The amendment fight, and why the record looks contradictory

Two accounts have circulated about Representative Ryan Clancy's amendment to extend the grants to housing cooperatives as well as condominiums — one saying it was adopted, one saying it failed. Both describe a real event at a different stage.

In committee, on October 3, 2025, the Assembly Journal records: “Report Assembly Amendment 2 adoption recommended by Committee on Housing and Real Estate, Ayes 9, Noes 5.” Assembly Amendment 2 was Clancy's. It carried, with Republican votes on a committee that reported the bill itself 12-2.

On the floor, four days later, the record reads differently. Representative Murphy offered Assembly Substitute Amendment 1, which replaced the entire bill and with it the committee's amendments. Clancy re-offered his change as an amendment to the substitute, and the Assembly “laid on table, Ayes 54, Noes 41.” The substitute was then adopted and the bill read a third time and passed.

So the cooperative amendment was adopted in committee and killed on the floor. Note also that the only recorded roll call that day was the 54-41 tabling motion; no roll call is recorded for third reading, so the passage vote appears to have been a voice vote.

A separate amendment by Representative Lori Palmeri, requiring a grant recipient to give current occupants an opportunity to purchase their unit, was offered October 1, 2025 and met the same substitute.

Who registered, and the objection worth reading

Registered For on AB 455: the City of Milwaukee (which added that it “also supports increasing resources into the program”), the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, NAIOP Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Builders Association, Wisconsin Independent Businesses, and the Wisconsin Realtors Association.

Registered Other: Legal Action of Wisconsin, which recorded the concern that “the bill may have the effect of displacing LAW's low-income tenants from multifamily housing.” That is the displacement point the Palmeri amendment was written to answer, and it did not survive the substitute.

The Community Associations Institute's Wisconsin chapter listed AB 455 and SB 481 as monitored and took no registry position.

What it would have produced

Existing § 234.661 creates WHEDA's main street housing rehabilitation revolving loan fund, which makes loans. AB 455 would have added a grant arm dedicated to conversion — state money covering the declaration, legal and permitting costs of creating a condominium.

That is a pipeline of newly formed Wisconsin associations, and the buildings it would draw from are older rental stock: no reserve history, a developer-drafted declaration, and a first budget never tested against anything. Two things make that timing awkward. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide currently requires a replacement-reserve allocation of at least 10 percent of the budget, with a rise to 15 percent announced for applications dated on or after January 4, 2027 — and its Full Review, which examines the association's budget and reserves, no longer has a lighter Limited Review alternative alongside it. Wisconsin, meanwhile, imposes no reserve requirement of its own and immunises the decision not to fund one.

Our Wisconsin governing statute page covers how a chapter 703 condominium comes into existence, and reserve studies covers what a first-year budget is measured against.

The wider silence this sits inside

AB 455 is one of only three bills in the entire 2025-26 session that mention condominiums at all, and it mentions them only by borrowing the § 703.02(4) definition. The Legislature's 2025 Subject Index to Legislation carries no condominium heading at all. No bill introduced in the biennium proposed to amend chapter 703.

What to watch next

This is the likeliest Wisconsin condominium bill to return. It has an Assembly floor win banked, a Senate hearing already held, broad municipal and industry support on the registry, and no cost to general purpose revenue, since it redirects an existing WHEDA fund. What it does not have is a Senate committee vote, and the committee that declined to take one is the same one that would receive it again. Wisconsin does not pre-file, so any reintroduction begins with a cosponsorship memo in December 2026 at the earliest.