Idaho Condominium Assessment Liens Expire in One Year

Idaho is not a Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act state, and it never adopted a super-priority lien for association assessments. Two chapters of title 55 do the work, and which one applies depends on the form of the community, not on what the association calls itself. Chapter 15, the Condominium Property Act of 1965, reaches a project that has been submitted to the act by a recorded declaration under section 55-1504. Chapter 32, the Homeowner's Association Act, reaches any incorporated or unincorporated residential association in which membership is based on owning or possessing an interest in real property and which has authority under recorded covenants, bylaws or other governing documents to assess and record liens against member property, per section 55-3203(7)(a).

Under section 55-1518 the assessment is a debt of the unit owner at the time it is made, and it becomes a lien only when the management body records a notice of assessment with the county recorder of the county where the condominium sits. That notice must state the amount of the assessment and any other charges the declaration authorises, such as interest, costs including attorney's fees and penalties, describe the condominium assessed, and name the record owner, and it must be signed by an authorised representative of the management body or as the declaration otherwise provides. When the assessment is paid or otherwise satisfied, the management body must record a further notice stating the satisfaction and the release of the lien.

Priority is the point most Idaho condominium owners get wrong. The lien is prior to all other liens filed or recorded subsequent to the recording of the notice of assessment, and to nothing else. A first mortgage or deed of trust recorded before the association's notice keeps its position. Two further qualifications sit in the same sentence: the declaration may subordinate the assessment lien to other liens either generally or by specific description, and labor or materialmen's liens arising under Idaho law and timely and duly filed take priority if the date fixed by statute for such a lien to arise precedes the recording of the notice of assessment.

The expiry rule is the real limit and it is unusually short. Unless sooner satisfied and released, or enforcement initiated, the lien expires and is of no further force or effect one year from the date the notice of assessment was recorded. The management body may extend it once, for not more than one additional year, by recording a written extension. That means a condominium association in Boise or Ketchum that records a notice and then sits on it for two years and a day loses the security entirely, though the underlying debt of the owner survives. Contrast section 55-3207(2)(b) in the homeowner's-association chapter, where a properly recorded claim automatically accumulates subsequent unpaid assessments without further filings for as long as any unpaid assessment remains, with no stated expiry.

Enforcement under section 55-1518 is by sale by the management body, its attorney or another person authorised to make the sale, after the owner fails to pay, and the sale is conducted in the manner permitted by law for the exercise of powers of sale in deeds of trust or in any other manner permitted by law. That routes a condominium association into the Trust Deeds Act in chapter 15 of title 45, whose timing is set by statute: under section 45-1506(2) notice of the sale must be given by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, at least 120 days before the day fixed for the sale, and under section 45-1506(12) the owner or any junior lienholder may reinstate at any time within 115 days of the recording of the notice of default by paying the amount then due plus enforcement costs, a reasonable trustee's fee and any contractual attorney's fees. A purchaser is entitled to possession on the tenth day following the sale under section 45-1506(11). Unless the declaration says otherwise, section 55-1518 also lets the management body itself purchase the condominium at the foreclosure sale and then hold, lease, encumber and convey it.

An association in an ordinary Idaho subdivision has no equivalent power. Section 55-3207 lets the association levy an assessment for the reasonable costs of maintaining common areas it owns and maintains, file and record a verified claim of lien with the required contents, and serve a copy on the owner within five business days of recording. Subsection (3) says only that the lien may be enforced by the board acting on behalf of the association; there is no statutory power of sale. Subsection (4) preserves an action to recover the sums for which subsection (1) creates a lien and a deed in lieu of foreclosure, and subsection (5) allows a money judgment action for unpaid assessments without foreclosing or waiving the lien, with recovery on that action satisfying the lien to the extent recovered.

An owner who wants to stop a condominium assessment lien from ripening has three practical levers, all of them statutory. The first is the one-year expiry in section 55-1518: if the management body neither initiates enforcement nor records a written extension, the lien lapses on its own and the owner can insist on a recorded satisfaction and release. The second is the reinstatement window borrowed with the power of sale, 115 days from recording of the notice of default under Idaho Code section 45-1506(12), during which paying the amount then due, enforcement costs, a reasonable trustee's fee and contractual attorney's fees cures the default and reinstates the obligation as though no acceleration had occurred.

The third is the content of the notice itself, since section 55-1518 requires the recorded notice of assessment to state the amount, describe the condominium, name the record owner and be signed by an authorised representative or as the declaration provides. After a sale, section 45-1512 permits a deficiency action only within three months, and the court may not enter judgment for more than the amount by which the total indebtedness at the time of sale exceeds the fair market value the court finds, and never more than the difference between the sale price and the total secured debt.

In a non-condominium Idaho association the association's route is a money judgment under section 55-3207(5) or a deed in lieu under section 55-3207(4), and the enforcement decision is made by the board acting for the association under section 55-3207(3). Assessment disputes are litigated in the district court for the county where the property lies; section 55-3206(4) preserves whatever attorney's-fee recovery the covenants, bylaws or another statute allow, so a losing owner can face the association's fees on top of the assessments.