Minnesota HOA laws & resources.

Minnesota legislates community associations three times over. A condominium created before 1 August 1980 whose owners recorded a declaration under it has the Minnesota Condominium Act, ch. 515. One created after that date has the Uniform Condominium Act, ch. 515A. Everything created on or after 1 June 1994 — condominium, cooperative or planned community — has the Common Interest Ownership Act, ch. 515B. Underneath whichever is yours sits the Nonprofit Corporation Act, and alongside it the Minnesota Human Rights Act and the federal laws that apply nationwide. HOPB hosts the full text of every one.

Minnesota HOA law guideEvery Minnesota statute that governs community associations, indexed by the decision you are making — beginning with whether the Common Interest Ownership Act reaches your community at all.

Nine things are worth knowing about how Minnesota HOA law works:

• MCIOA may not govern you at all. Unless the community elects in, it does not apply to one made up solely of platted lots for detached single-family dwellings where no association is obliged to maintain any building containing a dwelling (§ 515B.1-102(e)(2)) — the ordinary Minnesota covenanted subdivision. Cooperatives and planned communities created before 1 June 1994 are out too, as are 3-to-12-unit planned communities created between then and 1 August 2006.
• And yet it reaches backwards into older condominiums. About forty MCIOA sections apply to ch. 515 condominiums — the lien, reserves, records, meetings, voting, insurance, attorney’s fees — and they prevail over the declaration and bylaws of a condominium created before 1 August 1999 (§ 515B.1-102(b)(2)). For a ch. 515A condominium, MCIOA governs events on and after 1 June 1994 — except as to the declarant, who stays under ch. 515A.
• Your association can foreclose without going to court. MCIOA gives it a statutory power of sale and sends it to chapter 580, so an assessment lien can be foreclosed by advertisement exactly as a mortgage is (§ 515B.3-116(h)(1)). What that involves, and how long you have to redeem, is a page of its own — the period is six months by default but can be twelve, or as little as five weeks.
• The lien is silent, and it starts early. It attaches from the time the assessment becomes due, and where an assessment is payable in instalments the whole amount is a lien from the first instalment. Nothing is recorded to warn you — recording the declaration is itself record notice and perfection (§ 515B.3-116(a)).
• Six months survive a mortgage foreclosure — counted back from the end of redemption. Where a first mortgage recorded after 1 June 1994 is foreclosed and nobody redeems, the buyer takes subject to the assessments levied under § 515B.3-115(a), (e)(1) to (3), (f) and (i) that came due, without acceleration, in the six months immediately preceding the end of the owner’s period of redemption (§ 515B.3-116(c)) — not the six months before the lawsuit.
• The association has a clock too. Proceedings to enforce an assessment lien must start within three years after the last instalment becomes payable, or they are barred (§ 515B.3-116(d)).
• Check you are reading the right section — several come in twins. MCIOA splits reserves, assessments, plats and declarant duties into paired sections differing by a trailing digit, and which governs depends on when your community was created or when its fiscal year begins (§ 515B.1-102(h), (i)). Reserves are § 515B.3-114 or § 515B.3-1141.
• Records are open, and copying is capped. MCIOA opens the association’s membership, meeting, contract and financial records to owners and caps the charge at the association's actual costs — including searching for and retrieving the records and staff time — or, where the request is 100 pages or fewer of black-and-white letter or legal copies, 25 cents a page instead (§ 515B.3-118). For an incorporated association the Nonprofit Corporation Act adds a members’ and directors’ inspection right over articles, bylaws, accounting records and six years of minutes (§ 317A.461).
• Three rights do not depend on any of this. Chapter 500 carries a trio built on the same definition — each reaching a common interest community regardless of whether it is subject to chapter 515B, and reaching residential communities that are not common interest communities at all. Section 500.215 voids any covenant, rule or association document limiting display of the United States and Minnesota flags. Section 500.216 bars an association from prohibiting or refusing to permit a roof-mounted solar energy system. Section 500.217 bars it from prohibiting licensed family child care. Each has its own conditions — the detail is on the related-laws page.

Discrimination. The Minnesota Human Rights Act reaches housing through § 363A.09, and and the classes it protects include creed, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and status with regard to public assistance alongside race, colour, religion, national origin, sex, disability and familial status. Compare them against the federal Fair Housing Act before assuming a claim exists in only one place. It also reaches any record or inquiry that expresses such a limitation. Separately, § 507.18 makes a discriminatory covenant in a written instrument void regardless of the year it was written, leaving the rest of the instrument intact.

Debt collection. An association collecting its own assessments is generally not a “collection agency” — ch. 332 defines one as collecting for others — so the state rules bite on the agency it hires, which must be licensed or registered. The clause worth knowing is § 332.37(12): violating the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is a Minnesota violation too.

Everything else. Statutory new-home warranties of one, two and ten years that MCIOA expressly does not abrogate; a contractor’s lien that stops at the unit it improved; six-year limitations and conciliation court; solar and wind easements. All on the related & miscellaneous page.

• HOA directory↗ — search the Secretary of State’s business filings by community or subdivision name for the association’s contact information, its board, and its articles of incorporation.
• HOA documents — the declaration, amendments, bylaws, lien notices, plats and other community documents are recorded with the county recorder or registrar of titles for the county the association is in. In a common interest community the declaration is what creates the regime and is recorded under MCIOA; recording it is also what gives the assessment lien its notice and perfection (§ 515B.3-116(a)).