Maryland required independent condo board elections and a mandatory reserve funding plan in 2025. New York has nothing comparable.

On October 1, 2025, two Maryland statutes took effect and addressed three structural defects in condo and HOA governance that New York has not reached: a mandatory reserve funding plan tied to a required independent study, a requirement that every governing-body election be conducted by an independent third party with no stake in the outcome, and the explicit classification of lot owners as consumers with access to the state Attorney General's enforcement authority. Chapter 512 (Senate Bill 758) and Chapter 519 (House Bill 292) are the two vehicles. New York's bills on all three points were referred to committee in the 2025-2026 session and received no floor vote before Albany adjourned June 5, 2026.

What Maryland's reserve funding mandate now requires.

Maryland Chapter 519 (House Bill 292, 2025 session) amended the state's Condominium Act and Homeowners Association Act to require that every governing body develop a formal Funding Plan in consultation with the author of its most recent reserve study. The Funding Plan is the board's documented roadmap for reaching the study's recommended reserve levels over time. It must give priority to components required for occupant health, safety, and structural integrity, including roofing and load-bearing systems, plumbing, HVAC, and electrical. The board's annual budget must allocate reserves in the amount the study recommends, following the adopted Funding Plan. One exception exists: where genuine financial hardship prevents the full allocation, the board must formally document the basis for the shortfall and the plan for closing it. Reserve studies must be updated at least every five years under the revised statute.

The provision closes a specific gap that reserve studies alone do not close. A study can recommend a funding level, and a board can acknowledge the recommendation and budget a lower number anyway, without any legal consequence in most states. Chapter 519 attaches a legal obligation to the study's output: the budget figure must track the study figure, or the deviation must be formally justified and documented.

How Chapter 519 builds on Maryland's pre-existing study requirement.

Maryland's reserve study framework predates Chapter 519. Real Property Article § 11-109.4, phased into effect county by county between October 2020 and October 2022, already required condominiums established after each county's effective date to commission an independent reserve study before the first annual meeting of the council of unit owners. Chapter 519 extended the study obligation to associations established before those dates and added the Funding Plan mechanism that connects the annual budget directly to what the study says.

New York has no equivalent at either layer. Real Property Law § 339-kk requires a sponsor to fund a reserve account at the time of a condo conversion. That obligation does not carry forward to the board once the sponsor transfers control. New York bills A8945 and S7600, which would have required ongoing reserve studies for condominiums and cooperative corporations, were referred to committee in January 2025 and received no hearing before Albany adjourned. The operative reserve standard for any NYC condo building seeking a conventional mortgage is set by Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03, not state statute. The site's reserve fund gap issue page maps the full statutory absence.

Who Maryland says must run a board election.

Maryland Chapter 512 (Senate Bill 758, 2025 session), together with companion House Bill 1534, amended Real Property Article Title 11 (the Condominium Act) and the HOA Act to require that elections of the governing body be conducted by an independent party. The independent party cannot be a candidate in the election, cannot have a conflict of interest with any candidate, and cannot be the association's property manager unless the management company is itself owned by the association. Both bills took effect October 1, 2025.

Before October 1, 2025, Maryland placed no restriction on who ran the count. A board that had its managing agent tabulate ballots, or assigned a sitting director to collect the proxies and announce the result, was operating within the law. The independent-party requirement changes the structural position of the managing agent on the most consequential day of the association's calendar. The agent who drafts the budget, signs the vendor contracts, and receives the management fee cannot also be the person who certifies whether the board that approved those arrangements stays in office.

Maryland does not license election supervisors for community associations or impose a certification requirement for the independent role. The law works through the conflict-of-interest bar: if the appointed party has a stake in the outcome, the election is procedurally defective, and the statute gives owners a legal basis to challenge it.

New York imposes no equivalent for co-op or condo board elections. Business Corporation Law § 603 governs shareholder meetings in the co-op context but sets no independent-oversight requirement. No New York statute requires a co-op or condo to use an independent third party to conduct its governing-body election. The suite of co-op reforms enacted in New York's 2026 legislative session, including Local Law 2026/058, addressed purchase-application deadlines and rejection timelines; board election integrity was not in scope. The site's board election integrity issue page maps the gap.

What changes when lot owners become "consumers."

The most consequential provision of Chapter 512 is not the election rule. Effective October 1, 2025, Maryland amended its Consumer Protection Act to explicitly classify owners of units in condominiums and HOAs as consumers for purposes of state enforcement. That classification gives the Division of Consumer Protection within the Maryland Attorney General's office authority to investigate and act on complaints from condo or HOA unit owners about unfair or deceptive practices by their association's governing body. The AG can now open an investigation and impose remedies using the same enforcement infrastructure it applies to deceptive car dealers and predatory lenders.

Chapter 512 also prohibited associations from charging any fee for a lot owner to inspect or receive copies of the association's financial statements and other financial records. The right to inspect already existed in Maryland's code. The fee bar closes the mechanism that boards and their agents had used to make that right expensive to exercise in practice.

New York's record on each of these three points.

New York Real Property Law § 339-w and Business Corporation Law § 624 give condo unit owners and co-op shareholders the right to inspect their building's financial records. Neither statute prohibits the board or managing agent from charging a fee for that access. No state agency can compel compliance if the board refuses. The enforcement path is a court proceeding brought by the owner at their own expense. The companion post on what NYC condo and co-op owners can legally demand from the board walks through how that works in practice.

On consumer protection enforcement: New York General Business Law § 349 provides a right of action for deceptive acts in trade or commerce. Courts have consistently held that internal disputes between unit owners and their cooperative corporations arise in a context that does not meet the "in the conduct of business, trade or commerce" standard the statute requires for claims by consumers. The formal statutory classification that Maryland enacted in 2025, placing lot owners inside the consumer protection framework by name, would require an amendment to New York's consumer protection law. No such bill has been introduced in the current session.

On the AG's structural position: New York's Real Estate Finance Bureau derives its enforcement authority from the Martin Act and Real Property Law Article 9-B. Neither authorizes post-offering-plan governance enforcement. The companion post on why the AG can't help with most condo governance disputes documents the jurisdictional architecture. Maryland's 2025 expansion of its AG's consumer protection reach addresses the same structural problem through a different statutory mechanism, one that New York's legislature has not debated in this form.

New York Senate Bill S7745, which would have created a cooperative and condominium ombudsperson program within DHCR to provide a non-judicial dispute forum for unit owners, was referred to committee in January 2026 and received no floor vote before Albany adjourned. Maryland's AG now has authority over a large share of the conduct S7745 was designed to address, using an existing office rather than a new agency funded by a $6-per-unit annual fee. The site's post on the NY condo ombudsman bill's two failed sessions covers the legislative record in detail.

Bottom line.

Maryland's two October 2025 statutes address three sequential points at which condo governance commonly fails: boards that underfund reserves because no law connects the budget to the study's recommended figure, elections with no independent check on the counting process, and unit owners who have no low-cost enforcement path when the board ignores its obligations. Each failure point has a published bill number in Albany. New York bills on reserve studies (A8945, S7600), board election integrity, and owner dispute access were in committee when Albany adjourned June 5, 2026, and none was scheduled for a hearing. Maryland is not a state with a historically stronger residential governance tradition than New York. That three separate structural reforms cleared its legislature in a single 2025 session, while New York's equivalents have accumulated across multiple consecutive sessions without a committee hearing, reflects a policy choice, not a regulatory capacity.

Primary sources

Maryland Chapter 512 (Senate Bill 758, 2025) — independent election oversight, consumer classification, fee bar on financial records
Maryland Chapter 519 (House Bill 292, 2025) — mandatory reserve Funding Plan
Maryland Real Property Article § 11-109.4 — reserve study requirement for condominiums
NY Real Property Law § 339-kk — sponsor reserve obligation (conversion only; no board mandate)
NY Real Property Law § 339-w — condo unit owner record inspection right
NY Business Corporation Law § 624 — co-op shareholder inspection right
NY Business Corporation Law § 603 — co-op shareholder meeting rules
NY General Business Law § 349 — consumer protection statute
Levandusky v. One Fifth Ave. Apartment Corp., 75 N.Y.2d 530 (1990) — co-op business judgment rule

Companion resources: No reserve fund requirement · Board election integrity gap · AG REFB jurisdiction gap · Why the AG can't help with condo governance · Florida's structural reserve waiver ban · NY condo ombudsman bill: two failed sessions · What NYC condo and co-op owners can demand from the board · Write to your state representative