What the package is for
Buying a condominium unit means buying an interest in real property and membership in a private government with the power to tax. The documents are the constitution, the accounts and the record of that government, and they answer three questions: what do I own, what am I obliged to do and pay, and who decides? Everything else is detail.
One caution governs everything below. These documents' names, contents, delivery deadlines and the buyer's remedies for not receiving them are set by state statute and by the project's own documents. There is no national package: your deadlines and cancellation rights come from your state's condominium act and your contract.
The declaration — and the paragraph almost nobody reads
The declaration (also CC&Rs, master deed, or declaration of condominium) is the recorded instrument creating the condominium. It runs with the land, binds every successor owner whether or not they read it, and generally governs where it conflicts with the bylaws or rules.
The unit boundary definition is the most important paragraph in the package, and it is routinely skipped. It determines where your property stops and the common elements begin — typically at a defined plane of the perimeter walls, floors and ceilings — and from it flow maintenance responsibility, insurance responsibility and liability for damage originating in the unit.
Then read, in this order:
- Common and limited common elements. Limited common elements are common property reserved for one or more units' exclusive use — balconies, terraces, parking, storage, often windows and doors. Who maintains, repairs, replaces and insures them are four separate questions the declaration may answer differently.
- Percentage interests — each unit's share of the common elements, of common expenses, and of the vote. Check whether all three are the same fraction. They are not always.
- The maintenance, repair and replacement allocation — the most litigated area in condominium practice. Read it against the boundary definition and the insurance article as one exercise.
- The insurance article — what the association must carry, who insures unit improvements, how deductibles are allocated.
- Use restrictions — leasing, pets, occupancy, commercial use, alterations — and assessment and lien provisions: how assessments are levied, when due, how the lien arises and where it ranks.
- Amendment provisions, reserved declarant rights, and the mortgagee protection provisions inserted for lenders.
One check that costs nothing: the version you were handed may not be the version recorded. Amendments sit in the county land records and are frequently missing from circulated packages.
Bylaws, articles and rules
Bylaws
The operating manual for the association as an entity. Look at board size, terms and qualifications; quorum requirements — a quorum the association can never achieve is a governance failure waiting to happen, and it is why many associations cannot amend their documents; notice requirements and whether owners may attend and speak; proxy and voting rules; limits on the board's spending authority without owner approval, a commonly overlooked check; and records inspection rights.
Articles of incorporation
Short, mostly formal, and the source of a five-minute check almost nobody does: confirm the association exists and is in good standing with the state's corporate filing office. An administratively dissolved association may have impaired capacity to contract, sue or enforce liens, and reinstatement takes time and money. The databases are public and free.
Rules and regulations
Board-adopted rules, generally amendable by the board alone. They change most easily, govern daily life, and are frequently omitted from the package. Ask for them by name, and ask what has been adopted in the last twenty-four months — recent rules tell you what the association is currently fighting about.
The money: budget, financial statements, reserve study
The current budget
Ask for three years side by side and read the trend, not the level; insurance and utilities are where cost shocks appear first. Check whether the reserve contribution is a real number or a placeholder — a reserve line unchanged for five years while everything else rose is a decision to defer, stated in the budget. Check non-assessment revenue (parking, laundry, amenity fees, commercial rents, antenna leases), which depends on contracts that end; whether the budget balances; the bad-debt allowance, because delinquency shifts costs onto paying owners; and the legal line.
Financial statements
Three tiers, in descending order of assurance: an audit, in which the accountant expresses an opinion; a review, giving limited assurance; and a compilation, giving none. Buyers say "audited financials" for whatever they received; the accountant's report on the first page says which you are holding.
Then look for a qualified opinion or going-concern paragraph — rare and extremely informative; any loan payable, because an association with a bank loan has already had a capital event and is paying for it out of current assessments; whether operating and reserve funds are segregated; the contingencies note, where litigation appears; and the subsequent events note, where a new assessment or lawsuit shows up first.
Reserve study
The questions here are narrow: does one exist, how old is it, did it include a site visit, and is the association funding to its recommendation or to something less? A long chain of desk updates produces numbers that drift away from the building.
Minutes — the single most revealing document, and the least read
If a buyer reads one thing in the package it should be this, and the reason is structural rather than stylistic.
Every other document is prepared for an audience. The budget is adopted to be circulated. The financial statements are prepared by an outside accountant to a standard format. The declaration was drafted by the developer's lawyer. The resale certificate answers questions the legislature thought to ask. Minutes are the only document created contemporaneously, by insiders, for insiders, recording what the board actually knew and decided at the time — written before anyone was selling anything to you.
How much to read
Twenty-four months of board minutes at minimum; thirty-six is better. Add membership meeting minutes for the same period — shorter, and a record of what owners complained about.
What to look for
- Repeat items. The same roof, leak, garage or lift discussed at four consecutive meetings and never resolved. Repetition is the signature of deferred maintenance, and the most reliable signal in the package.
- Proposals raised and dropped. A reserve study commissioned and not funded; an engineering report ordered and never discussed again. The absences are as informative as the presences, and only visible if you read consecutively.
- Votes that failed, and the margins. A failed special assessment vote tells you the owners cannot or will not pay — and that the underlying problem is still there, unfunded.
- Litigation and counsel. Motions to retain counsel, authorise a claim, accept a settlement, fund a litigation reserve. Litigation is discussed before it is filed, so minutes routinely disclose matters that never reach a questionnaire.
- Insurance — renewal quotes, non-renewal notices, deductible changes, declined coverage, appraisal orders.
- Delinquency reports and collection actions, and their trend.
- Board turnover. Several directors resigning mid-term is a governance signal. So is a board that cannot fill its seats, and so is one that has run unopposed for years.
- Executive session frequency and stated reason. Boards may properly close sessions for litigation, personnel and delinquency matters, but a board in executive session for most of every meeting is either dealing with a great deal or avoiding transparency.
- Owner correspondence read into the record, contract awards and whether they were bid, and unbudgeted expenditure.
Reading the tone as well as the content
Minutes that get terser over time, or that stop recording discussion and record only motions and votes, often mark the point at which an association began being careful about what it wrote down. Offered as a reading technique rather than a rule, but a sharp change in the record is worth asking about.
What you may not get
Executive session minutes are commonly withheld or summarised, and the most recent meeting's may not yet be approved. Some associations keep minutes so thin as to be useless — itself a finding about how the association is run. Inspection rights and permissible redactions are set by state statute and the bylaws.
Note what the request itself tests: an association that produces two years of minutes promptly has told you something about its administration before you read a word.
Insurance and litigation disclosure — two documents that under-deliver
The certificate of insurance is not the policy
The certificate lists carriers, policy numbers, periods and limits. It is a third-party summary that generally disclaims amending or extending coverage, and it will not tell you what form the master policy is written on, what the deductible structure is, or what is excluded.
Ask instead for the policy declarations pages and the schedule of forms and endorsements, and read them against the declaration's insurance article. What matters: whether coverage is on a replacement-cost basis and when it was last appraised; whether a coinsurance clause applies and whether an agreed-value endorsement suspends it; whether the all-other-perils deductible is flat or a percentage; whether a separate wind, hail or named-storm deductible applies and what it is a percentage of; whether there is a per-unit deductible and how the master deductible is allocated; and whether ordinance-or-law coverage is in place.
Litigation disclosure is narrower than it sounds
Treat whatever form your state uses as a point-in-time answer to a narrow question. The standard industry condominium project questionnaire asks whether the association is involved in any active or pending litigation — which on its face does not reach demand letters, pre-suit notices under right-to-repair statutes, tolling agreements, arbitration or open code enforcement. An association can answer honestly and still hold a fully developed claim. Cross-check against the minutes, the contingencies note, and civil dockets searched under the association's exact legal name.
Also worth requesting, and a reading order
Documents rarely in the package that frequently matter: plats and plans; any alteration previously approved for the subject unit, with any agreement making the owner responsible for maintaining it, because that obligation transfers; the management agreement; recorded amendments; long-term vendor contracts and leases of common elements; recent engineering or reserve reports; open permits; and the most recent questionnaire completed for another buyer's lender, which aggregates many answers in one place.
If you will only do four things
- Read the last twenty-four months of minutes.
- Read the declaration's unit boundary, maintenance allocation and insurance articles together.
- Read the budget beside the two prior years, plus the contingencies and subsequent-events notes.
- Read the leasing and alteration restrictions, and the reserve study's funding recommendation against the budget's reserve line.
A final calibration. A package that is complete, current and boring is the common case and the right outcome. Most declarations contain nothing unusual, most budgets show costs rising as costs have risen, and most minutes record parking disputes and landscaping contracts. The purpose of reading is not to find something wrong but to establish that the few things that would matter are not there.
Common questions
How many months of minutes should I ask for?
Twenty-four months at minimum and thirty-six if you can get them, covering board meetings and annual and special membership meetings. The reason for the length is that the most useful signals are patterns rather than events — a repeated item, a proposal quietly dropped, a failed vote, a trend in delinquency — and none of those are visible in a single meeting's record.
What if the association will not give me the minutes?
Treat the refusal as information and check your entitlement. Owner and prospective-purchaser inspection rights, and what may lawfully be redacted, are set by state statute and by the bylaws, so what you can compel differs by state. Practically, the seller is an owner with inspection rights and can request them. An association that produces two years of minutes promptly is telling you something about its administration; one that cannot or will not is telling you something else.
Which document tells me whether a special assessment is coming?
None of them, individually — which is why this question is the hard one. The reserve study tells you what will need replacing and when. The budget tells you what is being set aside. The minutes tell you what the board has been discussing and failing to resolve. A resale certificate typically discloses assessments already levied, and in some states anticipated capital expenditures as well. The forecast comes from reading those together; no single document carries it.
What is the difference between audited, reviewed and compiled financial statements?
The level of assurance the accountant provides. An audit expresses an opinion on whether the statements are fairly presented. A review provides limited assurance based on analytical procedures and inquiry. A compilation provides none — the accountant presents management's figures without testing them. Which tier an association must produce is usually a function of state statute, association size or revenue, and the bylaws. Read the accountant's report on the first page rather than relying on how the package was labelled.
Do I need to read the declaration if the building seems well run?
Read at least three articles of it: the unit boundary, the maintenance and repair allocation, and the insurance article. Those determine what you own, what you must pay to maintain and what your own policy has to cover — and they are specific to the project, not to the state. A well-run association does not change what the declaration allocates to you.
Is a thin document package a red flag?
Not necessarily, but it is worth resolving before you rely on it. Rules and regulations are frequently omitted because they are board-adopted and circulate separately; recorded amendments are frequently omitted because the seller has the original document; the management agreement and vendor contracts are almost never included because nobody asks. Request the missing items by name. If they are not produced, you are making a decision on an incomplete record and should know that you are.