Montana HOA laws and resources.

Montana has no homeowners’ association act. A condominium has the Unit Ownership Act, Title 70 ch. 23 — but only where the owners recorded a declaration under § 70-23-103. Every community, condominium or not, is reached by Title 70, chapter 17, which limits what a covenant can be made to do; by the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act if it is incorporated; and by Title 49, chapter 2 for discrimination. HOPB hosts the full text of every one.

Montana HOA law guideEvery Montana statute that reaches a community association, ordered by how much it is likely to matter to an owner — beginning with the covenants chapter most Montana owners have never read.

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

• There is no Montana homeowners’ association act. Of the Title 70 chapters held for this tab — property in general, estates, rights incidental to ownership, servitudes and covenants, recording, the Unit Ownership Act and mobile home lot rental — none is a planned-community act. A full-text search of those nineteen chapters — nineteen of Montana’s roughly 460 — returns no match for “planned community”, “common interest community”, “community association” or “association act”; the single hit for the bare phrase “common interest” is a definition of “organization” in the mobile-home lot rental act. What binds you is your recorded declaration.
• The condominium act only reaches you if somebody opted in. § 70-23-103 is captioned “submission by declaration required”: the owners must execute, acknowledge and record a declaration to bring a property under the Unit Ownership Act. Townhomes are the same. Looking like a condominium is not enough — the county records settle it.
• Your association cannot tighten the rules after you buy. § 70-17-901 bars a homeowners’ association from imposing more onerous restrictions on the types of use of your property than existed when you acquired it, without your written agreement. “Types of use” expressly includes the ability to rent the property for any amount of time, so a short-term-rental ban adopted after you bought is the case this section was written about. § 70-23-507 binds condominium associations to it too.
• That protection does not travel with the house. A successor in interest generally cannot claim a previous owner’s exception, and nothing in § 70-17-901 creates a right of action for anything before May 9, 2019. It also does not touch a restriction that already applied when you bought, or one required to comply with federal, state or local law. Read subsections (2) to (5) as carefully as subsection (1). And the benefit is not self-executing: to claim it you must ask the association to record your exception with the county clerk and recorder, supply your conveyance date and pay the recording fee (§ 70-17-901(1)(b)).
• A covenant nobody has enforced can be abandoned — and a dormant association loses its grip. Under § 70-17-210 an owner may defend by showing the covenant was abandoned — no enforcement for the period in § 27-2-202, 6 years for a covenant founded on a written instrument — and “enforcement action” is defined as enforcement applied equally and consistently over at least 2 years (§ 70-17-210(4)). An association or governing body that has not met for 15 years is prohibited from enforcing against an owner whose use is substantially similar to others in the development. Covenants needed for legal compliance, easements or shared infrastructure survive that bar.
• No association may ban a political sign — even on the common areas. § 70-1-522 stops a homeowners’ or property owners’ association prohibiting a sign for a candidate or ballot issue on your property or on common areas in which you own an undivided interest. It may still limit size, location and the display period. A covenant to the contrary is contrary to public policy and a court may not enforce it.
• The association needs your permission to walk onto your property. § 70-16-110 requires it to obtain permission before an agent enters, to propose a time convenient to you, and to say what part of the property it wants to reach — and you may require that you or your agent be present. It does not apply to areas open to the public, to recorded easements benefiting the association, or to condominium units that must be entered to reach common elements.
• Five percent of the votes forces a meeting. For an incorporated association, § 35-2-527 says the corporation shall hold a special meeting on the written demand of members holding 5% of the voting power — and if notice is not given within 30 days, a member who signed may call it. § 35-2-520 bars expulsion or suspension except under a procedure that is fair and reasonable and carried out in good faith — but read what that means. It is satisfied either where the bylaws set out 15 days’ notice and a hearing at least 5 days before it takes effect, or where the procedure simply “takes into consideration all relevant facts and circumstances”. The 15/5 timetable is a safe harbour an association may adopt, not a floor the Act imposes. Any challenge must be brought within 1 year.
• Montana’s fair-housing law reaches further than many expect — with a big exception. § 49-2-305 covers marital status and age, which many people are surprised to find in a housing statute. But its prohibitions on age and familial status do not extend to housing for older persons, so a qualifying 62-and-over or 55-and-over community may lawfully restrict families with children. A complaint is filed with the Department of Labor and Industry, whose Human Rights Bureau administers it, within 180 days — and for a housing complaint the department issues its reasonable-cause finding within 120 days (§ 49-2-504(7)(a)).

• Montana Homeowners’ Association Directory↗ — find an association’s contact information, active board members, articles of incorporation and corporate status by searching the subdivision or community name.
• Montana recorded document search — your county clerk and recorder holds the documents that actually govern your community: the declaration of covenants, amendments, bylaws, plats, deeds, liens and judgments. With no HOA act in Montana this is the decisive record, and § 76-3-306 is why — subdivision covenants run with the land whether noted on the plat or recorded alongside it. Search under the subdivision or community name.
• Check whether a declaration was ever recorded. For a condominium the question is not academic: under § 70-23-103 the Unit Ownership Act applies only if one was.