Do you have to join an HOA when buying a condo?
You don’t join it. Buying the unit is the whole event. In Massachusetts the interest in the association that runs the condominium is part of the unit itself. It transfers with the deed even when the deed never mentions it. What matters is which documents bind you, and what your percentage interest commits you to pay.
If what you’re buying is a house and lot in a subdivision with an association, this answer doesn’t describe it. That obligation comes from the covenants recorded against the lot, and those documents decide it.
Can You Buy the Unit Without the Association?
No, and not because a rule says so. A condominium unit is the unit plus an undivided percentage interest in the common areas, and Massachusetts law won’t separate the two. It is “deemed conveyed or encumbered with the unit even though such interest is not expressly mentioned or described in the conveyance,” under G.L. c. 183A, section 10(a). Your own unit deed has to name the condominium and state the interest that comes with the unit.
That percentage does two jobs. It sets your share of the common expenses, which reaches you as a separate bill from your mortgage payment, and it sets the weight of your vote. There is one way out of the statute and it isn’t yours alone. Section 19(a) takes 75 percent of the owners plus every lienholder’s recorded consent. For one owner, selling is the exit.
What Are You Bound By?
The registry has held these documents since somebody created the condominium, and most buyers read them for the first time after something goes wrong. The master deed sets what counts as common area and what percentage interest attaches to your unit. The trust or the by-laws say how votes and assessments work, and the rules say what you can do inside the unit. Those terms can change by a vote you may lose, though section 5(c) makes the statute control where a document conflicts with it.
Four documents decide what you’re agreeing to:
- The master deed
- Every recorded amendment to it
- The declaration of trust, or the by-laws
- The rules and regulations
Ask the seller’s agent for the master deed and the recorded amendments, not a summary, and ask which document sets this unit’s percentage interest. Your lender runs its own examination of the association, and what that examination looks at is a different question from what binds you.
What Happens If You Stop Paying?
Plenty of owners have had the thought, usually in a year when the fee goes up and the hallway doesn’t get painted. G.L. c. 183A, section 7 closes both versions of it. You can’t pay less by giving up common areas you don’t use, and you can’t hold the fee back until the repair happens. The statute allows no offset, deduction or waiver.
The association’s lien on your unit exists from the moment an assessment comes due. It doesn’t have to file anything, because recording the master deed already perfected the lien. You’re personally liable too, for the assessments, the late charges, the interest and the cost of collecting them, attorneys’ fees included, under section 6.
None of it stays behind when the unit sells. Every closing obtains the section 6(d) statement, what closing attorneys call a 6(d) certificate, because recording it clears the unit of the unpaid amounts. The association has ten business days to produce one after a written request.
Read the master deed before the offer goes in. A Massachusetts real estate attorney is who tells you what a particular master deed or set of rules does to you.