HOA Costs by State (2026)

How the fee is actually set

An HOA board sets dues through an annual budget that has to cover two very different things: routine operating costs (landscaping, insurance, management-company fees, utilities for common areas) and a contribution to the reserve fund, which pays for big-ticket items — roofs, paving, pool resurfacing — that get replaced every 10, 20 or 30 years rather than every year. A community that underfunds its reserve keeps dues artificially low today at the cost of a large special assessment later, which is exactly the failure mode reserve-study laws exist to catch.

Whether that reserve contribution is checked against real numbers depends on your state. California's Civil Code § 5550 is the strictest example: it requires a full reserve study, including a “reasonably competent and diligent visual inspection” of common-area components with under 30 years of remaining life, at least once every three years, with the board reviewing and adjusting the funding plan annually in between. The annual budget must include a boldface Assessment and Reserve Funding Disclosure Summary showing the association's percent-funded ratio and whether reserves will be sufficient over a 30-year horizon. Most other states have no equivalent statewide mandate — some require only that the board adopt a policy addressing whether and when it does a reserve study, which is a governance requirement, not a requirement that a study actually happen. Don't assume your state requires one just because California does.

Regular dues vs. special assessments

Everything above describes the reserve study — the analysis. The reserve contributionis a separate board decision, and it's where regular dues and special assessments split into two different tools for the same underlying problem. Regular monthly dues are supposed to include a reserve-fund line item sized to the study's recommended annual contribution, spread evenly so no single year absorbs a roof or elevator replacement all at once. A special assessment is what happens when that smoothing didn't happen — an unbudgeted repair, an underfunded reserve, or a surprise like storm damage forces the board to bill owners a lump sum outside the regular dues cycle, on top of what they already pay monthly.

This is the direct, practical payoff of California's reserve-study disclosure rule: a buyer who reads the boldface Assessment and Reserve Funding Disclosure Summary required under Civil Code § 5550 can see the association's percent-funded ratio before closing, which is close to the only advance warning a buyer gets that a special assessment is coming. In a state with no equivalent disclosure mandate, that same underfunding is invisible until the board votes the assessment — which is exactly why the reserve-study section above matters for more than compliance trivia: it's the difference between a knowable risk and a surprise bill.

What happens when dues go unpaid

Delinquency escalation follows a similar shape everywhere — late fee, then interest, then a lien, then (in most states) foreclosure — but the specific numbers, and how the lien stacks against your mortgage, vary enough that the state you live in changes the real financial risk of falling behind.

Nevada is the sharpest illustration of why lien priority, not just the foreclosure process itself, matters to more than just the delinquent owner. Under NRS 116.3116(2), a defined slice of the HOA's lien — nine months of assessments — isn't merely paid ahead of other creditors, it is legally senior to a first mortgage recorded years earlier. The Nevada Supreme Court confirmed in SFR Investments Pool 1 v. U.S. Bank (2014) that an HOA foreclosing on that super-priority slice can wipe out an otherwise-senior mortgage lien if the lender doesn't act to protect it — a ruling significant enough that the 2015 Legislature added lender safeguards afterward: mandatory notice to the mortgage holder, a payoff option to satisfy the super-priority amount before foreclosure, and a 60-day post-sale redemption right. Most states don't give HOA liens this kind of true priority over a purchase-money mortgage; Nevada and a handful of others under the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act framework are the exception, not the rule.

Illinois's Condominium Property Act (765 ILCS 605/9) shows a different variation on the same underlying risk — not lien priority over a mortgage, but liability that survives the transfer itself. Under 605/9(g)(4), someone who buys a unit at a foreclosure sale (other than the bank doing the foreclosing) inherits responsibility for up to six months of the prior owner's unpaid common expenses that accrued immediately before the collection action started. That liability disappears if the prior owner's arrears get paid off during the enforcement action, but a buyer who assumes a foreclosed unit is delinquency-free without checking the association's books first can inherit a real bill that has nothing to do with anything they personally did.

The practical takeaway: a $1,000 delinquency that could trigger a foreclosure filing in Florida or Texas may not even clear California's $1,800 threshold, and in Nevada the same delinquency carries a lien-priority risk that doesn't exist in most other states at all. If you're behind on dues anywhere, treat the first lien notice — not the eventual foreclosure filing — as the moment to act; by the time a case reaches court, interest and attorney's fees have usually made the total owed far larger than the original delinquency.

When the association itself fails

It's rare, but an HOA can become financially or organizationally nonfunctional — not through any one owner's default, but because the board can't collect enough in dues to cover insurance and emergency repairs, or because no one will serve on the board at all. Most states have no HOA-specific bankruptcy or insolvency statute; what actually happens instead, per California's ECHO (a nonprofit HOA-education organization), is a petition to a court for receivership — brought by owners or, in acute cases, by the association itself — when the board is deadlocked, is failing its basic fiduciary duties, or an “immediate threat of injury, damage or destruction to property and to property values” exists and no one is acting on it. ECHO also flags a subtler, more common trigger than outright insolvency: member apathy, where no owner is willing to serve on the board at all (sometimes out of fear of personal liability), leaving routine decisions — emergency repairs, insurance renewal, vendor contracts — simply undone until someone petitions a court to intervene.

A court-appointed receiver effectively replaces the board: it can levy or raise assessments to fund emergency repairs, sign contracts, and pay creditors, all under the court's ongoing supervision and monthly reporting requirement. Critically, receivership doesn't erase what owners owe — it exists specifically to make sure the association keeps functioning and collecting, not to wipe out debt. If you're buying into an association with any sign of chronic dysfunction (board seats sitting vacant, deferred maintenance, an unusually low or suspiciously flat monthly fee for the amenities on offer), that resale/estoppel certificate covered above is exactly the document that should surface a receivership if one is already underway.

Condo dues vs. single-family HOA dues

“HOA fee” covers two structurally different obligations depending on what you're buying, which is part of why condo dues run so much higher than single-family HOA dues in the same market — Realtor.com's 2026 data puts 84.8% of condo/townhome listings under a fee versus 33.4% of single-family listings, and the fee itself tends to be larger in dollar terms, not just more common.

In a single-family HOA, your dues typically fund only shared amenities and common areas — the clubhouse, entrance landscaping, a private street — while the structure of your own house is yours to insure and maintain. In a condominium, the association's obligation runs much deeper: Fannie Mae's own condo project standards require the association to carry a master property insurance policy covering the building itself (not just common areas) plus fidelity/crime coverage protecting against theft by the people who handle association funds — coverage a single-family HOA generally has no equivalent need for, because there's no shared building to insure. That master policy, the roof and structural components, and often water/sewer lines are all embedded in condo dues in a way they simply aren't in a single-family HOA fee, which is the real driver behind the price gap, not just a difference in amenities.

Florida sharpens this distinction with a mandate that applies to condos only. Since the 2021 Surfside collapse, Florida Statute § 718.112(2)(g) requires a Structural Integrity Reserve Study at least every 10 years for any condo building three or more habitable stories tall, covering eight specific components — roof, load-bearing structure, fireproofing/fire protection, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing/exterior painting, and windows/exterior doors — with reserve funding for those items no longer eligible to be waived by a member vote. That mandate lives entirely in Chapter 718 (condominiums); Chapter 720, which governs single-family HOAs, has no equivalent structural-study requirement, because there's no shared building structure for it to apply to.

Where the master policy stops, your own HO-6 starts. Whether the association carries an all-in, all-in-excluding-improvements or bare-walls policy decides what you insure yourself; see condo insurance (HO-6) vs the HOA master policy.

What your lender needs from the HOA before approving the loan

Buying into an HOA — especially a condo — adds an underwriting step most single-family purchases skip: the project has to qualify, not just the borrower. For a conventional loan, Fannie Mae's Selling Guide (B4-2.1-01) requires the lender to review the project itself using a Condominium Project Questionnaire (Form 1076) that the HOA or its management company completes, covering owner-occupancy rate (established projects generally need at least 90% of units already conveyed to owners), a single-entity ownership cap, and confirmation the association carries adequate master insurance and fidelity coverage. A project that fails this review — too many investor-owned units, a litigation exposure, inadequate insurance — can sink your loan even if your own credit and income are approved.

FHA has its own, separate version: since a 2019 HUD rule, an individual condo unit can get Single-Unit Approval even in a building that has never gone through full FHA project approval, provided the project has at least five units, is complete and ready for occupancy, and the number of FHA-insured units stays at or under 10% of the total (or no more than two units in a project with fewer than ten). Getting there still requires the HOA or its management company to complete HUD's own Single-Unit Approval Questionnaire (Form HUD-9991) — which means an unresponsive or disorganized HOA board can stall an FHA buyer's closing even when every other piece of the loan is ready to go.

A worked example: budgeting for the national-median HOA

Put the CAI and Realtor.com figures together and the median case looks like this: a listing with the 2026 national-median $135/month HOA fee, on a mortgage already qualified under the DTI ratios covered on our salary-needed page. Because HOA dues count as a housing cost the same way property taxes and insurance do, that $135 doesn't just add $135 to your monthly outflow — it subtracts from the mortgage payment your front-end ratio can absorb, dollar for dollar. Financed at a 6.75% 30-year rate with 20% down, $135/month of dues is equivalent to roughly $26,000 less purchase price your income can support — the annuity value of that monthly amount over the loan term, divided through by the 80% loan-to-value — meaning two otherwise-identical buyers with the same qualifying income can afford meaningfully different purchase prices purely because one home carries a fee and the other doesn't.

In Florida, where the median fee runs closer to $369/month per Realtor.com's report, that same math works out to roughly $71,000 less purchase price at the identical income and rate — which is exactly why an HOA fee has to be modeled alongside price from the start, not treated as a rounding error once you've already qualified for the mortgage itself.

Illustrative calculation only: standard 30-year amortization at a 6.75% rate and 20% down, converting the monthly fee to its loan-amount-equivalent and dividing by loan-to-value for the price impact. Not a published figure — your own front-end ratio, rate and down payment will change the result.

Resale disclosure: the estoppel/resale certificate

When an HOA-governed home is sold, the association has to certify — in writing, for a fee — the seller's current account status, any unpaid assessments, pending special assessments, and known violations. Buyers and title companies rely on this document (called an estoppel certificate in some states, a resale certificate in others) to confirm there's no hidden HOA debt attached to the property. It is a real, often-overlooked line item at closing on an HOA home, and several states cap what the association can charge for it:

• Florida — capped at $250 for a standard request (10 business days to deliver), plus up to $150 more if the account is delinquent and up to $100 more for 3-business-day expedited delivery, under Fla. Stat. § 720.30851.
• Texas — capped at $375 under Property Code § 207.003, covering assembly, copying and delivery of the 16 required disclosure items (transfer restrictions, assessment amounts, pending suits, insurance, code violations and transfer fees).

This is also the document that would surface most of what this page covers about a specific property before you close: a pending special assessment, an active receivership, delinquency-driven interest already accruing, or a lien already recorded. Requesting it isn't optional paperwork — treat a seller or agent who resists producing one promptly as a reason to look harder, not a reason to skip it.

HOA costs by state

The 22 states below each have a full HOA cost page. Select one for the full local breakdown — average fee, HOA rules, and what to budget.