West Virginia HOA Insurance Requirements

Section 1: Overview — How HOA insurance is regulated in West Virginia

West Virginia governs condominiums, cooperatives, and planned communities under one UCIOA-based statute, the West Virginia Common Interest Ownership Act (WVCIOA), which carries a statutory insurance mandate for covered communities on the UCIOA Section 3-113 model, with the recorded declaration remaining operationally central.¹ The insurance obligations described here are codified at W. Va. Code § 36B-3-113.¹ WVCIOA is based on the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, and its insurance section retains the 1982 UCIOA text; West Virginia did not adopt the 2008 UCIOA insurance revisions.² The statute applies to communities created on or after July 1, 1986, and while certain provisions reach earlier communities through the retroactivity list in W. Va. Code § 36B-1-204, the insurance section is not among them, so earlier condominiums fall under the earlier Condominiums and Unit Property Act (W. Va. Code § 36A) or the recorded declaration.⁶ The property-coverage obligation is keyed to building structure, so detached-home planned communities differ from condominiums.¹ Fidelity and directors-and-officers coverage are not statutory mandates; they are typically declaration-driven or lender-driven.⁴ Within the national framework, West Virginia is a UCIOA state alongside Alaska and Colorado, distinct from CC&R-primary states and from comprehensive prescriptive states like California and Florida.⁷ The detailed sections below set out the mandate, its applicability, and the federal and market overlay.

Section 2: The statutory insurance framework

2A. The WVCIOA insurance mandate

The insurance mandate for West Virginia common interest communities is codified at W. Va. Code § 36B-3-113, the West Virginia analog to UCIOA Section 3-113.¹ The section descends from the 1982 UCIOA, and its current text retains that 1982 language; West Virginia did not incorporate the 2008 UCIOA revisions to Section 3-113, including the authority to charge a deductible to an owner who is the source of a loss.² The mandate covers condominiums, cooperatives, and planned communities created on or after July 1, 1986.³ The property-coverage obligation is keyed to building structure rather than to the condominium-versus-planned-community label: subsection (a)(1) requires property insurance on the common elements (and, in a planned community, on property that must become common elements), and subsection (b) extends the property insurance to the units only for a building that is part of a cooperative or that contains units having horizontal boundaries described in the declaration.¹ For planned communities of detached single-family homes, the association's property obligation reaches the common elements, and owners insure their own dwellings.

The section requires two coverages: property insurance as described above, and commercial general liability insurance, including medical payments insurance, in an amount determined by the executive board but not less than any amount specified in the declaration.¹ Both obligations apply "to the extent reasonably available," and if the required coverage is not reasonably available, the association must promptly deliver or mail notice of that fact to all unit owners.¹ The property valuation basis is a total amount of insurance, after application of any deductibles, of not less than 80% of the actual cash value of the insured property at the time the insurance is purchased and at each renewal date, exclusive of land, excavations, foundations, and other items normally excluded from property policies; coverage need not include improvements and betterments installed by unit owners.¹

On proceeds, any loss under the property policy is adjusted with the association, and proceeds are payable to an insurance trustee or the association, held in trust, and disbursed first for the repair or restoration of the damaged property.¹ Damaged or destroyed property for which insurance is required must be repaired or replaced promptly unless the community is terminated, repair would be illegal under health or safety law, or 80% of the unit owners vote not to rebuild; the cost of repair or replacement in excess of insurance proceeds and reserves is a common expense.¹ On deductibles, the section recognizes deductibles in setting the valuation floor but contains no 2008-style authority to charge the deductible to the owner who is the source of the loss; the uninsured amount, including the deductible, falls to the association as a common expense unless the declaration provides otherwise.¹

2B. Applicability, retroactivity, and earlier communities

WVCIOA applies to all common interest communities created within West Virginia on or after the July 1, 1986 effective date, and the prior condominium and horizontal property acts do not apply to communities created after that date.⁸ Certain WVCIOA provisions apply to communities created before that date through the retroactivity list in W. Va. Code § 36B-1-204, but that list is limited to enumerated sections (such as tort and contract liability, the lien for assessments, and association records) and does not include the insurance section, § 36B-3-113.⁶ Earlier condominiums not reached by the insurance section instead fall under the earlier Condominiums and Unit Property Act, W. Va. Code § 36A, or under the recorded declaration.⁹ The practical implication is direct: a manager taking over an older West Virginia community must determine the creation date before relying on any general "West Virginia condo insurance" reference, because a pre-1986 community's coverage obligations are governed by § 36A or its declaration, not by § 36B-3-113, unless the community amended its declaration to opt into WVCIOA.⁶

2C. The declaration, corporate law, and the federal and market overlay

WVCIOA permits the declaration to require the association to carry other insurance and to carry any coverage it considers appropriate, and § 36B-3-113 may be varied or waived only for a community all of whose units are restricted to nonresidential use, so the recorded declaration read against the WVCIOA backstops is the practical rulebook.¹ Fidelity (crime) insurance and D&O liability insurance are not statutory mandates; no separate WVCIOA provision requiring them was located, so they are declaration-driven or lender-driven.¹ Where the association is incorporated, the West Virginia Nonprofit Corporation Act (W. Va. Code § 31E-1-101 et seq.) permits indemnification of directors and officers and permits, but does not require, the corporation to purchase D&O insurance, which is corporate-conduct context distinct from any insurance mandate.⁴

The federal and secondary-market overlay applies regardless of state law. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, and NFIP requirements are lender or federal requirements that frequently exceed any state-law floor and, in practice, drive fidelity, flood, and replacement-cost adequacy decisions. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide requires master property coverage "sufficient to cover the full replacement cost value of the project improvements including the common elements and residential structures," general liability with a minimum limit of $1,000,000 per occurrence, and a property deductible capped at 5% of the master coverage amount, none of which is a West Virginia statute.⁵ Fannie Mae also requires fidelity/crime coverage for most condo and co-op projects, exempting only those that would need coverage of $5,000 or less, again as a lender guideline rather than state law.¹⁰ Market context shapes real coverage decisions in West Virginia: riverine and flash flooding is the defining natural-hazard exposure, the June 23, 2016 floods killed 23 people in what the National Weather Service described as a once-in-1,000-years event, and flood is insured separately through the National Flood Insurance Program rather than under a standard master policy, which excludes flood; winter perils such as snow load, ice, and frozen pipes are secondary claim sources.¹¹ The West Virginia Legislature has found by statute that "there is no adequate private flood insurance market available in West Virginia," which underscores the central role of NFIP coverage and lender flood requirements.¹²

Section 3: Coverage allocation and compliance obligations

A. Association coverage obligations

The master policy must carry property insurance on the common elements (and, in a planned community, property that must become common elements) and commercial general liability insurance, including medical payments, in an amount set by the executive board, both to the extent reasonably available; these obligations apply to covered communities and are mandatory unless the community is wholly nonresidential.¹ Property coverage must total at least 80% of actual cash value after deductibles, excluding land, excavations, and foundations.¹ Because the obligation is keyed to building structure, in a detached-home planned community the association insures the common elements, not the individual dwellings.¹

B. Coverage allocation between association and owners

For a cooperative or a building whose units have horizontal boundaries (stacked or attached condominium units), the master policy must include the units but need not include improvements and betterments installed by owners, leaving the owner responsible for those items, interior finishes, and personal property, typically through an individual unit (HO-6) policy.¹ The statute expressly preserves an owner's right to obtain insurance for the owner's own benefit, and the association's policy is primary where a unit owner carries other insurance covering the same risk.¹ In a detached-home planned community, the owner insures the dwelling directly, and the master policy does not reach it.¹ The most common reader error is assuming the master policy covers the unit interior or owner improvements; under § 36B-3-113 it does not.

C. Deductibles, proceeds, and repair-or-replace

The section recognizes deductibles but does not authorize charging the deductible to an owner who is the source of the loss, so by default the deductible and any uninsured amount are borne by the association and become a common expense; a declaration may reallocate this, but the statute does not.¹ Proceeds are held in trust and applied first to repair or restoration, and the association must rebuild promptly unless the community is terminated, rebuilding would be illegal, or 80% of owners vote not to rebuild.¹ Because the cost of repair or replacement in excess of proceeds and reserves is a common expense, owners face loss-assessment exposure for uninsured amounts through their common-expense obligations.¹

D. Fidelity, D&O, and disclosure

Fidelity and D&O coverage are declaration-driven or lender-driven; § 36B-3-113 does not require them, and the Nonprofit Corporation Act only permits D&O insurance.⁴ On disclosure, an insurer issuing a policy under the section must provide certificates or memoranda of insurance to the association and, on written request, to any unit owner or holder of a security interest, and may not cancel or refuse to renew until 30 days after mailed notice.¹ A resale certificate must include a statement describing insurance coverage provided for the benefit of unit owners, which supports purchaser and lender diligence.¹³ Separately, standard master property policies exclude flood, so NFIP flood coverage is central for units in a Special Flood Hazard Area, and West Virginia insurers issuing fire policies that do not cover flood must give a prescribed notice: "THIS POLICY DOES NOT COVER DAMAGE FROM FLOOD. FOR INFORMATION ABOUT FLOOD INSURANCE, CONTACT THE NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM OR YOUR INSURANCE AGENT."¹⁴

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill in the past 24 months amended W. Va. Code § 36B-3-113 or otherwise directly changed West Virginia's association insurance obligations. The insurance section has not been amended since the original WVCIOA enactment; its bill history records action only in 1980, 1984, and 1986, with the 1986 enactment (Senate Bill 102) effective July 1, 1986.² The most prominent insurance-related enactment in the window, Senate Bill 800 (2025 Regular Session), amended the Insurance Holding Company Systems Act to require group capital calculation and liquidity stress test reporting effective January 1, 2026; it regulates insurer solvency and does not address association insurance, flood disclosure, or property-insurance availability, so it is not an HOA measure.¹⁵

Flood-related bills introduced in the 2025 session, including measures to let counties regulate floodplains under NFIP guidelines and to fund the state flood resiliency program, did not pass.¹⁶

B. Recent appellate rulings

No West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals or Supreme Court of Appeals opinion in the past 36 months adjudicates a common interest community's insurance obligations, coverage allocation, deductible allocation, or insurance-proceeds or rebuild questions under § 36B-3-113. The nearest recent appellate decision involving a West Virginia condominium association under Chapter 36B is Maher v. Camp 4 Condominium Association, Inc., 895 S.E.2d 836 (W. Va. Ct. App. 2023), which the Intermediate Court of Appeals decided on disclosure, remedies, and "gist of the action" grounds rather than on the insurance section, so it does not interpret § 36B-3-113.¹⁷

Trial-level insurance-allocation and coverage disputes proceed through the West Virginia Circuit Courts, with civil appeals now going to the Intermediate Court of Appeals of West Virginia (created effective July 1, 2022) and then, by discretionary review, to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.¹⁸

C. Active legislative debates

The most material recent pressure on West Virginia association insurance is market-driven rather than statutory, centered on flood insurance availability and cost after the 2016 floods, with the Legislature's flood resiliency fund repeatedly left unfunded and floodplain and flood-funding bills failing in the 2025 session.¹⁶

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

West Virginia sits in the first of three broad categories of association insurance regulation: UCIOA states that impose a statutory insurance mandate keyed to Section 3-113 and conditioned on reasonable availability, where West Virginia sits alongside Alaska and Colorado; the second category is comprehensive non-UCIOA prescriptive states, notably California (Davis-Stirling) and Florida (Chapter 718, with structural-inspection and reserve requirements); and the third is CC&R-primary and traditional-statute states such as Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi.⁷ West Virginia's distinctive features are an early (1986) adoption of the 1982 UCIOA that retains the 1982 insurance text rather than the 2008 revisions, a recently created Intermediate Court of Appeals (2022) that legacy content omits, and a flood-dominated insurance market. For a multi-state operator entering West Virginia, obligations track the UCIOA Section 3-113 pattern, but the retained 1982 text (no owner-source-of-loss deductible authority), the post-2022 appellate structure, the building-structure keying, and the flood-dominated market are West Virginia-specific factors. West Virginia has not moved to update its insurance section toward the 2008 UCIOA amendments; § 36B-3-113 remains as originally enacted.²

HOA Weekly's West Virginia Insurance Requirements coverage updates quarterly as the Legislature and the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia act and as the property-insurance market shifts. Federal frameworks (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, NFIP, and FHA fair-housing accommodation rules) also apply to West Virginia associations regardless of the state framework, with fuller treatment to come at /federal/ once that section is built.

Recommendations

• Immediate (any West Virginia community): Pull the recorded declaration and the current master policy together, because § 36B-3-113 sets only backstops and the declaration is the operative rulebook. Confirm the policy meets the 80% actual-cash-value floor and carries commercial general liability plus medical payments. If any unit is financed through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or FHA, apply the higher lender floors (100% replacement cost, $1,000,000 liability, 5% maximum deductible, fidelity/crime coverage) rather than the state minimum.
• For older communities: Determine the creation date first. If the community was created before July 1, 1986 and did not amend its declaration to opt into WVCIOA, do not rely on § 36B-3-113; the obligations flow from Chapter 36A or the declaration. Any pre-1986 community with a mortgaged unit should be reviewed by counsel before renewal.
• On deductibles and loss assessment: Because West Virginia has no owner-source-of-loss deductible statute, assume the association (and therefore all owners as a common expense) bears the deductible unless the declaration reallocates it. Boards that want owner-charged deductibles must amend the declaration; do not assume the statute allows it. Advise owners to carry unit (HO-6) policies with loss-assessment coverage.
• On flood: Treat flood as a separate NFIP and lender question, not a state mandate. For any building in a Special Flood Hazard Area, or any community with mortgaged units, confirm NFIP or approved private flood coverage independent of the master policy. A new FEMA flood map bringing structures into an SFHA should trigger an immediate flood-coverage review.
• Quarterly monitoring triggers: Re-examine this page's conclusions if the Legislature amends § 36B-3-113 (for example, to adopt the 2008 UCIOA revisions), if the Intermediate Court of Appeals or Supreme Court of Appeals issues an opinion interpreting the section, or if the state materially changes flood insurance regulation or funding.

Caveats

• No West Virginia appellate court has interpreted § 36B-3-113, so allocation, deductible, and proceeds disputes must be argued from statutory text and the declaration rather than from settled state case law. This is an area of legal uncertainty.
• The 80% actual-cash-value standard reflects the 1982 UCIOA text West Virginia retains; practitioners accustomed to replacement-cost UCIOA states or to Fannie Mae's 100% replacement-cost rule should not assume West Virginia statute requires replacement cost.
• The specific share of West Virginia properties inside FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas could not be verified from a single authoritative figure; documented sources instead report that a large majority of West Virginia communities are designated flood hazard areas and that tens of thousands of structures sit in high-risk floodplains, so the flood exposure characterization is well supported even though a single statewide percentage is not cited here.
• Federal and secondary-market requirements (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, NFIP) change through lender guides and lender letters more frequently than state statute; the figures cited here should be reconfirmed against the current Selling Guide at each renewal.

1. W. Va. Code § 36B-3-113 (Insurance), West Virginia Legislature ↩
2. W. Va. Code § 36B-3-113 bill history (enacted 1986 RS SB 102, effective July 1, 1986; not amended since), West Virginia Legislature ↩
3. W. Va. Code § 36B-1-101 (Short title; Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act), West Virginia Legislature ↩
4. W. Va. Code § 31E-8-857 (Insurance) and § 31E-8-856 (Indemnification of officers), West Virginia Nonprofit Corporation Act ↩
5. Fannie Mae Selling Guide B7-3-03, Master Property Insurance Requirements for Project Developments (lender requirement, not West Virginia statute) ↩
6. W. Va. Code § 36B-1-204 (Applicability to preexisting common interest communities), West Virginia Legislature ↩
7. University Commons Riverside Home Owners Ass'n v. University Commons Morgantown, LLC (W. Va. 2014) (identifying UCIOA states including Alaska and Colorado) ↩
8. W. Va. Code § 36B-1-201 (Applicability to new common interest communities), West Virginia Legislature ↩
9. W. Va. Code Chapter 36A (Condominiums and Unit Property), West Virginia Legislature ↩
10. Fannie Mae Selling Guide B7-4-02, Fidelity/Crime Insurance Requirements for Project Developments (lender requirement, not West Virginia statute) ↩
11. National Weather Service, Charleston WV (RLX), June 23, 2016 West Virginia flood event (23 fatalities); see also FEMA, "Milestones Mark West Virginia's Road to Recovery Five Years After 2016 Disaster" ↩
12. W. Va. Code § 33-49-1 (Flood insurance; legislative findings), West Virginia Legislature ↩
13. W. Va. Code § 36B-4-109 (Resales of units; certificate contents including insurance statement), West Virginia Legislature ↩
14. W. Va. Code § 33-17-6a (Notice of noncoverage of flood damages and availability of flood insurance), West Virginia Legislature ↩
15. S.B. 800 (2025 Regular Session), Relating to insurance holding company systems (effective Jan. 1, 2026), West Virginia Legislature ↩
16. West Virginia Watch, coverage of failed 2025 floodplain and flood-resiliency bills and the unfunded flood resiliency trust fund (Apr. 29, 2025) ↩
17. Maher v. Camp 4 Condominium Ass'n, Inc., 895 S.E.2d 836 (W. Va. Ct. App. 2023), No. 22-ICA-330 (decided on disclosure and remedies grounds, not § 36B-3-113); appellate jurisdiction per W. Va. Code § 51-11-4 ↩
18. Intermediate Court of Appeals of West Virginia, About the Court (opened July 1, 2022), West Virginia Judiciary; see also W. Va. Code § 51-11-3 ↩