Wisconsin's statutory HOA lien exists — capped at 8 mills, and most associations cannot use it
Wisconsin's statutory HOA lien exists — capped at 8 mills, and most associations cannot use it
2026-09-21 · Wisconsin · Compliance
Wisconsin condominium associations have an express statutory lien for unpaid assessments. Non-condominium homeowners associations are usually told they have none, and rely on the recorded declaration instead. That is not quite right — there is a statute, and it is stranger than its absence would be.
Wis. Stat. § 779.70 is headed “Maintenance liens.” Its history line reads 1977 c. 316, 449; 1979 c. 32; 1979 c. 176; 1989 a. 31; 1995 a. 224; 1997 a. 254 — untouched since 1997.1
Who qualifies
Section 779.70(1) does not speak of homeowners associations. It speaks of a narrower entity:
“Any corporation organized under the laws of this state as a nonprofit, membership corporation for the purpose of maintaining, improving, policing or preserving properties in which its members shall have common rights of usage and enjoyment, including… private (not public) parks, plazas, roads, paths, highways, piers, docks, playgrounds, tennis courts, beaches, water pumping plant and connecting pipes or sewer plant and connecting pipes, shall have the power to prepare and annually submit to its membership a budget of the expenditures which it proposes to make for the ensuing year.”
The cap, and the condition that lifts it
Section 779.70(2)(a) is where the arithmetic lives:
“Upon the adoption and approval of the annual budget by a majority of the members entitled to vote…, or upon the approval of a special assessment under par. (e), the governing board of the corporation may levy an assessment not in excess of 8 mills on each dollar of assessed valuation, to be known as a maintenance assessment, against all of the lots, the ownership of which entitles the owner thereof to the use and enjoyment of the properties controlled by the corporation, but the limitation of 8 mills on each dollar of assessed valuation shall not apply in any case in which the property owners or their predecessors in title have, by written contract, or by the terms of their deeds of conveyance, assumed and agreed to pay the costs of maintaining those properties in which the owners have common rights of usage and enjoyment.”
Eight mills is eight-tenths of one percent of assessed valuation — on a $300,000 lot, $2,400 a year. The cap disappears entirely where the owners or their predecessors assumed the maintenance obligation by written contract or in their deeds, which is what a properly drafted modern declaration does.
The procedure, which is unlike the condominium route
Three features separate § 779.70 from the condominium lien in § 703.165.
The membership votes, not the board. The levy follows “the adoption and approval of the annual budget by a majority of the members entitled to vote.” A board that adopts its own budget and assesses on that authority is operating under the declaration, not under this statute.
The clocks are short. Section 779.70(3) lets the board declare assessments due at any time after 30 days from the date of levy. Under sub. (4), where an assessment remains unpaid for 60 days from the date of the levy the board may file a claim for a maintenance lien, and under (4)(a) the claim “may be filed at any time within 6 months from the date of the levy.” Six months from levy, not from delinquency.
It is filed in court, not with the register of deeds. Section 779.70(4)(b): the claim “shall be filed in the office of the clerk of the circuit court of the county in which the lands affected by the levy lie.” That is the opposite of where property practitioners expect to look.
Foreclosure follows under sub. (6), applying §§ 779.09 through 779.13 — the construction-lien foreclosure machinery.
Why most Wisconsin associations do not use it
The eligibility language describes a mid-century amenity corporation: a nonprofit membership corporation maintaining private parks, roads, piers, beaches, tennis courts and water or sewer plant. Many older Wisconsin lake and resort developments fit it exactly. A modern platted subdivision association, whose declaration already obliges every owner to pay assessments and already grants a contractual lien, has no reason to reach for a statute that adds a membership vote, a six-month filing window and a millage cap.
Which is why the practical answer is that a Wisconsin HOA's lien is ordinarily a creature of its recorded declaration. Section 710.18, the only statute directed at Wisconsin homeowners associations, contains no lien provision at all.
The contrast on the condominium side
Chapter 703 gives a condominium association an express lien and makes liability unavoidable. Section 703.165(2) provides that a unit owner “shall be liable for all assessments, or installments thereof, coming due while owning a unit, including any assessments coming due during the pendency of any claim by the unit owner against the association or during any period in which the unit is not occupied by the unit owner or is leased or rented to any other person,” and that liability “may not be avoided by waiver of the use or enjoyment of any common element or by abandonment.”2
A Wisconsin court applied exactly that in February 2026, affirming a money judgment and a foreclosure judgment against a Dodge County unit owner who withheld a $1,200 special assessment while disputing the board's authority to levy it.
Our Wisconsin collections and liens page covers both routes, and foreclosure covers where each one ends.
One recent act that deliberately left all of this alone
2025 Wisconsin Act 32, enacted August 8, 2025, created Wis. Stat. § 710.27, banning the recording of “non-improvement contracts” — long-term service agreements that purport to create a lien on a home — with a civil remedy including attorney fees and criminal exposure of up to $10,000 or nine months.3
Association instruments are excluded three separate times. Section 710.27(3)(b) exempts instruments recorded under § 710.18(2)(a), § 710.20, § 779.70 or chs. 703 and 707. Subsection (3)(c) exempts “[a] declaration, covenant, or other instrument related to the creation or operation of a homeowners' association, housing cooperative, or other common interest community.” And (3)(e) exempts “[a] lien or encumbrance arising from a covenant or agreement contained in an instrument of conveyance that creates or imposes ongoing obligations, such as contributions for maintenance, access easements, commercial operations, or property management.”
The Legislature wrote the carve-out three ways. Nothing an association records is affected.
What to watch next
Section 779.70's eight-mill cap has not been revisited since 1997, and the assessed valuations it operates on have moved a great deal since. No 2025-26 Wisconsin bill proposed amending it, and the 2026 interim study-committee slate contains nothing on property or community associations, so it will not be examined before the 2027-28 session.
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