Kentucky HOA laws & resources.

Laws & regulations impacting Kentucky associations.

Kentucky now has a homeowners-association statute, and a great deal of advice still in circulation says it does not. The Planned Community Act was created by 2023 Ky. Acts ch. 23 and took effect on June 29, 2023. Alongside it Kentucky has two condominium statutes — a modern one for anything created since 2011 and the 1962 law that still governs everything older — a corporation statute that supplies most of the procedure, and a civil rights chapter that is the one place state law reaches past your declaration. Together with the federal laws that apply nationwide, that is the whole of it. HOPB hosts the full text of every one, each with a plain-language guide.

Kentucky HOA law guideEvery Kentucky statute that governs community associations, indexed by the decision you are making — starting with the one that trips people up, which is that the cut-off for the older condominium law is not written in that law at all.

Eight things are worth knowing about how Kentucky HOA law works:

• Which statute governs you is a question of what you own and when it was created. A planned community — lots, covenants and an association — falls under KRS 381.785 to 381.801, whose own definition excludes condominiums (§ 381.785(13)(a)). A condominium created after January 1, 2011 falls under the Condominium Act. A condominium created before that date falls under the Horizontal Property Law — and nothing inside that Act says so. The cut-off is in the other statute, at § 381.9103(5): “KRS 381.805 to 381.910 shall not apply to condominiums created after January 1, 2011…”
• The new Act is retrospective, but it is not retroactive. Section 381.786(1) reaches “all planned communities in this Commonwealth” — but “[u]nless specifically stated” it does not invalidate a provision already in a document recorded before June 29, 2023. Exactly two provisions specifically state. § 381.797(8) overrides caps on assessments and annual increases. And § 381.800(2) makes any contrary political-yard-sign provision of any existing governing document void — the one covenant Kentucky strikes outright, retroactively and statewide. Two limits ride with the Act: a current development or neighbourhood that does not have a homeowners’ association is carved out (§ 381.786(3) — though § 381.786(1) applies the Act notwithstanding subsection (3)), and a development whose sole common facility for sharing maintenance expenses is shared roadways is outside the definition of a planned community (§ 381.785(13)(b)1.).
• An older condominium is governed by two statutes at once, and one of them answers a question the other cannot. Section 381.9103(2) sends twelve sections of the Condominium Act back to condominiums created before 2011 — among them the board and the end of declarant control, the association’s powers including fines, the lien, records and the annual financial report, and the resale certificate. They apply “only to the extent of events or circumstances occurring after January 1, 2011” and they “do not invalidate existing provisions of the declaration, bylaws, plats, or plans”, with no proviso reversing that. The practical consequence is a records rule. The Horizontal Property Law’s own records section, § 381.865, was repealed in 2012 by the same act that amended § 381.9197 — so an owner in an older Kentucky condominium asks under KRS 381.9197, not § 381.865.
• The two modern Acts are not built the same way, and on records the older one is the stronger. The Condominium Act says its provisions “may not be varied by agreement, and rights conferred… may not be waived” except where it expressly allows (§ 381.9107), and it makes all financial and other records “reasonably available for examination by any unit owner” with no enumerated exceptions (§ 381.9197(1)). The newer Planned Community Act is built largely from defaults that yield to the declaration, and it lets a board withhold five categories of record (§ 381.795(2)). The financial-report thresholds differ too — 150 days and $100,000 / $250,000 / $500,000 in the condominium statute, against 180 days and $125,000 / $300,000 / $1,000,000 in the newer one.
• No lien in Kentucky community-association law is a super-lien. The planned-community lien is prior to other liens except taxes, governmental charges and anything recorded before it (§ 381.799(2)(b)) — so an ordinary purchase-money first mortgage outranks it. The condominium lien yields to liens recorded before the declaration, to a mortgage recorded before the assessment became delinquent, and to taxes, and it is extinguished after five years if enforcement has not begun (§ 381.9193(2), (5)). The 1962 Act uses a third test again, yielding to all sums unpaid on first mortgages of record (§ 381.883).
• Most of the procedure lives in the corporation statute, and one sentence there matters more than the rest. KRS 381.787(1) requires a planned community association to be a nonprofit corporation under KRS Chapter 273 or an unincorporated nonprofit association under Chapter 273A; KRS 381.9165 permits it for a condominium. So meetings, notice, quorum, proxies, the board and officers usually come from there. And § 273.233 ends: “The member’s right of inspection may be abolished or limited by the corporation’s articles of incorporation or bylaws.” The corporate records right is a default your own documents can switch off — which is exactly why an owner cites § 381.795 or § 381.9197 instead. Three more defaults surprise people: the board, not the members, controls the bylaws unless the documents say otherwise (§ 273.191); there is no statutory procedure for removing a director (§ 273.211(4)); and a director may never vote by proxy (§ 273.217(4)).
• Kentucky fair housing protects seven bases — and the list is not the same in every section of the chapter. In housing, § 344.360 protects race, color, religion, sex, familial status, disability and national origin, and § 344.360(11) is the provision an association’s rules run into: a reasonable modification at the disabled person’s expense, and a “refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services”. Elsewhere in the same chapter the list changes — § 344.370 adds age, § 344.120 drops sex and familial status, and § 344.400 drops disability and familial status. One more thing to read carefully: § 344.360 is addressed to a real estate operator, broker or salesman, not to “any person”, so whether it reaches your association directly turns on the § 344.010(8) definition. § 344.280(5) is addressed to “a person” — associations included — and forbids coercing, intimidating, threatening or interfering with anyone exercising those rights. The federal Fair Housing Act applies independently.
• Around the edges. Why a Kentucky covenant never expires (§ 381.222 exempts a restrictive covenant without right of entry or reverter from the thirty-year cut-off in §§ 381.219 and 381.221), the private transfer fee ban that expressly does not touch your assessments (§ 382.792(2)(g)), a city’s power to have a receiver appointed over the association of a planned community — active or inactive — that will not maintain infrastructure it is legally obligated to maintain (§ 381.803), the two director shields with different triggers, the seven-year construction repose measured from first occupancy, and the code-enforcement lien that outranks your association’s are all collected on the related-laws page.

Find HOA contact information & documents.

• Kentucky Homeowners’ Association Directory — visit HOPB’s HOA Directory and select Kentucky to reach the state’s corporate registry, the Kentucky business entity search↗, where you can search by community or subdivision name to find an association’s registered agent, principal office, officers and directors, and its filed documents. An association that does not appear there is not necessarily gone. It may never have incorporated — KRS 381.787(1) allows an unincorporated nonprofit association under Chapter 273A as the alternative, and a Horizontal Property Law regime needs no entity at all. Or it may have been administratively dissolved and be eligible for reinstatement that relates back as if it had never happened.
• Association records — four regimes, and which one you are in decides how strong your right is.
  • In a planned community: § 381.795. An owner may examine the association’s records — but the board may withhold five enumerated categories (§ 381.795(2)). Read the list before assuming a refusal is improper (Planned Community Act).
  • In a condominium: § 381.9197. “All financial and other records shall be made reasonably available for examination by any unit owner and his or her authorized agents” — with no enumerated exceptions. In a condominium created after January 1, 2011 that right also may not be waived or varied by agreement (§ 381.9107). A financial report follows within 150 days of the fiscal year end, at a standard that scales with revenue (Condominium Act). § 381.9197 reaches pre-2011 condominiums too (§ 381.9103(2)) — which is where the repealed § 381.865 went — but § 381.9107 does not, and the reach-back sections do not invalidate existing provisions of the declaration.
  • If incorporated: § 273.233. All books and records, for any proper purpose at any reasonable time — but the right “may be abolished or limited by the corporation’s articles of incorporation or bylaws” (Nonprofit Corporation Acts). Check your own documents before relying on it.
  • If unincorporated: KRS 273A.110. On reasonable notice and for a proper purpose, any record “material to the member’s or manager’s rights and duties under the governing principles”, with copying at labor and materials — and where the governing principles limit inspection the association “bears the burden of proof in demonstrating the reasonableness of any restrictions imposed” — except as to limits in written governing principles the requesting member assented to, where it does not. Read your governing principles before assuming the burden is on the association.
  • Do members have the right to inspect and copy HOA documents? — the general principles behind all four, in plain language.
• Recorded documents, and what recording actually does. A declaration, bylaws, plat, amendments and lien notices are recorded with the county clerk where the property lies. For the two condominium regimes recording is constitutive: a horizontal property regime is established by recording a master deed or lease (§ 381.815), and a condominium under the modern Act “may be created… only by recording a declaration” executed like a deed (§ 381.9125). For an ordinary subdivision covenant, recording does something narrower. KRS 382.270(1) is written for deeds, deeds of trust and mortgages conveying legal or equitable title — it makes an unacknowledged one invalid “against a purchaser for a valuable consideration, without notice thereof, or against creditors”, but since 2022 the same subsection provides that if such an instrument “is or has been otherwise lodged for record” it is “deemed to be validly lodged for record” and “all interested parties shall be on constructive notice of the contents thereof”. That is a notice-and-priority rule, not a rule that an unrecorded covenant binds nobody, so do not assume a covenant is unenforceable against you merely because of a recording defect. Recording is also where the association’s lien takes its place in the queue.
• Which statute governs your community. Ask what you own, then when it was created. Lots and covenants with an association → Planned Community Act. A condominium created after January 1, 2011 → Condominium Act. A condominium created on or before that date → Horizontal Property Law, plus the twelve reach-back sections. Then ask whether anyone ever incorporated, because that decides whether Chapter 273 or Chapter 273A supplies the procedure. The law guide works through both questions and says where each statute stops.
• Buying or selling in a Kentucky condominium. A seller must give the buyer the declaration (plats and plans excepted), bylaws and rules, and a certificate signed by the association’s manager or authorized agent covering eleven items — unpaid assessments, other fees, anticipated capital expenditures for the current year and, if known, the next two, reserves, the latest balance sheet and income statement, the budget, any unsatisfied judgment, any pending suit in which the association is a defendant, and any other suit naming it where more than $10,000 is in dispute, and insurance (§ 381.9203(1)). The association must furnish it within ten days of a written request and may not deny the validity of any statement in it. The buyer’s protection is real: the sales contract is voidable until the certificate is provided and for five days afterwards, or until conveyance, whichever comes first. A charge for preparing it is capped at the lesser of $225 or eighty percent of the unit’s monthly assessment (§ 381.9167(1)(l)). A unit owner can also demand a recordable statement of the unpaid assessments against his or her unit within ten business days, binding on the association (§ 381.9193(8)).
• Debt collection. Kentucky has no state statute on collection practices, so the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is the law when a third-party collector pursues unpaid assessments — and HOPB’s HOA debt collection FAQs answer the questions that come up most. Note what the state Acts do give you: interest on past-due assessments may not exceed eighteen percent a year in a condominium (§ 381.9191(2)), a lien action carries costs and reasonable attorney’s fees for the prevailing party (§ 381.9193(7)), and a condominium lien is extinguished unless enforcement begins within five years (§ 381.9193(5)).
• Disability, service animals and accessibility. The state provision an association’s rule runs into is § 344.360(11) — a reasonable modification at the requester’s expense, and a refusal “to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services”. Read it with the federal Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, whose title III reaches places of public accommodation↗; DOJ publishes a service animal FAQ↗ and its revised requirements on service animals↗. One Kentucky caution: § 344.010(4) excludes persons with current or past controlled-substance or alcohol abuse problems from the state definition of disability. That limits this chapter; federal law is separate.
• Servicemembers. The federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act caps interest and restricts foreclosure and default judgments against those on active duty — including on association assessments.
• HOPB’s blog covers association questions that come up across every state, from board conduct and reserve funding to enforcement and dispute resolution.