Common-Interest Communities

Chapters 21, 22, and 23 developed the three private servitudes in their classical form: the easement, a right to use the land of another; the profit à prendre, a right to take from it; and the promissory servitude, a covenant respecting use enforceable at law by damages or in equity by injunction against a successor with notice. Each was studied as a bilateral relation between a dominant and a servient parcel. This chapter studies what happens when those instruments are combined, multiplied across hundreds of parcels, coordinated by a single recorded instrument, and administered by a standing corporate body with power to assess, to legislate, and to enforce. The result — the condominium, the planned community, the cooperative, the property owners' association — is the common-interest community, and it is the most consequential institutional development in American property law since the recording system.

The subject demands doctrinal discipline for a reason peculiar to it. Because the association is the visible institution, the association is commonly mistaken for the community. It is not. The community is a property regime constituted by recorded servitudes and statutory law; the association is one organ within that regime, created by the declaration and by a corporate filing, with only such powers as statute, declaration, and bylaws confer. Every analytical error in this field — that a board may adopt any rule it pleases, that owners may resign, that the association owns the land, that the Constitution binds the board as it binds a city — descends from confusing the regime with its administrator.

1. A common-interest community is a property regime in which ownership of a unit or lot carries an inseverable obligation to pay assessments to an association for property or services relating to the common holdings. Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes § 6.2 (Am. L. Inst. 2000); Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act § 1-103(9) (Unif. L. Comm'n 1982, as amended).
2. The community is created by a recorded declaration, not by incorporation of the association. The declaration is the constitutive instrument: it submits identified land to the regime, describes the units and common elements, allocates interests, and imposes the servitudes. UCIOA §§ 2-101 to 2-105.
3. The association administers; it does not define. Its authority is derived and enumerated, flowing from statute, from the declaration, from the bylaws, and from necessary implication — never from its corporate existence alone. UCIOA § 3-102; Restatement (Third) § 6.4.
4. The three principal forms are not interchangeable. In a condominium the owner holds a fee in the unit plus an undivided interest in the common elements as tenant in common; in a planned community the owner holds a fee in a lot and the common property is typically owned by the association; in a cooperative the entity owns the fee and the resident holds shares plus a proprietary lease.
5. The affirmative covenant to pay assessments is the defining servitude of the modern regime. Its enforceability against successors was settled in America by Neponsit Property Owners' Ass'n v. Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, 15 N.E.2d 793 (N.Y. 1938), and is now confirmed by statute in every enacting jurisdiction. UCIOA § 3-115.
6. Assessments are secured by a statutory lien that attaches without recordation and enjoys a limited priority over prior mortgages. The uniform priority is six months of common-expense assessments; state enactments vary from none to twelve months, and the practical consequences for lenders are substantial. UCIOA § 3-116.
7. Restrictions recorded in the declaration and rules adopted by a board are reviewed differently. Recorded restrictions carry a presumption of validity and fall only if arbitrary, contrary to public policy, or grossly burdensome; board-adopted rules must be within the delegated rulemaking power and reasonable. Nahrstedt, 878 P.2d 1275; Hidden Harbour Estates, Inc. v. Basso, 393 So. 2d 637 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1981).
8. Board decision-making within the scope of authority is reviewed deferentially, not immunized. Levandusky v. One Fifth Ave. Apartment Corp., 553 N.E.2d 1317 (N.Y. 1990), adapts the business-judgment rule to residential governance; the deference disappears where the board acts outside its power, in bad faith, or discriminatorily.
9. Directors owe duties of care, loyalty, and good faith, and the association may owe duties directly to owners and third persons in tort. Frances T. v. Village Green Owners Ass'n, 723 P.2d 573 (Cal. 1986), holds an association to a landlord-like duty of care over common areas and permits individual director liability for tortious conduct.
10. Amendments to a declaration validly adopted under a reserved amendment power bind owners who purchased before the amendment. Villa De Las Palmas Homeowners Ass'n v. Terifaj, 90 P.3d 1223 (Cal. 2004) (post-purchase pet restriction enforceable). The reserved power is itself part of the servitude every purchaser takes subject to.
11. Declarant control is a bounded fiduciary trust, not ownership of the community. Special declarant rights, development rights, and the period of appointed directors terminate by statute or by conveyance thresholds, and transition obligates turnover of records, funds, reserves, and common property. UCIOA §§ 3-103(d), 3-104.
12. Governing documents cannot override controlling statutory or constitutional law. Racially restrictive covenants are unenforceable, Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), and are independently unlawful under the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601–3631, and 42 U.S.C. § 1982.
13. State-action doctrine and statutory regulation are distinct sources of limitation. Most constitutional guarantees do not run against a private association of their own force; where associations are constrained as to flags, solar devices, or political signs, the constraint is ordinarily statutory.
14. The regime is a creature of the land records. Declaration, plat or plan, amendments, easements, and liens are title matters, and resale certificates supply the purchaser with the operating facts that the records do not disclose. UCIOA §§ 4-102, 4-109.
15. Termination is exceptional and statutorily channelled. It requires a supermajority, a recorded termination agreement, and a prescribed disposition of proceeds; casualty and condemnation are governed by allocation rules rather than by ordinary co-tenancy partition. UCIOA §§ 1-107, 2-118.

Upon completing this chapter the reader should be able to:

• State the definition of a common-interest community and distinguish the property regime from the association that administers it.
• Identify the constituent property elements of the regime: units or lots, common elements, limited common elements, allocated interests, reciprocal easements, recorded servitudes, and the assessment obligation.
• Distinguish the condominium, the planned community, and the cooperative by ownership structure, governing instruments, and financing consequences.
• Trace the historical development from nineteenth-century restrictive-covenant subdivisions through mid-twentieth-century condominium enabling legislation to the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act and Restatement (Third) Chapter 6.
• Rank the governing instruments — statute, declaration, plat, articles, bylaws, rules, board policies — and resolve conflicts among them.
• Identify the source of any asserted association power and determine whether the power was validly exercised.
• Analyze assessment obligations, allocation formulas, delinquency remedies, liens, and lien priority against mortgages.
• Distinguish restrictions in a recorded declaration from board-adopted rules and apply the correct standard of review to each.
• Evaluate declarant control, special declarant rights, transition obligations, and developer conflicts of interest.
• Apply constitutional and civil-rights limits accurately, distinguishing state action from direct statutory regulation of private associations.
• Perform the title-examination steps required when land lies within a common-interest community.
• Correct the recurring misconceptions that dominate popular and even professional discussion of the subject.

• Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes ch. 6, §§ 6.1–6.20 (Am. L. Inst. 2000) — the governing secondary restatement of common-interest-community law.
• Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 1982, amended 1994, 2008, and revised 2021) — comprehensive framework for creation, governance, management, alteration, and termination.
• Uniform Condominium Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 1977, amended 1980).
• Uniform Planned Community Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 1980).
• Model Real Estate Cooperative Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 1981).
• Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 2008).
• Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601–3631, and the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988.
• 42 U.S.C. § 1982 (equal property rights).
• Federal Communications Commission Over-the-Air Reception Devices Rule, 47 C.F.R. § 1.4000.
• Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005, 4 U.S.C. § 5 note.
• State condominium, planned-community, horizontal-property, and homeowners'-association statutes; state nonprofit corporation acts; state recording acts.

• Wayne S. Hyatt & Susan F. French, Community Association Law: Cases and Materials on Common Interest Communities (3d ed. 2016).
• Susan F. French, The Constitution of a Private Residential Government Should Include a Bill of Rights, 27 Wake Forest L. Rev. 345 (1992).
• Gerald Korngold, Resolving the Intergenerational Conflicts of Real Property Law, 56 Buff. L. Rev. 1525 (2008).
• Robert C. Ellickson, Cities and Homeowners Associations, 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1519 (1982).
• Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (1994).
• Paula A. Franzese, Does It Take a Village? Privatization, Patterns of Restrictiveness and the Demise of Community, 47 Vill. L. Rev. 553 (2002).
• Gregory S. Alexander, Dilemmas of Group Autonomy: Residential Associations and Community, 75 Cornell L. Rev. 1 (1989).
• Hanoch Dagan & Michael A. Heller, The Liberal Commons, 110 Yale L.J. 549 (2001).
• 9 Powell on Real Property §§ 54A.01–54A.09, 60.01–60.11 (Michael Allan Wolf ed.).
• Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes ch. 6 Reporter's Notes (Susan F. French, Reporter).

A common-interest community is a form of land ownership in which each owner holds an individual parcel — a unit or a lot — and, by virtue of that ownership alone, is obligated to contribute to the costs of property, services, or facilities held or supplied for the benefit of the owners collectively. The Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes § 6.2 defines it as a real-estate development or neighbourhood in which individually owned lots or units are burdened by a servitude imposing an obligation that cannot be avoided by nonuse or withdrawal, either to pay for the use of or the maintenance of commonly held property, or to pay dues or assessments to an association that provides services or facilities to the community. The Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act § 1-103(9) states the same idea in statutory form: real estate with respect to which a person, by virtue of ownership of a unit, is obligated to pay for real estate taxes, insurance premiums, maintenance, or improvement of other real estate described in a declaration.

Three features of these definitions are analytically decisive. First, the obligation attaches to the ownership of land, not to consent. It is a servitude, and it binds successors on the principles developed in Chapter 23. Second, the obligation is inescapable by nonuse or withdrawal. The owner who never enters the clubhouse pays the clubhouse assessment; the owner who wishes to secede cannot, because he cannot sever the servitude from his own title. Third, the obligation is affirmative — it requires payment — and is therefore precisely the species of covenant that English law refused to let run and that American law, from Neponsit forward, has permitted.

It follows that a subdivision governed only by negative restrictions, enforceable owner against owner without any assessment obligation and without any association, is not a common-interest community. It is a common-plan scheme of the kind analyzed in Chapter 23. The transition from scheme to community occurs when the recorded instrument adds two things: a fund and an administrator. That addition changes the character of the arrangement from a set of bilateral servitudes into an institution capable of continuous governance.

A common-interest community is not an association. The confusion is understandable — the association sends the notices, levies the assessments, and files the suits — but it is the source of most of the analytical errors examined at the end of this chapter. The regime is constituted by recorded instruments operating upon land. The association is a juridical person, usually a nonprofit corporation and sometimes an unincorporated association or a trust, created to administer that regime. The regime could in principle exist without incorporation; many older communities are administered by unincorporated associations, and the Uniform Act contemplates that the association may take any of several legal forms while the community's existence depends upon the declaration.

The components of the regime may be enumerated. Each is a property or contractual element analyzed elsewhere in this Volume, and the community consists in their combination:

• Individually owned units or lots — fee simple estates, examined in Part IV, or in the cooperative a leasehold coupled with corporate shares.
• Common elements or common property — held either as undivided tenancies in common appurtenant to each unit (Chapter 16) or in the association's own name.
• Limited common elements — portions of the common elements allocated to the exclusive use of one or more but fewer than all units.
• Reciprocal easements — of access, support, encroachment, utilities, and entry for maintenance, running among the units and the common elements (Chapter 21).
• Restrictive covenants and equitable servitudes governing use, appearance, occupancy, and conduct (Chapter 23).
• The affirmative servitude to pay assessments, with its lien security.
• Automatic, inseverable association membership appurtenant to unit ownership.
• Governing documents: declaration, plat or plan, articles, bylaws, rules, and board policies.
• An overlay of mandatory and default statutory rights and duties.

Every question in the field is answered by asking which of these components supplies the rule of decision. A dispute about who may repair a balcony is a question of common-element classification. A dispute about whether an owner must pay is a question of the assessment servitude. A dispute about whether a rule binds is a question of delegated power under the declaration read against the statute. Framing the dispute as one about "what the HOA can do" obscures all of this.

The lineage begins with the private residential restriction. Nineteenth-century developers of urban squares and suburban tracts — Leicester Square in Tulk v. Moxhay itself, Louisburg Square in Boston, the Chicago and Cleveland allotments of the 1870s — sold lots subject to covenants restricting use to dwellings, prescribing setbacks, and forbidding trades. Enforcement was owner against owner, and the doctrinal apparatus was that of the equitable servitude and the common plan. The system had two structural weaknesses: nobody was charged with maintaining shared amenities, and nobody had authority to adapt the restrictions to changed conditions.

The remedy appeared in the planned garden suburbs of the early twentieth century. Roland Park in Baltimore (1891 onwards) and the Country Club District in Kansas City developed by J. C. Nichols supplied the missing institution: a permanent owners' association, automatic membership, and a covenant to pay annual charges for maintenance of streets, parks, and services. Radburn, New Jersey (1929) added common open space owned by the association. The legal question these innovations posed — whether the affirmative charge could run against successors — was answered for the United States by Neponsit in 1938, sustaining an assessment covenant on the ground that it touched and concerned the land because it supported the common facilities that made the lots valuable, and permitting the association to sue as agent for the owners though it held no land itself.

The second line of development is legislative and concerns the vertical division of buildings. Ownership of separate storeys was familiar to the civil law and to a few American statutes, but the common law's difficulties with support, maintenance, and the running of affirmative burdens made it impractical at scale. The Puerto Rico Horizontal Property Act of 1958, and its adoption as a model after the National Housing Act amendments of 1961 made federally insured mortgages available on condominium units, prompted every state to enact horizontal-property or condominium legislation within a decade. Those first-generation statutes were short and mechanical: they permitted the regime, prescribed a declaration and plat, and left governance largely unregulated.

The third phase is the movement toward comprehensive and uniform regulation. The Uniform Condominium Act (1977, amended 1980), the Uniform Planned Community Act (1980), and the Model Real Estate Cooperative Act (1981) were consolidated by the Uniform Law Commission into the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (1982), amended in 1994 and 2008 and revised in 2021, which governs all three forms in a single statute organized around creation, management, and protection of purchasers. The Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act (2008) supplies a shorter set of owner protections for states unwilling to adopt the whole framework. In 2000 the Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes devoted Chapter 6 to common-interest communities, treating them as a species of servitude regime and articulating standards of validity, reasonableness, and fiduciary obligation for judicial use where statutes are silent.

A single caution governs the use of all of this material. The uniform acts are drafts, not law. Fewer than half the states have enacted UCIOA, most with substantial modification, and many states operate under first-generation condominium acts supplemented by separate homeowners'-association statutes of uneven scope. The practitioner must always distinguish the uniform text, the state enactment, the version enacted, and the community's own vintage, because most statutes apply prospectively in full and retroactively only in enumerated respects.

In a condominium the owner holds a fee simple estate in the unit — ordinarily a defined volume of space bounded by the undecorated surfaces of perimeter walls, floors, and ceilings — together with an undivided interest in the common elements held as a tenant in common with all other unit owners. The two components are inseverable: the undivided interest cannot be conveyed, mortgaged, or partitioned apart from the unit, and any instrument purporting to sever them is ineffective. This inseverability is the structural feature that distinguishes the condominium common elements from ordinary co-tenancy, in which any co-tenant may compel partition (Chapter 20).

The common elements comprise everything within the submitted land that is not a unit: structural components, roofs, foundations, exterior walls, corridors, elevators, mechanical systems, grounds, and recreational facilities. Limited common elements are portions of the common elements allocated by the declaration or by the plans to the exclusive use of one unit or of a group of units — balconies, patios, assigned parking, storage lockers, the exterior doors and windows serving a single unit, and mechanical equipment serving fewer than all. The classification matters for three purposes: who may use, who must maintain and repair, and who bears the expense. The uniform default assigns maintenance of limited common elements to the association with the expense charged to the benefited units, but declarations frequently vary this, and the drafting is a common source of litigation.

The declaration must allocate to each unit three separate interests: the undivided interest in the common elements, the share of common expenses, and the votes in the association. The uniform act requires the formulas to be stated and permits them to differ from one another, so that a community may allocate ownership by relative floor area, expenses by benefit received, and votes one per unit. The allocations are not casual. They determine ownership on termination, the amount of every assessment, and the arithmetic of every supermajority.

Creation requires a declaration and, because the boundaries are volumetric, plats and plans of sufficient precision to identify each unit and each limited common element by reference to physical monuments and to the structure as built. The uniform act requires certification by a surveyor or engineer that the plans depict the improvements as constructed. A condominium may be created in stages by reserving development rights to add real estate, to create units, or to withdraw land, and the reserved rights and their time limits must be disclosed in the original declaration.

In a planned community the owner holds a fee simple estate in a lot with its improvements, and the common property — streets, open space, recreational facilities, drainage tracts — is ordinarily owned in fee by the association rather than in undivided shares by the owners. The Uniform Act defines the planned community residually: a common-interest community that is neither a condominium nor a cooperative. The owner's relationship to the common property is therefore not one of co-ownership but of easement plus membership: the declaration grants each lot an appurtenant easement of enjoyment over the common property, and each owner is automatically a member of the association that owns and manages it.

Because the owner's interest in the common property is an easement rather than an undivided share, the planned community exhibits a set of consequences that distinguish it from the condominium. The association may, subject to the declaration and statute, encumber or convey common property; the common property is separately assessed for real-estate taxes in many jurisdictions unless statute allocates the value to the lots; and the association's insolvency presents risks to the common property that do not arise where owners hold undivided interests. Conversely, maintenance responsibility is ordinarily simpler, because the structures are owned entirely by the lot owners and the association's obligations are confined to the common tracts.

The term "homeowners' association" is a description of the administering body and not a form of ownership. It appears in condominiums and in planned communities alike, and in many state statutes the operative term is "property owners' association" or "unit owners' association." The Society's usage in this chapter follows the uniform acts: the community is the regime; the association is the body corporate; and the phrase "HOA community" is avoided as imprecise.

In a cooperative the fee in the entire property, land and building, is owned by a single entity — historically a corporation, sometimes a limited liability company or a trust. The resident does not own real property in the ordinary sense. He owns shares or a membership interest in the entity, and holds a proprietary lease or occupancy agreement entitling him to possession of a designated apartment for so long as he remains a member in good standing. The shares and the lease are inseverable, and the interest is generally treated as personalty for some purposes and as an interest in real estate for others, with the characterization varying by jurisdiction and by subject — securities regulation, recording, taxation, homestead, and execution each may answer differently.

Two consequences follow that have no analogue in the condominium. First, financing is collective. The entity ordinarily carries a blanket mortgage on the whole property, and the resident's monthly charge includes his allocated share of the debt service and taxes, while his own purchase is financed by a share loan secured under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code rather than by a real-estate mortgage. Default by one resident therefore threatens all, because the blanket mortgagee may foreclose against the entire property; this mutual financial exposure is the classical justification for the cooperative board's broad power to approve or refuse transferees. Second, the relationship is contractual and tenurial as well as proprietary, so that the doctrines of landlord and tenant — the subject of Part VIII — supply rules of decision that would be inapposite in a condominium.

These differences are not formal. A restriction that would be tested in a condominium as a servitude affecting a fee estate is tested in a cooperative as a lease term and a corporate governance decision, which is why Levandusky, a cooperative case, framed the standard in the language of the business-judgment rule while Nahrstedt, a condominium case, framed it in the language of servitude validity. The forms should never be treated as interchangeable, and the analyst's first question in any common-interest dispute is which form is before him.

The common-interest community is not a new species of property interest. It is an assembly of the interests already examined, deployed at scale and coordinated by a single instrument. The reciprocal easements of access, support, encroachment, utility, and maintenance entry are easements appurtenant created by express grant in the declaration and analyzed by the rules of Chapter 21. Rights to take water, timber, or minerals from common tracts, where they exist, are profits governed by Chapter 22, and the one-stock rule discussed there explains why such rights are ordinarily made appurtenant and non-apportionable. The use restrictions are restrictive covenants and equitable servitudes governed by Chapter 23, satisfying intent, touch and concern, and notice through recordation; the community-wide reciprocity that the common-plan doctrine had to imply in Sanborn v. McLean is here made express by the declaration.

The assessment obligation is the affirmative covenant sustained in Neponsit, and the association's standing to enforce restrictions it did not itself covenant for is the modern successor to Neponsit's holding that the association may sue as the owners' agent — a point now supplied directly by statute in enacting states. Architectural control is a covenant conferring a discretionary approval power, of the kind long enforced where the discretion is exercised reasonably and in good faith. Membership is an appurtenance annexed to the estate. What historically developed as separate doctrines, each with its own privity and notice requirements, now operates as one integrated regime — and the Restatement (Third) makes the integration explicit by abolishing the privity distinctions and treating all of these as servitudes governed by a single set of validity and enforcement rules.

The practical significance of the derivation is that servitude doctrine remains the residual law of the field. Where a statute is silent, where a declaration is ambiguous, or where an association asserts a power not enumerated, the analyst returns to the servitude: what was created, by what instrument, with what intent, subject to what notice, and enforceable by and against whom.

A common-interest community is governed by a stack of instruments of descending authority. An instrument lower in the hierarchy is void to the extent it conflicts with one above it. The ordinary ranking is: controlling federal law; controlling state statute (distinguishing mandatory provisions, which governing documents may not vary, from default provisions, which they may); the recorded declaration with its plats or plans; the articles of incorporation or organization; the bylaws; rules and regulations adopted under delegated authority; and board resolutions and policies. Jurisdictions differ on the relative rank of articles and bylaws, and a few statutes rank the plat above the declaration where the two conflict as to physical boundaries.

Two rules of construction accompany the hierarchy. First, a governing document cannot confer a power that the law withholds, and no supermajority of owners can authorize what a mandatory statute forbids. Second, the recorded instruments are the only ones that operate directly upon title; bylaws and rules bind by force of the declaration's delegation and of membership, not by their own recordation, and an unrecorded rule cannot create an encumbrance on land.

Terminology varies materially. "Declaration" appears as "master deed" in several states and as "declaration of covenants, conditions and restrictions" in most planned communities; "bylaws" in some jurisdictions are recorded and treated as part of the declaration. The analyst identifies instruments by function and by recordation, not by caption.

A community is created by recording a declaration executed by every person whose interest in the land would be affected — the fee owner, and any lessee of a ground lease or holder of an interest that will be subordinated. The uniform act prescribes the declaration's minimum contents: the name and type of community; the county; a legal description of the submitted land; the maximum number of units; the boundaries and identifying number of each unit; a description of limited common elements; the allocated interests with the formulas used; any development rights and special declarant rights with the land to which each applies and the time limits within which each must be exercised; and any restrictions on use, occupancy, or alienation.

Recording performs two distinct offices. It creates the regime — before recording there is no community, whatever the developer's plans — and it supplies the constructive notice that binds every subsequent purchaser under the recording acts studied in Part XI. A community whose declaration is misindexed or recorded outside the chain of title presents the problem of Witter v. Taggart discussed in Chapter 23, and the consequence is that a purchaser without notice may take free of restrictions that every other owner observes.

Allocated interests deserve particular care because they are simultaneously property rights and governance rights. The undivided interest determines the owner's share of proceeds on termination and, in many states, the assessed value attributable to the unit. The common-expense allocation determines the assessment. The vote allocation determines control, and where the declarant reserves multiple votes per unowned unit — a device the uniform act constrains — the allocation is also the mechanism of declarant control. The uniform act forbids reallocation except as the declaration expressly permits, and requires that any amendment reallocating interests be executed by the affected owners.

The association's powers derive from four sources, and identifying the source is the first step in any dispute about authority. Statutory powers are conferred directly by the common-interest statute and, for incorporated associations, by the nonprofit corporation act; the uniform act's enumeration includes adopting budgets, levying assessments, hiring and discharging managing agents, instituting and defending litigation in the community's name, making contracts, regulating the use of common elements, imposing charges for late payment, imposing reasonable fines after notice and hearing, adopting rules, acquiring and encumbering property subject to owner approval thresholds, and exercising any other power necessary and proper for the government and operation of the association. Declaration powers are those the constitutive instrument confers, most importantly architectural control and any assessment formula or enforcement mechanism beyond the statutory default. Bylaw powers concern internal governance. Implied powers are those necessary to carry out an expressly granted power — the power to assess implies the power to bill, to account, and to compel production of ownership information — but implication cannot supply a substantive restriction on use that the declaration omits.

Correlative to power is duty. Directors owe the duties of care and loyalty prescribed by the nonprofit corporation act; the association owes owners duties of good faith and fair dealing in exercising discretionary powers, Restatement (Third) § 6.13, and duties to treat owners even-handedly in enforcement, in access to information, and in the exercise of architectural discretion. The uniform act imposes procedural duties that are frequently litigated: notice of meetings; open meetings with executive sessions confined to enumerated subjects; owner access to records with defined exceptions for personnel, litigation, and personal financial information; annual budget adoption with an owner ratification mechanism; reserve study or disclosure requirements in several enacting states; and notice and hearing before the imposition of any fine.

Owner rights are the mirror image. They include the right to use one's unit subject to the recorded servitudes; the right to use common elements subject to reasonable regulation; the right to vote, to nominate, and to stand for election; the right to inspect records; the right to notice and hearing before sanction; the right to enforce the declaration directly against other owners where the association declines; and the right to challenge association action that exceeds authority or is exercised in bad faith. The Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act consolidates several of these for states that have not enacted UCIOA.

Two limiting principles govern the whole. First, a power exercised beyond its source is void, not merely voidable, and no deference attaches to it: the business-judgment principle protects the manner of exercising authority, never the assumption of authority not conferred. Second, a power exercised within its source is nonetheless invalid if exercised in bad faith, for an improper purpose, discriminatorily, or without the procedure the governing documents or statute require.

The obligation to pay assessments is what converts a set of restrictions into a community. It is an affirmative covenant running with each unit, and its enforceability against successors — doubted in England, litigated in America through the nineteenth century, and settled by Neponsit — is now placed beyond argument by statute in every enacting state. The uniform act provides that until the association levies an assessment the declarant pays all common expenses, and thereafter all common expenses are assessed against all units in accordance with the allocations stated in the declaration.

Regular assessments fund the annual budget: management, insurance, utilities, maintenance of common elements, administration, and contributions to reserves. Special assessments fund extraordinary items — a roof replacement, an uninsured casualty, a judgment — and typically require a higher approval threshold, often owner ratification, because they fall outside the budget cycle. The uniform act also authorizes assessments against fewer than all units in three defined situations: expenses associated with limited common elements charged to the benefited units; expenses benefiting fewer than all units charged to those benefited; and expenses caused by the misconduct of an owner charged to that owner's unit. The last of these is the statutory basis for charging back damage and enforcement costs.

Allocation formulas may be equal per unit, proportional to allocated interest, proportional to floor area, or tiered by benefit; the formula binds because it is in the declaration, and courts will not substitute a fairer formula for the recorded one. Delinquency triggers a graduated set of remedies: interest at the rate stated in the declaration or by statute, late charges, reasonable attorney's fees, suspension of voting rights and of the use of recreational common elements where statute permits, an action in personam against the owner, and enforcement of the lien. The obligation may not be avoided by waiver of the use of common elements or by abandonment of the unit.

Under the uniform act the association has a statutory lien on a unit for any assessment or fine levied against it, arising when the assessment becomes due; recordation of a notice of lien is not required to perfect it, though most associations record for practical reasons. The lien is prior to all other liens except liens for real-estate taxes and governmental assessments, encumbrances recorded before the declaration, and first mortgages recorded before the assessment became delinquent — with the critical qualification that the association's lien is nonetheless prior to that first mortgage to the extent of the common-expense assessments that would have become due during the six months immediately preceding an action to enforce the lien.

That limited priority — the "six-month super-lien" — is the most consequential and least uniform provision in the field. Enacting states have adopted six months, nine months, twelve months, or none; some include attorney's fees and costs within the priority and others exclude them; and jurisdictions divide sharply over whether foreclosure of the priority portion extinguishes the first mortgage entirely or only the priority amount. The Nevada litigation culminating in SFR Investments Pool 1, LLC v. U.S. Bank, 334 P.3d 408 (Nev. 2014), holding that foreclosure of the super-priority piece extinguished the first deed of trust, produced a decade of appellate correction and statutory amendment and stands as the cautionary example of how much turns on the precise text of the local enactment.

Foreclosure may be judicial everywhere and nonjudicial where the statute or declaration authorizes a power of sale. Statutes increasingly condition foreclosure on procedural predicates: a minimum delinquency in amount or duration, pre-foreclosure notice and an opportunity to cure, a payment-plan offer, board approval by recorded vote, and in several states a prohibition on foreclosing for fines or attorney's fees alone. Statutes of limitation run separately on each instalment. In bankruptcy, pre-petition assessments are ordinarily dischargeable claims while post-petition assessments accruing while the debtor remains a legal or equitable owner of the unit are excepted from discharge under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(16); the lien itself survives discharge of the personal obligation unless avoided.

A recurring transactional consequence deserves emphasis. Because the priority is limited, a purchaser at a mortgage foreclosure sale takes subject to the servitude and becomes liable for assessments accruing after the sale, while the association's claim for older arrears is generally extinguished as to the unit though not as to the former owner personally. The uniform act makes a unit purchaser jointly liable with the seller for unpaid assessments through the date of conveyance, which is the reason the resale certificate examined below is indispensable.

Restrictions in a common-interest community fall into two classes that are reviewed differently, and conflating them is the most frequent analytical error in the litigated cases. A restriction contained in the recorded declaration — or in a validly adopted amendment to it — is a servitude of which every purchaser had record notice; it is presumed valid and is enforced unless it is arbitrary, violates a fundamental public policy, or imposes a burden on the affected land that far outweighs any benefit. That is the holding of Nahrstedt v. Lakeside Village Condominium Ass'n, in which the California Supreme Court enforced a recorded pet prohibition against an owner whose indoor cats caused no demonstrated nuisance, reasoning that the validity of a recorded restriction is assessed as to the community as a whole and not case by case, because case-by-case adjudication would destroy the stability and predictability that induce purchase and depress enforcement costs for all.

A rule adopted by the board under delegated authority is reviewed more searchingly. It must fall within the rulemaking power conferred by statute and declaration, must be adopted with any required procedure, must be reasonable, and must be applied even-handedly. Hidden Harbour Estates, Inc. v. Basso distinguishes the two categories explicitly: restrictions in the declaration are clothed with a strong presumption of validity, while a rule promulgated by the board must be reasonable, and the burden of showing reasonableness lies on the association. In practice reasonableness examines the rule's relation to a legitimate community purpose, its proportionality, its consistency with the declaration, and the availability of less restrictive means.

The catalogue of common restrictions may be organized by subject: residential-use-only clauses and their application to home offices, day care, and group homes; architectural and design controls governing colours, materials, roofing, fences, and landscaping; alteration restrictions applicable to units, limited common elements, and common elements, with different approval standards for each; leasing restrictions imposing minimum terms, caps on the number of leased units, or approval requirements; short-term rental restrictions; pet restrictions by number, weight, species, or absolutely; vehicle and parking restrictions including commercial vehicles, recreational vehicles, and storage; sign restrictions; nuisance and conduct clauses; business-activity restrictions; and occupancy restrictions, which require particular care because they may collide with familial-status protections.

Two doctrinal points recur across the categories. First, the source of a restriction determines the procedure required to change it: an amendment to the declaration requires the recorded supermajority and, once recorded, binds all; a rule may be revised by the board. Second, the source affects the reach: a rule ordinarily may regulate conduct and the use of common elements, but may not impose a new servitude upon the units themselves, because that would enlarge the burden on land without the notice and consent the recording system requires. A leasing prohibition, which restricts the owner's power of alienation and use of his own unit, is on nearly all authority a declaration matter, and boards that adopt one as a rule usually lose.

Enforcement mechanisms are cumulative: informal notice; fines imposed after notice and an opportunity to be heard; suspension of privileges where authorized; self-help correction with charge-back where the declaration permits and the intrusion is lawful; alternative dispute resolution, which several statutes require before suit; injunctive relief, the primary remedy for a continuing violation; damages, including the cost of restoring architectural conformity; and the assessment lien for monetary sanctions where statute permits. Individual owners retain standing to enforce the declaration in most jurisdictions, and that standing is important where an association declines to act or is itself the violator.

The standard of review for board action is deferential within the sphere of authority. Levandusky v. One Fifth Avenue Apartment Corp. adapted the corporate business-judgment rule to a cooperative board's refusal to approve a plumbing alteration, holding that so long as the board acts for the purposes of the cooperative, within the scope of its authority, and in good faith, courts will not substitute their judgment for the board's. Many jurisdictions have extended the principle to condominium and planned-community boards. The rule's limits are its elements: authority, purpose, and good faith. A board that acts ultra vires, that targets an owner, that fails to follow required procedure, or that acts on a conflict of interest receives no deference at all.

Deference is further bounded by affirmative duty. Frances T. v. Village Green Owners Ass'n held that an association exercising the powers of a landlord over common areas owes a corresponding duty of care to owners, so that a board that knew of criminal activity and declined to provide lighting could be liable in negligence, and that individual directors could be personally liable for their own tortious conduct notwithstanding the business-judgment rule. The case establishes the two-sidedness of association power: authority over the common areas carries responsibility for them.

Amendment is the mechanism by which a community adapts, and its enforceability against existing owners is settled where the amendment power is reserved in the recorded declaration. Villa De Las Palmas Homeowners Ass'n v. Terifaj enforced a pet restriction adopted by amendment after the owner's purchase, on the ground that the owner took title subject to a declaration that expressly reserved the power to amend, so the possibility of amendment was itself part of the servitude she accepted. The limits are that the amendment must be adopted by the prescribed vote and procedure, must be recorded, must be within the scope of the reserved power, and must not be unreasonable, retroactive in a manner the power does not authorize, or destructive of a vested property right such as an allocated interest or a limited common element assignment without the affected owner's consent.

Every common-interest community begins under the control of its declarant, and the law of the developer phase is the law of a temporary trust. The uniform act distinguishes development rights — rights reserved in the declaration to add real estate, to create units or common elements, to subdivide or convert units, or to withdraw land — from special declarant rights, which include completing improvements, exercising development rights, maintaining sales offices and signs, using easements through the common elements for construction, making the community part of a larger one, and appointing or removing officers and directors during the period of declarant control. Both categories must be disclosed in the original declaration, must identify the land to which they apply, and must be exercised within stated time limits; unexercised rights lapse.

Control of the association is time-limited by statute rather than by the declarant's preference. The uniform formulation terminates declarant control on the earliest of a fixed period after the first conveyance, a stated number of years after the declarant ceases to offer units in the ordinary course, or the conveyance of a stated percentage of the units that may be created; and it requires interim owner participation before that date, with owners electing a minimum fraction of the board once specified conveyance thresholds are reached. Statutes further restrict the declarant's ability to bind the association to long-term management or recreational-facility contracts, permitting termination without penalty within a defined window after owner control begins — a provision enacted in response to the sweetheart recreation leases of the 1960s and 1970s.

The declarant's obligations during control are substantive. He must pay or subsidize common expenses attributable to unsold units, and where the declaration permits a subsidy in lieu of assessments the arrangement must be disclosed; he must not use his control to prefer his own interests in insurance, contracting, or enforcement; he owes the association a duty of care and loyalty in the exercise of appointed control, which the Restatement (Third) § 6.19 states as a duty to act in the interests of the community as a whole; and he must fund or disclose reserves as the state requires. Construction-defect exposure is the field's most heavily litigated developer question, and statutes in many states now impose notice-and-opportunity-to-repair procedures before an association may sue, along with limitation and repose periods running from substantial completion.

Transition — "turnover" — is a discrete legal event with an enumerated content. Within a short statutory period after the termination of declarant control the declarant must deliver to the association the original governing documents; the minute books and corporate records; financial records and audited statements for the control period; funds held on the association's behalf, including reserves and working-capital contributions; tax returns and employer identification materials; membership rosters; insurance policies; construction plans, specifications, and as-built drawings; certificates of occupancy; warranties on common-element components; permits, contracts, and leases; and deeds conveying any common property not previously conveyed. The transition audit, in which the new board examines the sufficiency of reserves and the adequacy of construction, is the moment at which most developer claims are identified, and the running of limitation periods makes prompt examination essential.

The boundary between private governance and public law must be stated precisely, because it is habitually misstated. Constitutional guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment restrain state action. A private association is not the state merely because it performs functions resembling municipal ones, and courts have overwhelmingly declined to treat ordinary community associations as state actors. What Shelley v. Kraemer holds is narrower and more exact: judicial enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant is itself state action and is therefore forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause. Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953), extended the principle to an action for damages for breach of such a covenant. The covenant is not made a nullity as a private agreement; it is stripped of every judicial remedy, which as a practical matter destroys it.

Statutory prohibition operates on a different footing and reaches private conduct directly. The Fair Housing Act forbids discrimination in the sale or rental of dwellings, and in the terms, conditions, privileges, and provision of services or facilities, because of race, colour, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability; it applies to associations in their enforcement of restrictions, their approval of transfers, and their administration of facilities. Section 804(f) requires reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services when necessary to afford a disabled person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling — the provision under which assistance-animal accommodations override no-pet restrictions — and requires that reasonable modifications at the resident's expense be permitted. Familial-status protection constrains adult-only rules, age restrictions, and occupancy limits, subject to the housing-for-older-persons exemption of 42 U.S.C. § 3607(b). Section 1982 supplies a parallel and older guarantee of equal property rights, and state civil-rights statutes frequently add protected classes such as marital status, source of income, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

A third category consists of subject-specific statutes that limit association authority without reference to constitutional doctrine. The Freedom to Display the American Flag Act preempts association restrictions on the display of the flag on an owner's own property, subject to reasonable time, place, and manner limits. The Federal Communications Commission's Over-the-Air Reception Devices Rule invalidates restrictions that impair the installation, maintenance, or use of covered antennas and satellite dishes in areas within the owner's exclusive use or control. State solar-access and solar-rights statutes void or narrow restrictions on solar collectors; state statutes protect political signs during election periods, xeriscaping and drought-tolerant landscaping, electric-vehicle charging installation, and clotheslines; and some states extend free-expression protections to large residential developments by statute or state-constitutional interpretation, a minority position that must be verified locally and never assumed.

The correct method, therefore, is layered. Ask first whether the restriction is invalid as a servitude under Chapter 23 principles and Restatement (Third) § 3.1 — arbitrary, unconscionable, an unreasonable restraint on alienation, or contrary to public policy. Ask next whether a statute directly regulates the association's power over that subject. Ask only last, and rarely with success, whether the association's conduct is attributable to the state. Reversing the order produces the misconception, corrected below, that constitutional law governs associations as it governs municipalities.

A common-interest community appears in the land records as a cluster of instruments, and the examiner's task is to find all of them and to determine their effect on the parcel under examination. The core instruments are the declaration and every amendment; the plat, plan, or condominium plans, including as-built certifications and amendments creating additional phases; instruments exercising or relinquishing development rights and special declarant rights; deeds conveying common property to the association; recorded bylaws where the state requires recordation; easements benefiting or burdening the community, including utility, access, drainage, and conservation easements; assessment liens and notices of lien with releases; judgments and lis pendens affecting the association or the unit; mechanic's liens against common elements; and any termination or withdrawal instrument.

The examination questions follow from that list. Is the parcel within the submitted land as described in the declaration and as amended? What unit or lot number, undivided interest, common-expense share, and vote are allocated to it? Which limited common elements are assigned to it, by what instrument, and may that assignment be reallocated? What use restrictions burden it, and are any of them subject to a reserved amendment power? Are any development rights still exercisable that could add units, dilute allocated interests, or place structures on land the purchaser expects to remain open? Are there unreleased assessment liens, and what is the priority relationship to the mortgage being insured? Do the plats and the as-built plans agree with the improvements actually standing? Each of these becomes a title exception or a requirement in the commitment.

Because the records disclose the regime but not its operation, statutes require the seller to furnish a resale certificate or disclosure statement prepared by the association. Its typical contents are the current assessment and payment frequency; unpaid assessments, fines, and charges against the unit; other fees payable by unit owners; any special assessment approved or reasonably anticipated; the reserve balance and any portion designated for a specific project; the association's most recent financial statement and current budget; insurance coverage; any known unsatisfied judgments, pending litigation, or administrative proceedings; any known violation of the governing documents affecting the unit; and any restriction on leasing. The uniform act makes a purchaser's obligation to complete conditional on delivery, and the certificate binds the association as to the facts stated. For a purchaser, the resale certificate and the recorded documents together are the community's operating and constitutional record, and both must be read before closing.

Amendment of the declaration requires the vote or written agreement of owners of the allocated interests stated in the declaration, subject to a statutory ceiling in most enacting states, and must be recorded to take effect. Certain amendments require more: reallocating allocated interests, changing unit boundaries, converting common elements into units, altering limited common element assignments, and restricting alienation ordinarily require the consent of every affected owner, and in many communities the consent of eligible mortgagees. Amendments to bylaws follow the bylaws' own procedure, and rules are amended by the board. The uniform act also permits limited amendment by the association alone to correct scrivener's errors or to conform to as-built conditions, and permits judicial correction of defective declarations.

Termination is deliberately difficult. It requires agreement of owners holding a supermajority of the allocated votes — eighty percent under the uniform act, and higher where the declaration says so — together with mortgagee consents, and the termination agreement must be recorded. If the community is to be sold as a whole the agreement must so state and must specify the terms; the association then holds the proceeds in trust and distributes them among owners according to their interests in the property as valued, with liens attaching to the distributions. If the property is not to be sold, title vests in the owners as tenants in common in proportion to their former interests, and liens attach correspondingly. Statutes increasingly protect dissenting owners against forced sale at less than fair value, a response to condominium terminations effected by bulk purchasers who assembled supermajorities.

Casualty is governed by the declaration and statute rather than by the ordinary law of accidental destruction. The association must insure the common elements and, in most condominiums, the units to their original specifications, with owners insuring improvements and betterments and personal property; the association's policy is ordinarily primary as to insured property, and the deductible may be allocated to the responsible unit where statute allows. After a casualty the default rule is that the damaged portion must be repaired unless the community is terminated by the required vote, or unless repair is illegal under health or building law; if less than the whole is repaired, insurance proceeds are applied first to restoration and any surplus distributed by allocated interest.

Condemnation is allocated by statute rather than left to ordinary eminent-domain apportionment. Where an entire unit is taken, the award compensates the owner for the unit and its allocated interest, and the allocated interests of the remaining units are automatically reallocated; where part of a unit is taken, the award compensates for the reduction in value and the unit's interests are adjusted; where only common elements are taken, the award is paid to the association for distribution or use as the statute and declaration direct. Recording the court's judgment or a supplemental instrument is required to reflect the reallocation in the land records.

The following worked illustrations apply the chapter's framework. Each identifies the governing instrument, the governing doctrine, the applicable statutory layer, the likely analytical result, and any jurisdictional qualification. They are analytical exercises, not legal advice for any transaction.

1. "An HOA owns everyone's property." It does not. Owners hold fee estates in their units or lots. The association owns, at most, the common property in a planned community, and in a condominium it ordinarily owns nothing at all — the common elements belong to the owners in undivided shares.
2. "HOA rules are just private contracts." Recorded restrictions are servitudes that run with the land and bind persons who never agreed to them. Their force comes from property law and the recording system, not from contract formation.
3. "The board can make any rule it wants." Rulemaking is a delegated power bounded by statute and declaration, and rules must be reasonable and even-handedly applied. A rule that enlarges the servitude on the units themselves is beyond the power.
4. "Anything in the bylaws automatically binds the land." Bylaws govern the association's internal affairs. Encumbering land requires a recorded instrument operating on title — the declaration or a recorded amendment.
5. "An owner can opt out of the association." Membership is appurtenant to and inseverable from ownership, and the assessment servitude cannot be avoided by nonuse, withdrawal, or abandonment.
6. "The Constitution applies to an HOA exactly as it applies to government." Most constitutional guarantees restrain state action. Shelley v. Kraemer bars judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants; it does not convert associations into governments. Limits on associations are usually statutory.
7. "An HOA lien is automatically superior to every mortgage." The lien is generally junior to a prior first mortgage except for a limited priority window — six months under the uniform act, and varying widely by state.
8. "The association can amend anything by board vote." Declaration amendments require the recorded owner supermajority, often mortgagee consent, and unanimous consent of affected owners for reallocations, boundary changes, and limited-common-element reassignments.
9. "Condominiums and HOAs are the same thing." The condominium is a form of ownership; the association is an administering body. A condominium has an association, but a planned community with lots in fee is a different property regime.
10. "Common areas always belong to the association." In a condominium the common elements belong to the unit owners as tenants in common, appurtenant and inseverable. Association ownership is the planned-community pattern, not a universal rule.
11. "A declaration and bylaws are interchangeable." They differ in function, in recordation, in amendment standard, and in binding effect. Confusing them produces both invalid restrictions and unenforceable procedures.
12. "Buying before a rule was adopted means the rule can never apply." A validly adopted amendment under a reserved power binds pre-existing owners prospectively. Terifaj is the leading illustration.
13. "Association assessments are voluntary membership dues." They are an affirmative servitude secured by a statutory lien and enforceable by foreclosure. Nothing about them is voluntary.
14. "A board's business judgment makes every decision immune from judicial review." Deference presupposes authority, proper purpose, and good faith. Ultra vires, discriminatory, procedurally defective, or self-interested action receives none, and Frances T. shows that authority may itself generate a duty of care.
15. "Common-interest restrictions exist independently of the recorded title." They live and die in the land records. A restriction outside the chain of title may be unenforceable against a purchaser without notice, however diligently the community observes it.

A common-interest community is a property regime in which ownership of a unit or lot carries an inseverable obligation to pay assessments to an association for common property or services. The regime is created by a recorded declaration and consists of individually owned units or lots, common elements or common property, limited common elements, allocated interests, reciprocal easements, recorded use restrictions, the affirmative assessment servitude, automatic association membership, a hierarchy of governing instruments, and an overlay of statutory rights and duties. The association administers the regime; it does not constitute it, and its powers are derived from statute, declaration, bylaws, and necessary implication rather than from its corporate existence.

The three principal forms are distinct and not interchangeable. In the condominium the owner holds a fee in a volumetric unit together with an inseverable undivided interest in the common elements. In the planned community the owner holds a fee in a lot, the association ordinarily owns the common property, and the owner's access rests on an appurtenant easement plus membership. In the cooperative the entity holds the fee, the resident holds shares and a proprietary lease, financing is collective under a blanket mortgage, and landlord-and-tenant doctrine supplies rules that would be inapposite elsewhere.

The regime is built from the servitudes of Chapters 21 through 23: express easements for access, support, and utilities; profits where shared resources are exploited; restrictive covenants and equitable servitudes made reciprocal by express declaration rather than by implication; and the affirmative assessment covenant sustained in Neponsit. The governing instruments rank from statute through declaration and plat, articles, bylaws, rules, and board policies, and an instrument is void to the extent of conflict with one above it. Assessments fund the community and are secured by a statutory lien with a limited priority over prior mortgages, six months under the uniform act and highly variable by state, subject to statutory conditions on foreclosure and to the bankruptcy treatment of pre- and post-petition obligations.

Restrictions in a recorded declaration are presumed valid and fail only if arbitrary, contrary to public policy, or grossly disproportionate — the Nahrstedt standard — while board-adopted rules must fall within the delegated power and be reasonable, the Hidden Harbour distinction. Board action within the sphere of authority receives Levandusky deference; action beyond authority, in bad faith, or without required procedure receives none, and Frances T. establishes that control over common areas generates a correlative duty of care. Amendments adopted under a reserved power bind prior purchasers, Terifaj, but reallocations of interests and boundary changes require the consent of affected owners.

Declarant control is a temporary, statutorily bounded, fiduciary phase, terminated by conveyance thresholds or elapsed time and closed by a turnover of records, funds, reserves, warranties, and property. Public-law limits are layered: servitude invalidity first, direct statutory regulation second — the Fair Housing Act, § 1982, flag, antenna, solar, and political-sign statutes — and state-action doctrine last and rarely, with Shelley v. Kraemer standing for the unenforceability of racially restrictive covenants rather than for the proposition that associations are governments. Everything the regime does is anchored in the land records, and the resale certificate supplies the operating facts the records omit. Termination, casualty, and condemnation are governed by statutory supermajorities and allocation rules rather than by ordinary partition.

Part VII — Servitudes closes here. Chapters 21 and 22 established the nonpossessory rights to use and to take; Chapter 23 established the promissory servitudes and their running at law and in equity; and this chapter has shown how those instruments combine into the dominant form of American residential development. Volume I now turns to Part VIII — Landlord and Tenant, where possession itself is divided in time rather than in space. Chapter 25 opens that Part with the leasehold estates — the term of years, the periodic tenancy, the tenancy at will, and the tenancy at sufferance — and the reader will find the cooperative's proprietary lease, encountered in this chapter, waiting to be re-examined with the doctrinal equipment that Part VIII supplies.

• Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes ch. 6, §§ 6.1–6.20 and Reporter's Notes (Am. L. Inst. 2000).
• Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 1982, amended 1994 and 2008; rev. 2021) with Official Comments.
• Uniform Condominium Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 1977, amended 1980); Uniform Planned Community Act (1980); Model Real Estate Cooperative Act (1981).
• Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act (Unif. L. Comm'n 2008).
• Wayne S. Hyatt & Susan F. French, Community Association Law: Cases and Materials on Common Interest Communities (3d ed. 2016).
• Susan F. French, The Constitution of a Private Residential Government Should Include a Bill of Rights, 27 Wake Forest L. Rev. 345 (1992).
• Robert C. Ellickson, Cities and Homeowners Associations, 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1519 (1982).
• Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (1994).
• Gregory S. Alexander, Dilemmas of Group Autonomy: Residential Associations and Community, 75 Cornell L. Rev. 1 (1989).
• Paula A. Franzese, Does It Take a Village? Privatization, Patterns of Restrictiveness and the Demise of Community, 47 Vill. L. Rev. 553 (2002).
• 9 Powell on Real Property §§ 54A.01–54A.09 (Michael Allan Wolf ed.).
• Gerald Korngold, Private Land Use Arrangements: Easements, Real Covenants, and Equitable Servitudes (2d ed. 2004).