Alabama HOA laws & resources.

Laws & regulations impacting Alabama associations.

Alabama has separate laws for condominiums and for non-condominium homeowners' associations, and which one applies is date-based — together with the federal laws that apply nationwide. HOPB hosts the full text of every one of these Alabama statutes, each with a plain-language guide.

Alabama HOA Law Guide Browse every statute we host in full — the two condominium acts, the Homeowners' Association Act, the Nonprofit Corporation Law, the Fair Housing Law, and the Rights of Blind & Disabled Persons law — grouped by role, with the official text and a plain-language guide for each.

Three things are worth knowing about how Alabama's HOA law works:

• Which law applies is date-based — check that first. A condominium created before January 1, 1991 is governed by the Condominium Ownership Act, and one created on or after that date by the Uniform Condominium Act of 1991. A non-condominium homeowners' association is governed by the Homeowners' Association Act only if its declaration was recorded on or after January 1, 2016 (or it has voted to opt in); an older HOA otherwise runs on its recorded declaration. Nearly all associations must also be organized as nonprofit corporations under the Alabama Nonprofit Corporation Law (Title 10A, Ch. 3).
• Fair housing protects residents. The Alabama Fair Housing Law bars housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, and is enforced by ADECA. The reasonable-accommodation and assistance-animal rules that come up most in associations come from both that Alabama law — which spells out reasonable-modification, reasonable-accommodation, and accessible-design duties (§ 24-8-7) — and the federal Fair Housing Act it mirrors, while the Rights of Blind & Disabled Persons law adds equal access and a service-animal right that reaches housing.
• Around the edges. Service animals, debt collection under the federal FDCPA (Alabama has no state analog), and the corporate code an association runs on — plus the laws people wrongly assume apply, like the Open Records and Open Meetings acts, and the mistaken belief that a state solar-rights law overrides an HOA — are collected on the related-laws page.

Find HOA contact information & documents.

• The Alabama Secretary of State business search — visit HOPB's HOA Directory and select Alabama, or search the Secretary of State directly, to find an association's corporate status, board members, and articles of incorporation by the community or subdivision name. For HOAs created since 2016, the Secretary of State also keeps a public database of HOA governing documents — the bylaws and recorded CC&Rs that the association is required to file (§ 35-20-5).
• Association records. Beyond the public filings, owners have statutory rights to inspect their association's records — for a condominium, the association's financial and other records must be reasonably available to any unit owner (§ 35-8A-318); for a homeowners' association, key records must be furnished to a member or purchaser within 30 days (§ 35-20-13); and because associations are nonprofit corporations, their books and records may be inspected by any member for a proper purpose (§ 10A-3-2.32).
• HOA documents. The association's Declaration of Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs), amendments, bylaws, plats, deeds, and lien notices are recorded with the judge of probate in the county where the community is located (search under the community name); the CC&Rs must be recorded to be enforceable. Parcel information is available from the Alabama Department of Revenue.