Louisiana HOA laws: a board member’s reference.

Plenty of what has been published about Act 158 says Louisiana HOA law was replaced on January 1, 2025, and that every association now has to operate differently. That is not what the statute says.

The Act does not affect the validity or superiority of any provision in a community document filed before January 1, 2025. It applies to existing communities only to the extent their documents are silent. The legislature’s own revision comments say the Act was written for newly formed communities and was not meant to make existing ones change their documents, their budgeting, or how they allocate assessments.

In practice this cuts both ways. Many Louisiana declarations written in the 1990s and 2000s say nothing about records access, electronic voting, or budget ratification. For those communities the Act quietly supplies the procedure, without anyone having amended anything. Communities formed after January 1, 2025 are governed by it directly.

Condominiums are outside all of this. Louisiana condo regimes run on the Condominium Act at R.S. 9:1121.101 and following, though the collections rules below reach both.

Membership meetings run on 30 to 60 days’ notice absent a bylaw provision. Both ends bind: a meeting noticed 90 days out is as far outside the window as one noticed in 10 days. Notice states time, date, place, and agenda, and the agenda must spell out any proposed amendment to the community documents, any budget changes, and any proposal to remove a director. Owners get a reasonable opportunity to comment on anything affecting the community.

Board meetings work differently. They need at least 30 days’ notice to directors and owners stating time, date, place, and agenda, with no stated ceiling. Materials sent to the board beforehand must be reasonably available to owners, including by website posting, with unapproved minutes and executive session materials excepted.

Executive session is available only during a regular or special meeting, and only for legal advice, litigation, labor and personnel matters, contracts under negotiation, and privacy matters. No final vote or action may be taken there.

One safeguard worth knowing: actions taken without following these rules stay valid unless a court sets them aside, and a challenge must be brought within 60 days of minutes being approved or notice going out.

Must be kept: accounting records, minutes of owner and board meetings other than executive sessions, owner names and communication addresses with voting interest shown, organizational documents and current rules, three years of financial statements and tax returns, current directors and officers, the latest Secretary of State annual report, financial records detailed enough to produce the required resale disclosures, current contracts, records of every architectural approval and denial, and ballots and proxies for one year.

May be withheld: personnel and medical records, contracts under negotiation, litigation and mediation materials, attorney-client communications, anything whose disclosure would break the law, executive session records, and other owners’ individual lot files.

The association may charge a reasonable fee for copies and for supervising an inspection, and is not obligated to compile or synthesize anything. It only has to produce what it already has.

Nothing stops a community from going further. Sending full monthly financials to every homeowner rather than just the board is not required in Louisiana, and it is the most effective thing a community can do to build confidence in its own governance.

The board proposes a budget at least annually. Within 30 days of adopting the proposal it sends every owner a summary that includes any reserves and a statement of the basis on which those reserves are calculated and funded. It sets a ratification meeting 10 to 60 days out. A majority ratifies. If owners do not ratify, the last ratified budget stays in force.

There is no required budget format. There is a required reserve disclosure, which is hard to answer honestly without a current reserve study. Our budget guide walks the sequence.

Special assessments follow the same path. The exception is an emergency: a two-thirds vote of directors present makes it effective immediately, with prompt notice to owners and spending limited to the stated purpose.

Assessments are levied at least annually against the budget, and owners are personally liable for assessments during their ownership. Late fees and interest are allowed at a rate the association sets, capped at the rate permitted under the collections provisions.

Written demand goes out by mail or courier to the owner’s designated address, by email to a designated address, by hand delivery to the lot if neither was designated, or by any method reasonably calculated to give notice. The owner then has 30 days. Only after that may the association file the sworn detailed statement of privilege in the parish mortgage records.

Partial payments are applied in statutory order: unpaid assessments, then late charges, then reasonable attorney fees and collection costs, then all other fees, fines, penalties, and interest. An association that applies a partial payment to fines first, leaving the assessment open so the delinquency stays alive, is not following the statute. This one gets missed constantly.

Two different clocks. A privilege for unpaid dues or assessments dies as to third parties unless a notice of pendency of action is recorded within five years. A privilege for charges tied to alleged covenant violations dies in one year. Fine-based liens have a fifth of the runway.

If an owner misses assessments for three months or more within any eight-month period after notice of delinquency, the association may accelerate twelve months and file for the accelerated amount.

Separately, when an owner requests a payoff figure in a record, you have ten business days and the number you send is binding on the association. A payoff sent to a closing attorney is not an estimate. How CMGT handles delinquency recovery covers the operational side.

Before adopting, amending, or repealing a rule, the board gives all owners notice of the proposed action, the text, and the date it will act after considering comments. Afterward it notifies owners of what it did. Every rule must be reasonable, and board rulemaking on residential lots is bounded: rules may implement the declaration or address behavior that violates it or harms others’ use and enjoyment. A rule floating free of the declaration is vulnerable.

The association decides whether to pursue or decline enforcement and has discretion depending on circumstances. But it shall not be arbitrary or capricious in that decision. Selective enforcement is not just a bad look in Louisiana. It is a statutory exposure, and the answer is a written policy you apply consistently and can produce on demand. Our fair-process enforcement guide covers building one.

Reasonable fines are allowed, including interest and attorney fees, and rights or privileges may be suspended for nonpayment or violations. Two hard limits: you may not deny an owner access to their own lot, and you may not withhold a service if losing it would endanger anyone’s health, safety, or property.

On architectural standards, tightening design criteria takes a two-thirds vote rather than the supermajority other restrictions need. But no tighter standard can force an owner to alter what is already built, and only exterior work increasing the lot’s improvement value by more than 40% has to meet the new standard.

The board cannot amend the declaration, amend the bylaws, terminate the planned community, elect directors (though it may fill vacancies for an unexpired term), determine the qualifications, powers, duties, or terms of directors, or impose rules inconsistent with the declaration.

That list surprises new boards regularly. If your board changed the bylaws without a membership vote, that action is exposed.

Two things the association must have and most do not: reasonable procedures for addressing and resolving written complaints from owners, and a reasonable method, which can be electronic, for owners to communicate with the board. Both are required. Neither exists by default.

Owners may remove any director or officer they elected, with or without cause, by majority vote at a properly noticed meeting with a quorum. The person facing removal gets a chance to speak first. Directors appointed by the developer cannot be removed during declarant control.