What triggers it, and what does not

The right attaches to “a management contract that contains an automatic renewal provision”. A fixed-term contract with a hard end date and no evergreen clause is outside the section. That is a meaningful boundary: the renewal clause is what determines whether § 55.1-1837 is available at all.

Where the clause is there, the timing is a floor, not a ceiling. “Not less than 60 days” means a board may give more notice but cannot give less.

The transition duties that came with it

Chapter 105 also amended the licensing side of the Code, in Title 54.1's common interest community manager provisions. The Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsman's own annual report describes the effect: on termination, managers “shall transfer and release all funds and close bank accounts…within a reasonable time” and without additional cost to the association.³

That half is arguably the more useful one. An association that can leave a contract but cannot get its bank accounts, ledgers and records back has not actually left.

Why the General Assembly did this

The state has a documented enforcement record behind the reform. DPOR's Investigations Section, working with the Office of the Attorney General, petitioned local circuit courts to place two common interest community management companies — Rosewood Management and Consulting Services and Tagare Corporation — into receivership following complaint investigations. The Ombudsman's report records that Tagare admitted violations of the Common Interest Community Board's regulations and agreed to revocation of its licence.

Receivership is the state's heaviest tool, and it is slow. Sixty days' notice is the fast one, and it sits in the hands of the board rather than the regulator.

What the section does not give a board

It is a termination right, not a damages right. It does not create a claim for a manager's past conduct, and it does not set what happens to fees already paid for a period not yet served — that remains a matter of the contract.

Nor does it change the licensing regime. A manager whose conduct warrants discipline is dealt with by the Common Interest Community Board, which in June 2025 imposed a $2,500 monetary penalty and revoked the licence of one firm after rejecting a milder recommendation from its own informal fact-finding process.

The conditions that change the answer

The contract must contain an automatic renewal provision. No evergreen clause, no statutory right.

Notice must be written. The section says so in terms.

The manager holds the same right. The exit is available to both sides on the same terms, which is worth knowing before a board opens a dispute with its manager.

“Reasonable time” is undefined. The fund-transfer and account-closure duty is not tied to a fixed number of days, and no Virginia decision has yet construed it.

What to watch next

Chapter 105 is the only 2025 amendment to appear anywhere in the Property Owners' Association Act, and the 2026 session added nothing to either statute. The pressure on the manager relationship has since moved to the regulatory layer, where a proposed rewrite of the Common Interest Community Board's manager regulations would add contract-content requirements, a fidelity-bond minimum and a bar on undisclosed vendor remuneration.