DC Condo Leasing Limits Turn on a 2/3 Amendment Vote

The Condominium Act of 1976, D.C. Law 1-89, governs every residential condominium in the District, and § 42-1902.27 has carried its current shape since the 2014 amendments made by D.C. Law 20-109. Nothing in Chapter 19 of Title 42 mentions leasing, rentals, tenants or occupancy caps. There is no DC provision that grandfathers owners who are already renting when a restriction passes, no statutory floor or ceiling on lease length, and no percentage cap the Council has blessed or forbidden. The District also has no property-owners'-association act at all, so a non-condominium homeowners association in DC is governed by its own recorded covenants and by general contract law rather than by a statute of this kind.

The vote is the real control. Section 42-1902.27(b) applies whenever any of the units are restricted exclusively to residential use and there is a unit owner other than the declarant. In that case the instruments may be amended only by agreement of unit owners of units to which 2/3 of the association votes pertain, or any larger majority the instruments specify, except where the chapter provides a different method for a particular kind of amendment. A purely non-residential condominium may set a smaller majority in its instruments. Note the measure: 2/3 of the votes allocated to units, not two thirds of the owners who show up at a meeting, and the instruments may raise but never lower that bar for a residential building.

The unanimity clause is what makes a DC leasing amendment risky for a board. Section 42-1902.27(e)(5) says an amendment may not change the uses to which any unit is restricted in the absence of the unanimous consent of the unit owners. The Act does not define "uses," and it contains no leasing-specific rule that would settle whether converting a freely rentable unit into an owner-occupancy-only unit changes its use or merely regulates the owner's conduct. An owner facing a proposed rental ban should read the declaration's use clause first, because that is the text the argument runs on.

The same subsection blocks four other things by amendment regardless of the vote: creating or increasing special declarant rights, increasing the number of units, changing unit boundaries, and changing a unit's undivided interest in the common elements, liability for common expenses, right to surplus funds or number of association votes. Separately, § 42-1902.27(f) lets a declarant unilaterally record a corrective amendment within 5 years of recordation to fix a mathematical mistake, an inconsistency or a scrivener's error, or to clarify an ambiguity about an objectively verifiable fact, and lets the association's principal officer do the same on a 2/3 vote of the executive board. A corrective amendment may not materially reduce the declarant's obligations.

Mortgage-holder consent, often the practical obstacle to any amendment, has a default answer. Where the instruments require action by the holder of a mortgage or deed of trust on a residential unit, § 42-1902.27(g) treats that requirement as satisfied if the association delivers a copy of the proposed amendment to each holder's last known address, and a holder that does not object in writing within 60 days of mailing or delivery is deemed to have consented. An inadvertent failure to reach one holder despite good faith efforts does not invalidate the amendment.

A related section reaches sales rather than leases. Section 42-1903.15 makes any right of first refusal or other restraint on the free alienability of a unit void unless the instruments provide for promptly furnishing a recordable statement certifying any waiver of, or failure or refusal to exercise, that right. If the association will not promptly furnish the statement, the restraint becomes inapplicable to the disposition for which it was requested. The instruments may require a reasonable fee for issuing the statement, and the statement binds the association, its executive board and every unit owner.

There is no District agency that fines an association for adopting a leasing restriction, and no penalty schedule attaches to § 42-1902.27. Enforcement runs the other way: an owner who believes an amendment was adopted without the required 2/3 vote, or that it changed a unit's permitted uses without unanimous consent, must sue to invalidate it, and § 42-1902.27(c) bars that action if it is brought more than one year after the amendment is recorded. That one-year window runs from recordation, not from the day the owner learns of the amendment or first receives a violation notice, so an owner who waits for the association to enforce the new rule against them may find the challenge already time-barred.

On the other side, an association that adopts a valid leasing restriction enforces it with the ordinary tools the Condominium Act gives it, including the rule-making and fining powers in § 42-1903.08 and the assessment lien in § 42-1903.13. Where the dispute is about a sale rather than a lease, § 42-1903.15 supplies a self-executing consequence: the association's failure or refusal to promptly furnish the recordable waiver statement its instruments require makes the right of first refusal or other restraint inapplicable to that transaction outright, with no court order needed.