Utah licensed property managers and exempted the ones who run condos.

A barber needs a New York state license. The person managing your $200 million residential co-op building needs nothing. Utah enacted a property manager licensing law in 2025, taking effect January 1, 2027 — and the legislature carved out the people who run condos, co-ops, and HOAs. New York's equivalent bill has not received a committee hearing in nine consecutive sessions.

What Utah's new license requires.

Utah House Bill 337, passed during the 2025 general session, created a property manager license category administered by the Utah Division of Real Estate under Utah Code § 61-2f. A companion bill, HB 1002, enacted during the 2025 First Special Session, set the effective date at July 1, 2026; the 2026 legislature subsequently extended implementation to January 1, 2027, giving the Division additional time to develop the examination and licensing infrastructure.

The new license applies to anyone who, for compensation, manages residential real property on behalf of an owner: scheduling maintenance, collecting rents, handling lease renewals, and coordinating repairs. Applicants must complete pre-licensing education, pass a state examination, and satisfy continuing education requirements at renewal. The Division publishes licensee information in a searchable public registry. That registry, once active in January 2027, will carry a credential for the person managing a portfolio of individual rental units. It will not carry a credential for the person managing a 400-unit co-op building.

The carve-out is in the same statute. Community association managers (the people who perform the same functions for condominium associations, cooperative corporations, and homeowners associations) are explicitly exempt. A person managing twelve individual rental apartments across the city is now licensed. A person managing a single building with twelve hundred units in common-interest ownership is not.

How the exemption was written.

The Community Associations Institute is the national trade group for the community association management industry. It represents managing agents, attorneys, and vendor firms that do business with condominiums, co-ops, and HOAs across the country. In 2025, CAI's Utah Legislative Action Committee lobbied the Utah Legislature to amend HB 337 before final passage. According to CAI's own 2025 legislative report on community association manager licensing, the Utah LAC "successfully amended Utah's property manager licensing law to fully exempt all community association managers from these licensing requirements."

CAI's formal position is not opposition to all licensing. Its national policy framework supports voluntary certification programs and has advocated for mandatory licensing in some states when the legislation was designed around the association management model. In Utah, the calculation went the other way: the HB 337 framework was built around individual rental-property management, not common-interest associations, and CAI moved to exclude its members rather than negotiate the bill's shape.

The result is a licensing structure with a built-in gap. Individual-property managers now carry a public credential and face potential disciplinary action from the Division of Real Estate. The people coordinating reserve studies, enforcing house rules, administering common charges across hundreds of units in a single building, and selecting the vendors who bill those charges have none of that. No Utah statute governs their competency, their fiduciary conduct, or their continuing education.

The Utah carve-out is not an isolated outcome. According to the same CAI legislative report, the organization monitored community association manager licensing activity in multiple states during the 2025 session and intervened in several to shape or block proposals. The report tracks this activity as a success metric. Utah is the state where the bill passed in a form CAI opposed; the amendment that followed is what that monitoring produces when the bill moves anyway. In states where CAI has more influence at the introduction stage, bills that would cover community association managers tend not to reach a floor vote at all — which is the condition New York has been in for ten sessions.

States that already require community manager licensing.

Utah is not the first state to grapple with this divide. Six other jurisdictions have enacted specific community association manager licensing requirements that cover condominiums and co-ops. Their laws span three decades and different political environments.

Each of the six licensing jurisdictions produces a public roster of credentialed managers, a body that can discipline or revoke, and a continuing education requirement that keeps credentials current. The Utah carve-out means that state joins New York in one column of that table: property is managed by people with no state credential in the community association category.

Where S.71 stands after ten sessions.

New York Senate Bill S.71, sponsored by Senator Brian Kavanagh, would require managing agents of cooperatives and condominiums to file a registration statement with the Department of State. The bill defines the covered scope: principal managerial responsibilities for a cooperative or condominium, authority for policy or financial decisions covering maintenance, security, energy conservation, code compliance, fiscal budgetary responsibilities, and the collection and expenditure of money for the building.

S.71 was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2025. The 2025-2026 legislative session ended June 10, 2026 without a committee vote or a scheduled hearing. That is the ninth consecutive session the bill has been filed without receiving a hearing. There is no Assembly companion bill that has advanced further.

The Utah story does not represent a path S.71 is likely to follow. In Utah, the bill reached a floor vote. The industry then lobbied for a carve-out before passage, and the legislature granted it. In New York, the managing-agent licensure bill has not reached the stage where a carve-out would be needed. It has not reached any stage. The HPD Property Registration form, which every NYC building with six or more units must file annually under Housing Maintenance Code § 27-2097, accepts as managing agent anyone with a New York City street address. No credential field exists because New York State issues no credential to require.

That is the practical gap. A managing agent signs off on the DOB NOW attestations required since January 2026 for co-op and condo renovation permits, coordinates the LL97 retrofit decisions that can run $12,000 to $90,000 per household, administers the reserve fund whose adequacy now determines conventional mortgage eligibility under Fannie Mae LL-2026-03, and controls the insurance procurement that has seen premiums double across the city since 2019. None of those activities, in New York, require any credential, examination, or continuing education. If S.71 passed in its current form, it would add a DOS registration process, a public registry searchable by building address, and a statutory mechanism for the Department of State to investigate and discipline registered managers who violate the law's standards.

Bottom line.

Utah's new property manager license is a real credential for a real category of practitioners. The statutory carve-out for community association managers means it does not reach the people who manage condominiums, co-ops, or HOAs in that state. That outcome is not incidental. It reflects the lobbying capacity of the trade group that represents those managers, a capacity the group has deployed successfully in multiple states. New York has not gotten to the carve-out stage. S.71 has been filed for nine sessions and has not received a committee hearing. The 15,108 buildings in the NYC condo and co-op universe are managed by people who face no state credential requirement and no disciplinary mechanism. Utah's new license does not change that. It shows how the gap persists even in states that act.

Primary sources: Utah HB 337 (2025 general session) · Utah HB 1002 (2025 First Special Session) · Utah Code § 61-2f (Real Estate Licensing and Practices Act) · CAI 2025 Legislative Report on Community Association Manager Licensing · NY Senate S.71 (2025-2026 session)

Companion resources: S.71: the NY managing-agent licensure bill nobody's talking about · Washington D.C. licensed property managers in 1999 · Georgia required community association manager licensing in 1997 · Illinois licensed community association managers in 2010 · NYC has run a managing agent registry for decades. Still no license required. · When Albany adjourned in June, four co-op reform bills had no vote · The 15,108-building NYC condo and co-op universe