Alaska HOA Liens: Three-Year Deadline, Court Foreclosure Only

The lien arises by operation of law. AS 34.08.470(a) gives the association a lien on a unit for an assessment levied against it or a fine imposed on its owner from the time the assessment or fine becomes due, and unless the declaration provides otherwise, fees, charges, late charges, fines and interest charged under AS 34.08.320(a)(10) through (12) are enforceable as assessments. Where an assessment is payable in instalments, the whole amount is a lien from the moment the first instalment falls due. AS 34.08.470(d) then removes the recording step entirely: recording the declaration constitutes record notice and perfection, and no further claim of lien need be recorded. An Alaska owner will therefore never see a lien filing before enforcement begins.

The three-year clock in AS 34.08.470(e) is the single most important limit on the page. A lien for an unpaid assessment is extinguished unless proceedings to enforce it are instituted within three years after the full amount of the assessment becomes due. That is a shorter runway than the general contract limitation and it runs per assessment, so an association carrying a delinquency across several budget years can lose the oldest instalments while keeping the newest. AS 34.08.470(f) preserves a separate personal action to recover the same sums and allows the association to take a deed in lieu of foreclosure, so losing the lien does not extinguish the debt.

Priority is where Alaska follows the uniform act closely. AS 34.08.470(b) puts the lien ahead of all other liens and encumbrances except a lien recorded before the declaration, a first security interest recorded before the assessment became delinquent, and real estate taxes and other governmental charges. It then carves a six-month super-priority above even that first mortgage, for the common expense assessments based on the periodic budget adopted under AS 34.08.460(a) that would have become due, absent acceleration, during the six months immediately preceding institution of an action to enforce the lien. The same subsection states that a lien under the section is not subject to AS 09.38.010, which is the homestead exemption capped at $54,000, so an owner cannot use the homestead to shield the unit from an association foreclosure.

The foreclosure route is the practical limit. AS 34.08.470(j)(1) requires that in a condominium or planned community the lien be foreclosed as a lien is foreclosed under AS 34.35.005. That statute sends the association to court, in the district court where the amount in controversy is within its jurisdiction and in the superior court above it. AS 22.15.030(a)(7) sets the district court's lien foreclosure jurisdiction at an amount in controversy not exceeding $100,000. AS 34.35.005(b) directs the court to allow as part of costs the money paid for drawing, filing and recording the lien claim plus a reasonable attorney fee for the foreclosure, and AS 34.35.005(c) gives the action preference on the civil calendar. Cooperatives are treated differently: AS 34.08.470(j)(2) and (3) send a real estate cooperative to mortgage or deed of trust foreclosure or to AS 34.35.005, and a personal property cooperative to Article 9 enforcement under AS 45.29, while AS 34.08.470(k) supplies a public or private sale power with reasonable written notice, no sale until five weeks after notice is sent, a seven-week look-back for other recorded interests, a fixed order of proceeds and a cure right that survives until disposition or a contract to dispose.

Two scope limits decide whether any of this applies. AS 34.08.010 applies the chapter to common interest communities created after January 1, 1986, and AS 34.08.040(a) extends AS 34.08.470 back to communities created before that date, but only for events and circumstances occurring after it. AS 34.08.040(b) then adds a rule that catches many older Alaska condominiums: applying AS 34.08.470 to a community created under AS 34.07 before 1986 does not invalidate a conflicting provision of that community's declaration. In an older regime the declaration can override the lien section. Separately, AS 34.08.030 puts a limited expense liability planned community, one whose annual average common expense liability per residential unit does not exceed the printed $100 as adjusted under AS 34.08.820, outside everything but AS 34.08.720 to 34.08.740, so it has no statutory lien at all. The $100 is a 1986 figure that AS 34.08.820 adjusts in 10 percent steps against the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers from a December 1979 reference base of 230, so the operative threshold today is higher than the number the statute prints.

An owner facing enforcement should look first at timing and at the payoff figure. 470(e) extinguishes the lien for any assessment whose full amount became due more than three years before proceedings were instituted, which is a complete defence to that portion of the claim. 470(h) requires the association, on written request, to furnish a statement of the amount of unpaid assessments within 10 business days, in recordable form where the owner's interest is real estate, and that statement is binding on the association, the executive board and each unit owner, so it fixes the payoff and can be used against an inflated demand.

005(c). 005(b) makes the drawing, filing and recording costs and a reasonable attorney fee part of the judgment. 460(b) at 18 percent a year. 010.