Yes, an HOA can foreclose on your house. If you fall behind on dues, it can put a lien on the house and, depending on your state, sell it, sometimes without a judge. Losing the house doesn't erase your mortgage, so you can still owe the bank. If you get a lien or foreclosure letter, call a lawyer that day.
By Wayne Hassay, Managing Partner, Maguire Schneider Hassay, LLP, a LegalShield provider law firm
If you live in a neighborhood with a homeowners association, you pay dues. Maybe it's every month, maybe it's every quarter. It's the money that keeps the pool clean and the grass cut out by the front entrance. You write the check, or it comes out of your account automatically, and you forget about it until next time. Of all the bills in the house, it's probably the one that worries you least.
In 2024, a man in Mesa, Arizona, lost his sales job. Money got tight, and his HOA dues, about $170 a quarter, started to slip. By the time it escalated, he owed his association $977 in dues and interest, according to The Mesa Tribune.
On November 15, 2024, the association took him to court to foreclose on his house.
He tried to work it out. He told the Tribune he offered to pay $50 a month on top of his regular dues, and the association said no. He came back with an offer of $200 a month, and they said no again. On June 30, 2025, the court ruled against him without ever hearing his side, because he never filed a response to the lawsuit. The judgment came to $6,579, and $3,345 of that was attorney fees. And on October 16, 2025, his house was sold at a sheriff's sale. The buyer was the HOA. The price was $8,172, for a house he bought for $449,328 in 2022.
There's a better chapter to this story, and I'm glad there is. On September 17, 2026, the Phoenix TV station 12News reported that the association had agreed to stop trying to evict the couple and work out a payment plan. As of late September, the details weren't final. But it took almost two years to get there, and it took a national news story. Most folks who end up in that spot don't get a news crew knocking on the door.
Arizona has since changed its law (A.R.S. § 33-1807), by the way. Starting September 26, 2025, an HOA in a planned community there has to wait until you're 18 months behind or owe $10,000 in past-due assessments, whichever comes first. Before that, it was one year or $1,200. The change came too late to help that family, and other states set their own rules.
I don't know every fact of that case. But I've been practicing long enough to know how something this small gets this big.
If your HOA forecloses on your house, you can still owe on the loan.
The bank lent you that money, and the bank's loan doesn't disappear just because the HOA foreclosed on the house. In some states, the mortgage stays attached to the property, and whoever buys it at the HOA's sale takes it subject to the mortgage lien. The buyer at foreclosure risks losing the house if the loan goes unpaid, but that does not automatically relieve you of your obligation on the bank loan. So you can wind up with no house and an unpaid loan balance.
Whether you could end up owing money after losing the house depends on your loan and on the laws where you live. About 20 states and Washington, D.C., give part of an HOA's lien what lawyers call super lien status. That slice, often six to nine months of unpaid dues, can jump ahead of the mortgage. In a few of those states, an HOA sale can even wipe out the bank's lien on the house. Your promise to repay the loan usually survives either way.
Once in a while, a sale brings in more than what's owed and there's money left over for the homeowner (lawyers call it surplus funds), but in my experience that's the exception to the rule. Some states also give you a right of redemption, a window after the sale to pay what's owed and get the house back. Either way, you've lost control of the biggest thing you own, and it all started with a routine maintenance bill.
A lot of HOAs have fewer steps than banks do to pull the trigger on a foreclosure.
Think about what your mortgage company has to go through. Federal rules generally make a mortgage servicer wait until you're more than 120 days behind before it can even start a foreclosure. If you ask for help in time, it has to sit down and look at options with you first, like a payment plan or a modified loan. Those rules were written for mortgage lenders, and your HOA isn't a mortgage lender, so they don't apply.
In some states, an association can foreclose without ever going in front of a judge. That's called a nonjudicial foreclosure. Other states require a judicial foreclosure, where the HOA has to file a lawsuit first. Whether your HOA must offer a payment plan depends on state law. Even where a reasonable plan is required, the HOA may not have to accept the one you propose. Often it can say no, the way it did in Mesa, and just keep going.
Most of us think of the HOA as the outfit that cuts the grass or shovels the snow. So when we fall a few dollars behind, we don't think much of it. What's the big deal, right?
The big deal is who's doing the collecting.
Your HOA is a nonprofit board made up of your neighbors, and your neighbors have day jobs. They don't understand this tangle of state law, bylaws, and, believe it or not, neighborhood politics any better than you do. So they hire a management company, and a lot of times a collections law firm, to do the dirty work, so to speak.
It usually starts small. You miss a payment, and the management company sends a late notice and tacks on a late fee. Interest may start adding up. Miss a few more, and your account gets handed over to the law firm. The firm sends a demand letter, and it may put a lien on your house. A lien is a legal claim against your house for money you owe. Then comes a lawsuit, or in some states a foreclosure notice with no lawsuit at all. Either route can end with your house being sold.
Every one of those steps costs money, and most associations' governing documents say the homeowner pays the cost of collecting. So the lawyer's bill ends up on yours. In March 2023, ProPublica and Rocky Mountain PBS looked at HOA collection firms in Colorado. One firm said in a court filing that a typical uncontested HOA foreclosure brings in $4,000 to $6,000 in attorney fees.
Those firms are hired to do a great job for their client, and their client is the association. So they're going to enforce the rules a whole lot harder than any one of your neighbors ever would.
And it's happening more. What I have found is that HOAs are more aggressive than they were a number of years ago, and the numbers bear that out. ATTOM data reported in August 2026 put HOA-related foreclosure filings up nearly 40% from two years earlier. Benutech counted 284,933 HOA liens filed against homeowners in 2025, up 8.6% from 2024. That works out to about 780 liens a day.
Part of the reason is money. Insurance, repairs, and landscaping all cost more than they used to, and these boards have to stay ahead of their own bills. A 2026 reserve study report found 74% of associations it studied were below 70% funded.
When an association is short on cash, it gets a lot less patient with the folks who owe it. And there are simply more of these communities than there used to be. Everybody loves the pool and the clubhouse. Not many people look at what's behind that curtain.
Open it the day it comes, keep paying your regular dues if you can, and call a lawyer before any deadline passes.
Trouble usually shows up as a letter from your HOA, its management company, or a law firm you've never heard of. Watch for words like lien, collection, notice of default, or intent to foreclose, because they mean the clock is already running. Sometimes it's court papers handed to whoever answers the door. In Mesa, the papers were handed to his partner's son while he wasn't home. If anything like that lands at your house, treat it like an emergency, because it is.
The first thing to do is open it. The biggest mistake I see is folks who put it off, ignore it, or figure it'll sort itself out. It won't.
The second thing is to not assume the letter is right. The management company is there to enforce the rules, but their interpretation of the rules may not be yours. Their interpretation may not even be correct. The way they're applying those rules may violate state law.
If a collection law firm is the one contacting you, federal debt collection law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), may apply. You generally have 30 days from their first written notice to dispute the debt in writing, and they have to verify it before they keep collecting. Don't let that window close on you.
Keep paying your regular dues if you can. If you need a payment plan, ask for it in writing. Hang on to every letter, every envelope, and every email.
And please don't handle it all over the phone with nothing on paper. Don't hold back your dues to make a point about some other fight you're having with the board. Don't assume a small balance means small consequences. Above all, don't let a court date or a response deadline slide by. When nobody shows up, the court can rule without hearing your side, and that's exactly what happened in Mesa.
Now, granted, if you're $500 behind, you're $500 behind, and you're going to have to make good on that. But the number on the letter can be wrong, and a lawyer can check it.
{{billboard-1}}
The best time to deal with all this is before you ever sign. You know you're buying a four-bedroom house. But do you know you're also buying a set of rules your neighbors may enforce against you, aggressively, over the smallest thing?
So read the bylaws, the CC&Rs (covenants, conditions and restrictions), and the rules before you close. Ask who manages the association and which law firm handles its collections. Ask what happens when an owner falls behind, how fast it goes to a lawyer, and who pays for that lawyer. And ask how healthy the reserve fund is, because an association that's short on savings is more likely to hit you with a special assessment and more likely to chase every dollar it's owed.
If that letter shows up, call a lawyer, and call the day it arrives. The earlier a lawyer sees it, the more room there is to work. Wait too long, and a lawyer ends up trying to undo a foreclosure.
A lawyer can look at what's being enforced against you and whether it was triggered the right way under your association's bylaws. They can check whether the process lines up with your state's law, whether you were properly notified, and whether the fees they're charging are permitted. If nobody sits down and dots those I's and crosses those T's, you'll never know if you're being treated fairly. HOA law varies a lot from state to state, so it helps to talk with a lawyer licensed where you live.
If you're a LegalShield member, you can call your provider law firm and have a lawyer look at the letter with you. What's covered depends on your plan and where you live. If you already have an attorney you trust, give them a call. Either way, get an attorney.
Yes. Your mortgage doesn't stop an HOA from foreclosing over unpaid dues. And the HOA sale doesn't erase what you owe the bank, so you can lose the house and still owe on the loan.
It depends on your state. In Arizona planned communities, the HOA has to wait until you're 18 months behind or owe $10,000 in past-due assessments, whichever comes first. Before September 26, 2025, it was one year or $1,200.
In some states, yes. That's called a nonjudicial foreclosure. Other states make the HOA file a lawsuit first, which is a judicial foreclosure.
Usually you do. Most associations' governing documents say the homeowner pays the cost of collecting. In the Mesa case, $3,345 of a $6,579 judgment was attorney fees.
You can push back. The number on the letter can be wrong, and the HOA may have charged fees or skipped steps your state's law doesn't allow. Here's how to fight a lien on your property.
Wayne Hassay is the Managing Partner of Maguire Schneider Hassay (MSH), a LegalShield provider firm. Wayne is an outspoken advocate on how technology and group legal services bridge the justice gap, and served as immediate past President of the ABA's Group Legal Services Association for 2023–2024.
We’ll provide more information about the trustors vs. trustees comparison, what to consider when filling these roles, and how they work together in Revocable and Irrevocable Trusts.
A power of attorney with springing powers is a legal document that grants someone else the authority to act on your behalf only after a specific event occurs.
.jpg)
There’s no rule that says a lawyer has to set up your Trust for it to be valid. However, Trusts are complex and doing it yourself without a lawyer's help comes with risks.
A Certificate of Trust proves your Trust is real and names who can act for it, while your beneficiaries and assets stay private. It lets your Trustee handle Trust business, like opening accounts or transferring property.
A limited power of attorney often comes in handy when you need help for a short time or for a single purpose. This legal document can help in situations like when you’re traveling, serving in the military, caring for an aging parent, or sending a child to study abroad.
We’ll cover some of the most common scams, the red flags that give them away, how to protect yourself, and what to do if you’ve already been caught out.
An executor is responsible for ensuring your final wishes get carried out, so it’s important that you choose someone who is responsible and can bear the emotional burden.
An employer identification number is a nine-digit number the IRS uses to identify a taxpayer. The estate needs its own, and getting one is usually simpler than it sounds. Learn more about estate EINs.
