Missouri HOA laws & resources.

Laws impacting Missouri associations.

Missouri has no single, comprehensive HOA act. Its associations are governed by a scattered set of state statutes — alongside the federal laws that apply nationwide. HOPB hosts the full text of every one of these Missouri statutes, each with a plain-language guide.

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

• Missouri has no comprehensive HOA act. Condominiums are governed by the Missouri Uniform Condominium Act (for condominiums created after September 28, 1983) or the older Condominium Property Act (for those created before) — both in Chapter 448. A non-condominium homeowners' association has no comprehensive governance code; its authority comes mainly from its own recorded declaration (covenants and bylaws) together with the Missouri Nonprofit Corporation Law (Chapter 355), under which most associations are organized.
• The strongest homeowner protections sit in the property chapter. Rather than a general HOA act, Missouri gives owners a set of specific protections in § 442.404: an association cannot prohibit political signs, rooftop solar panels, “for sale” signs, or keeping up to six chickens on a lot of two-tenths of an acre or more (reasonable rules are still allowed). Nearby, § 442.012 makes solar energy a property right, and § 442.403 voids discriminatory restrictive covenants. These and more are collected on the related-laws page.
• Fair housing has an HOA-specific hook — and a short deadline. The Missouri Human Rights Act prohibits housing discrimination and requires an association's board to delete a discriminatory restrictive covenant from the governing documents — without an owner vote (§ 213.041). A housing-discrimination complaint must be filed with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights within 180 days of the act (§ 213.075); the parallel federal route through HUD generally allows one year.

HOA contact information and documents.

• The Missouri Homeowners' Association Directory — visit HOPB's HOA Directory and select Missouri to reach the state's official corporate registry (the Missouri Secretary of State's business search), where you can search under the community's name or subdivision to find an association's registered agent, officers, statutory agent, and corporate documents, such as its articles of incorporation.

• Association records and inspection — members generally have a right to examine the association's records. For an incorporated association, the Missouri Nonprofit Corporation Law gives members a statutory right to inspect and copy corporate records (§§ 355.821 through 355.831). For condominiums, the managers or board must keep records open to the unit owners under the Condominium Property Act (§ 448.200) or the Uniform Condominium Act (§ 448.3-118).

• Recorded documents — an association's declaration (covenants, conditions, and restrictions), bylaws, plats, and amendments are recorded with the recorder of deeds in the county where the community is located. To bind the property, these instruments must be recorded in the county land records.