Nevada certified community managers in 2005 and gave owners a state ombudsman. New York has neither.

Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 116A, enacted by the 2005 Legislature, prohibits any person from performing community management in Nevada without a certificate issued by the Nevada Real Estate Division. The statute covers condominiums, planned unit developments, and other common-interest communities. Certification requires 60 hours of state-approved education covering Nevada community association law, a fingerprint-based background check, and compliance with a statutory fiduciary duty standard codified in NRS 116A.630. The Nevada Real Estate Division's Ombudsman for Owners in Common-Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels, established by statute in 1997, receives owner complaints, provides informal mediation, and routes unresolved disputes into mandatory pre-suit alternative dispute resolution. S.71, the New York Senate bill that would create an equivalent registration requirement for managing agents, completed its tenth consecutive session in committee in June 2026 without a floor vote.

What NRS 116A requires and who it covers.

NRS 116A.400 states that "a person shall not act as a community manager unless the person holds a certificate." The prohibition is unconditional. A management firm that operates without a certificate faces administrative discipline by NRED, including suspension, certificate revocation, and fines. There is no carve-out for large firms, established companies, or self-described professionals whose credentials come from a trade association rather than the state.

Pre-certification education is regulated under NAC 116A.120. Applicants must complete at least 60 hours of approved instruction. At least 18 of those hours must cover Nevada's Uniform Common-Interest Ownership Act as codified in NRS Chapters 116 and 116A. At least 20 hours must cover federal, state, and local law applicable to common-interest community management. The Commission for Common-Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels approves the curriculum; unlicensed instruction does not qualify. Applicants must also submit fingerprints through a law enforcement agency acceptable to NRED, complete a background disclosure, and pay a state-regulated fee.

The initial certification step covers individual managers. Firms that provide community management services must also register with the Division as community management companies. Renewal requires continuing education in subsequent periods. Disciplinary actions against certified managers are published as public records accessible through NRED, creating a searchable accountability record that has no equivalent in New York.

The fiduciary duty Nevada imposed by statute.

NRS 116A.630 declares that a community manager "shall act as a fiduciary in any client relationship and exercise ordinary and reasonable care in the performance of duties." That is an affirmative statutory standard, not a common-law inference. A certified manager who breaches the duty faces discipline from NRED: certificate suspension or revocation, civil penalties, and a public disciplinary record. The fiduciary obligation is not optional and is not waivable by contract.

New York has no equivalent statutory standard for managing agents. Real Property Law Article 9-B, which governs condominiums, and Business Corporation Law Article 7, which governs cooperative corporations, impose fiduciary duties on board members. Neither statute extends a fiduciary obligation to the management firm the board retains. A managing agent in New York who mishandles vendor contracts, misdirects reserve fund disbursements, or neglects required compliance filings faces no occupational sanction from any state agency. The only available path is a civil action against the agent or the building corporation, at costs that typically run between $250 and $400 per attorney hour.

The gap matters because the work managing agents perform in New York is the same work requiring a certificate in Nevada. Buildings in both states carry operating budgets in the millions, vendor relationships representing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, and compliance obligations under local and state law. In Nevada, the person doing that work holds a state certificate, has cleared a background check, and owes a fiduciary duty enforceable by a licensing board. In New York, that person needs nothing.

The ombudsman Nevada created in 1997.

NRS 116.625 created the Office of the Ombudsman for Owners in Common-Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels in the 1997 legislative session, eight years before manager certification requirements took effect. The Legislature decided that owners needed a state-funded dispute channel before managers were even licensed. That sequencing matters: the ombudsman is not a complaint mechanism for licensed-manager conduct alone. It is a structural resource for any owner in any common-interest community in Nevada.

The NRED Ombudsman's office handles 350 to 400 cases annually. Approximately 40 percent of cases are resolved through the office before reaching any court. About 15 percent proceed to litigation. The mandatory pre-suit step is not advisory: before an owner or an association in Nevada can file a civil action on matters covered by NRS 116, state law requires completion of an alternative dispute resolution process administered through NRED. That obligation does not exist in New York.

The most common subjects reaching the ombudsman are access to financial records, meeting notice requirements, and selective enforcement of association rules. Those categories appear repeatedly in CCNYC's documentation of New York's structural gaps. BCL §624 gives co-op shareholders the right to inspect financial records. RPL §339-w gives condo unit owners a parallel right. Neither statute provides an administrative enforcement mechanism. A board that refuses to produce records in New York leaves the owner with one option: civil court. The Nevada ombudsman is the agency that stands between that dispute and a lawsuit.

The governing framework New York never adopted.

Nevada's NRS 116 is modeled on the Uniform Common-Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA), a model law developed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. UCIOA sets out a complete governance framework for condominiums, cooperatives, and planned communities, addressing creation, management, finance, and dispute resolution in a single integrated statute. Nevada built NRS 116, the ombudsman, and NRS 116A on that foundation over three decades of legislative sessions.

New York never adopted UCIOA. New York condominiums are governed by Real Property Law Article 9-B, enacted in 1964. New York cooperatives are governed by Business Corporation Law Article 7, a general corporate statute applied to cooperative housing by convention rather than by design. Neither statute was drafted with contemporary governance risks in mind, and both predate the UCIOA framework. The structural difference is not that Nevada has better-written rules. It is that Nevada chose to build a governance framework, while New York chose to leave common-interest housing inside a general corporate and property-law structure that has no place for manager accountability, owner dispute channels, or disclosure floors.

What the 2025 Nevada Legislature considered.

The Nevada Legislature meets in two-year cycles. The 2025 session, which adjourned in June 2025, passed SB 121, which would have amended NRS 116A to require community managers to provide at least 40 days' notice to unit owners before terminating a management agreement. Governor Lombardo vetoed the bill on June 5, 2025. That 40-day notice would have protected owners who would otherwise have no advance warning that their building's management is changing, a risk that New York law does not address. A New York managing agent can exit a contract on whatever notice the contract allows, with no state agency requiring owner disclosure.

The 2025 session also considered amendments to NRS 116 addressing collection procedures, enforcement rights, and records access. To our knowledge, Nevada's Legislature has considered amendments to one or both statutes in each session since 1997. That pattern of recurring legislative attention to governance problems stands in contrast to the ten-session, no-movement record of S.71 in New York.

Bottom line.

Nevada prohibited unlicensed community management in 2005, imposed a statutory fiduciary duty on certified managers in the same bill, and built a state owner ombudsman eight years before that. The 2025 Legislature passed SB 121 to add a 40-day manager termination notice requirement; the Governor vetoed it. New York closed its tenth consecutive session without advancing S.71, the registration bill that would establish the threshold requirement Nevada has operated under for two decades. Florida, Virginia, New Jersey, and California have each added governance protections that New York has not. The comparison is not between a model system and an imperfect one. It is between states that decided to govern common-interest community management and one that has not. That decision is made, or deferred, each time a committee does not schedule a hearing.

Primary sources: NRS Chapter 116A (community manager regulation) · NRS Chapter 116 (common-interest ownership) · NRS 116.625 (ombudsman statute) · NAC 116A.120 (60-hour education requirement) · Nevada Real Estate Division — Ombudsman for Owners in CICs · NY S.71 (2025-26 session, Kavanagh) · NY Real Property Law Article 9-B · NY Business Corporation Law Article 7

Companion resources: Virginia licensed condo managers in 2008. New York still hasn't. · S.71: the NY managing-agent licensure bill · When Albany adjourned, four reform bills had no vote · Why the NY AG can't help with condo governance disputes · New York's condo-reform record: what stalled, and what passed · Florida fixed condo transparency after Surfside. New York hasn't. · Issue: Managing agent licensure gap · Issue: No public managing agent registry · Write to your NY representative