, 13.1-860 ↩
- Code of Virginia § 13.1-870, General standards of conduct for directors ↩
- Code of Virginia § 13.1-814.1, Special provisions for community associations ↩
- Code of Virginia § 55.1-1807, Statement of lot owner rights (right to serve on the board of directors) ↩
- Code of Virginia § 55.1-1939, Statement of unit owner rights (right to serve on the executive board) ↩
- Code of Virginia § 13.1-871, Director conflict of interests ↩
- Code of Virginia § 13.1-870.1, Limitation on liability of officers and directors; exception ↩
- SB 246, 2026 Regular Session, Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act; numerous revisions to Act, delayed effective date ↩
- Community Associations Institute / Virginia Legislative Action Committee, 2026 Virginia End of Legislative Session Report ↩
- HB 723, 2024 Regular Session, Chapter 82 (amending Code of Virginia § 55.1-1816) ↩
- Leggett v. The Sanctuary at False Cape Condominium Association, Inc., Record No. 240270 (Va. May 2, 2024) ↩
- Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(n), abandonment of office by director delinquent more than 90 days ↩
- Virginia State Bar, Virginia Lawyer, on the January 1, 2022 expansion of the Court of Appeals of Virginia’s civil jurisdiction (SB 1261; Code of Virginia § 17.1-405) ↩