Pennsylvania HOA Assessment Liens: Six-Month Limited Nondivestiture, Not a Super-Lien

The lien arises without any filing. Under 68 Pa.C.S. § 5315(a) the association has a lien on a unit for any assessment levied against that unit or any fine imposed on its owner from the time the charge becomes due, and § 5315(d) provides that recording the declaration itself constitutes record notice and perfection of the lien. Nothing is docketed at the prothonotary's office first, and a title search will not show a separate lien instrument. Unless the declaration provides otherwise, the same lien carries fees, charges, late charges, fines and interest imposed under § 5302(a)(10), (11) and (12), plus the association's reasonable costs and legal fees of collection. If dues are billed in installments and one installment is missed, the entire outstanding balance of that assessment becomes a lien as of the delinquent installment's due date, so a single missed quarterly payment can expose the whole year. Condominiums run on the parallel section at 68 Pa.C.S. § 3315, and housing cooperatives on § 4315, where the association may additionally evict the proprietary lessee in the manner provided for an unlawful holdover by a commercial tenant.

Priority is the point where Pennsylvania parts company with the states that adopted a true super-lien. Section 5315(b)(1) makes the association's lien prior to other liens except three categories: encumbrances recorded before the declaration was recorded, real estate taxes and other governmental charges, and mortgages and deeds of trust securing first mortgage holders that were recorded before the due date of the assessment (or of the unpaid installment). A Pennsylvania HOA therefore stands behind the bank, not ahead of it. What § 5315(b)(2) supplies instead is called limited nondivestiture: a judicial sale divests the association's lien as to the unpaid common expense assessments under § 5314(b) that came due in the six months immediately before the sale, and then only to the extent those six months are actually paid out of the proceeds. Under § 5315(b)(2)(ii) the older unpaid assessments are divested only in the full amount actually paid, whether or not the proceeds of the judicial sale are adequate, which in practice means an underwater sheriff's sale leaves the balance attached to the property.

Where the money does stretch, § 5315(b)(2)(ii) sets the order: the costs of the judicial sale come first, then the liens and encumbrances described in paragraph (1), then the six months of common expense assessments, then the remaining older assessments, and only after all of that may anything reach another claimant, including the prior owner of the unit. Two consequences follow for buyers. Someone bidding at a Pennsylvania sheriff's sale on a mortgage foreclosure can take title still encumbered by years of unpaid dues, because the mortgage foreclosure divests only that six-month band. And the six-month band is narrower than it first looks: it covers only common expense assessments made under § 5314(b), so fines, late charges, interest and the association's attorney fees, which § 5315(a) makes enforceable as assessments, sit entirely outside the protected six months.

The dollar limits that do exist are in the neighbouring sections. Section 5314(b) caps interest on a past due assessment or installment at the rate established by the association, not more than 15% per year. Section 5315(i), added by Act 189 of 2004, fixes the order in which the association must apply money it receives: first to accrued interest, then to any late fee, then to costs and reasonable attorney fees, and only then to the delinquent assessment itself, and that order applies notwithstanding any restrictive endorsement, designation or instructions placed on or accompanying a payment. Writing "assessments only" on the cheque does not redirect it. Section 5315(g) requires a judgment or decree in any action under the section to include costs and reasonable attorney fees for the prevailing party, which cuts both ways: an owner who defeats the claim recovers fees too. Section 5315(b)(3) removes the $300 general monetary exemption at 42 Pa.C.S. § 8123 from the picture entirely, so a debtor cannot claim it against an assessment lien.

Deadlines and information rights are short and specific. Section 5315(e), as amended by Act 21 of 2016, extinguishes the lien unless proceedings to enforce it, or a suit to recover the sums it secures, are instituted within four years after the assessments become payable. Section 5315(h) requires the association, on written request from a unit owner, to furnish a recordable statement of the amount of unpaid assessments currently levied against the unit within ten business days, and that statement binds the association, the executive board and every unit owner. Section 5315(f) preserves the association's other routes, including a plain suit on the debt and a deed in lieu of foreclosure, and § 5315 sets no minimum delinquency and no statutory notice-and-hearing step before suit, so any cure period an owner gets comes from the declaration and bylaws rather than from the Uniform Planned Community Act.

Not every Pennsylvania community is covered. Subpart D of Title 68 was added by Act 180 of December 19, 1996, effective in 45 days, and § 5102(b) then applied § 5315 retroactively to planned communities created earlier, though only as to events occurring afterwards. The carve-out to check first is size: under § 5102(a)(1) a planned community of no more than 12 units that holds no right under § 5215 to subdivide or convert units and no right under § 5211 to add real estate is subject only to §§ 5105, 5106, 5107 and 5218 unless its declaration adopts the whole subpart, and § 5102(c) applies the same limit to a pre-1997 non-flexible community of 12 or fewer units. Those associations have no § 5315 statutory lien at all. Section 5102(e) likewise excludes a planned community whose units are all restricted to nonresidential use.

§ 5315(a) and ending in a sheriff's sale. No state agency adjudicates the dispute; the association sues on its own. Because § 5315(a) folds late charges, fines under § 5302(a)(11), interest and legal fees into the lien, and § 5315(i) applies every payment to interest, late fees and attorney fees before the assessment itself, a delinquency not cleared in one payment keeps growing while the owner pays. The counterweights are narrow but real: interest cannot exceed 15% per year under § 5314(b), the lien is extinguished if the association does not sue within four years under § 5315(e), and § 5315(g) awards costs and reasonable attorney fees to whichever side prevails.

An owner who wants a binding payoff figure should demand the § 5315(h) recordable statement in writing, since the ten-business-day response binds the association, the executive board and every unit owner.