Minnesota · Law guide
Minnesota HOA law guide.
Every Minnesota statute that governs community associations, hosted in full on HOPB with the official text. Minnesota runs three condominium regimes at once — chapters 515, 515A and 515B — and the newest of them reaches backwards over the older two while leaving a large class of ordinary detached-housing subdivisions outside it altogether. So the first question is not what the law says. It is which law is yours. This index is how the pieces fit together, and which one answers your question.
Every page on this tab
Start with the Common Interest Ownership Act even if you are sure it does not apply to you — § 515B.1-102 is the section that decides which of these pages you actually need, and it is not obvious from the outside. If your community is a subdivision of detached houses where the association maintains no dwelling, MCIOA probably does not govern you, and the Nonprofit Corporation Act and your own declaration are doing nearly all the work.
01
Minnesota Common Interest Ownership ActChapter 515B, 87 sections, §§ 515B.1-101 to 515B.4-118. The modern statute for condominiums, cooperatives and planned communities. Read § 515B.1-102 first, before anything else on this tab: it decides whether MCIOA reaches your community at all, it pulls forty of its own sections back over older ch. 515 condominiums so that they prevail over those communities’ declarations and bylaws, and it exempts a large class of detached-housing subdivisions outright. The lien, the six-month priority after a mortgage foreclosure, replacement reserves, records, meetings and attorney’s fees all live here.
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02
Minnesota Condominium ActChapter 515, 32 sections, §§ 515.01 to 515.29. The original 1963 act, applying only where the owners submitted the property by recording a declaration (§ 515.03) — in practice, condominiums created before 1 August 1980. Assessments are a lien prior to all other liens except tax liens and any sums unpaid on the first mortgage of record (§ 515.23); you cannot escape them by abandoning the apartment (§ 515.21); records and vouchers are open to owners on weekdays (§ 515.20). Do not read it alone — MCIOA overrides much of it.
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03
Minnesota Uniform Condominium ActChapter 515A, 67 sections, §§ 515A.1-101 to 515A.4-117. Condominiums created after 1 August 1980. Its enacted short title is simply the “Uniform Condominium Act” (§ 515A.1-101) — the “Minnesota” everyone adds, including the old hub, is not in the statute. Since 1994 MCIOA governs day-to-day events in these buildings, but this chapter still governs the declarant and your claims against the developer, which is why it matters for construction and warranty disputes.
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04
Assessment liens, foreclosure and redemptionChapters 580, 581 and 582, 78 sections. Here because MCIOA § 515B.3-116(h)(1) gives your association a statutory power of sale and sends it to chapter 580 — so a Minnesota association can foreclose an assessment lien by advertisement, without going to court. Chapter 580 sets the sale and the redemption period — six months by default, but twelve in the cases listed in § 580.23, subd. 2, and as little as five weeks for certain abandoned property under § 582.032 — which is also the clock the association’s six-month priority is counted back from. Read this before you assume you have time.
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05
Minnesota Nonprofit Corporation ActChapter 317A, 134 sections, §§ 317A.001 to 317A.909. The corporate rulebook for an incorporated association: formation, members’ meetings, voting, directors and their duties, indemnification, dissolution. Its centre of gravity for a homeowner is § 317A.461 — articles, bylaws, accounting records, voting agreements and minutes kept for six years, open to inspection by any member or director for a proper purpose at a reasonable time. This is the main statute for communities MCIOA does not reach.
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06
Minnesota Human Rights ActChapter 363A, 44 sections. Minnesota’s civil rights statute, and in housing it protects classes federal law does not name. Section 363A.09 protects race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, disability, sexual orientation and familial status — check any of those against the federal Fair Housing Act before assuming your claim lies in only one place. It also reaches any record or inquiry that expresses such a limitation.
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07
Minnesota collection practices statutesChapter 332, 39 sections. What the person chasing your assessments may and may not do. A “collection agency” is defined as one collecting for others (§ 332.31), so this binds the agency your association hires rather than the association itself; agencies, debt buyers and collectors must be licensed or registered (§ 332.33). The clause to know is § 332.37(12), which makes violating the federal FDCPA a Minnesota violation too — giving the Department of Commerce and the attorney general a licence and an injunction to act on, though not the debtor a damages claim.
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08
Related & miscellaneous Minnesota statutesEverything that reaches you from outside the acts above. Your flag rights under § 500.215, rooftop solar under § 500.216 and licensed child care under § 500.217 — all three applying whether or not MCIOA governs you and whether or not you are in a common interest community at all. Discriminatory covenants void regardless of the year written (§ 507.18). Statutory new-home warranties of one, two and ten years that MCIOA expressly does not abrogate (ch. 327A). Six-year limitations, conciliation court and its $20,000 ceiling, solar and wind easements, and the four things Minnesota owners are most often told that are not so.
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General information, not legal advice. Statutory references are to Minnesota Statutes 2025 as published by the Office of the Revisor of Statutes; the statutes are amended every session, so confirm the current text against the official source.