South Carolina Condo Liens Rank Behind Recorded Mortgages and Must Be Foreclosed in Court

The lien in Section 27-31-210(a) belongs to the administrator or board of administration of a horizontal property regime, which is what the South Carolina Horizontal Property Act calls a condominium and the term the statute still uses today. It attaches to "all sums assessed ... for the share of common expenses chargeable to any apartment" that go unpaid. Its rank is fixed by the same sentence: it comes ahead of everything except tax liens in favor of an assessing unit and any mortgage or other lien that was duly recorded. Because recorded mortgages are carved out by name, a South Carolina association that forecloses takes the property subject to the first mortgage, and the association gains nothing by racing the lender to the courthouse.

The second half of the balance sheet is subsection (b), and it runs against owners who are current on their dues. When a lender or a third party buys the unit at the mortgage foreclosure sale, that buyer is not liable for the common-expense share that accrued after the mortgage was recorded and before the buyer took title. Those unpaid assessments do not disappear. The statute converts them into "common expenses collectible from all of the apartment owners," so a neighbour default that ends in a bank foreclosure is spread across every unit in the regime, including the unit the new owner just bought.

Foreclosure itself is a lawsuit. Section 27-31-210(a) says the lien "may be foreclosed by suit ... in like manner as a mortgage of real property," and South Carolina forecloses mortgages judicially in the Court of Common Pleas. There is no power of sale, no trustee sale, and no nonjudicial route for an association: S.C. Code Section 29-3-630 provides that no sale under a power to sell contained in a mortgage or similar security instrument passes title to the land unless the debt is first established by the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, or the debtor consents to the amount in a recorded writing dated within the previous twelve months under Section 29-3-640. Two litigation tools sit inside the same subsection: once the foreclosure action is commenced the owner must pay a reasonable rental for the unit, and the association is entitled to the appointment of a receiver to collect that rent. The association may also bid the unit in at the foreclosure sale and then acquire, hold, lease, mortgage and convey it. Separately, the same subsection allows a suit for a money judgment on unpaid common expenses without instituting foreclosure proceedings at all. Because the sale runs as a mortgage foreclosure, Section 29-3-660 also lets the court order the owner to pay any residue of the debt left unsatisfied after the sale, so a shortfall does not end the exposure.

Section 27-31-210 fixes no minimum balance before suit, no pre-suit notice, no cure period, and no cap on attorney fees, because none of those appear in the text. The procedural protection a South Carolina condominium owner actually has is that a judge must sign off. Two neighbouring sections do add money limits. Section 27-31-200 says that on a sale or conveyance the unpaid assessments come out of the sale price ahead of everything but past-due taxes and recorded mortgages, and Section 27-31-220 makes an ordinary purchaser jointly and severally liable with the seller for what the seller owed, but caps that purchaser exposure at the figure stated in the statement of amounts due that the council of co-owners must issue on request.

For South Carolina associations that are subdivision HOAs rather than condominium regimes, none of this applies as statute. The Homeowners Association Act of 2018 covers recording of governing documents, forty-eight-hour notice before a budget increase, document access, and magistrate jurisdiction, and it never mentions a lien or foreclosure. A subdivision HOA lien is therefore whatever its recorded declaration created, and Section 27-30-130(A)(1) makes that declaration unenforceable unless it was recorded with the clerk of court, Register of Mesne Conveyance, or register of deeds in the county where the property sits. An owner facing a collection action should pull the recorded declaration first, because if it is not on record the claimed lien has no source.

Note also what the lien text does not reach. Section 27-31-210(a) covers sums assessed "for the share of common expenses," not fines. Nothing in the Horizontal Property Act or the Homeowners Association Act authorises an association to foreclose over a violation penalty. Section 27-30-160 instead routes monetary disputes under the HOA Act to the magistrates court, which under Section 22-3-10 hears contract claims and penalty claims only up to seven thousand five hundred dollars.

Collection begins with an assessment the owner does not pay. A South Carolina condominium association has two independent routes and may use either. It can sue for a money judgment on the unpaid common expenses without ever filing a foreclosure, or it can file a foreclosure action in the Court of Common Pleas under Section 27-31-210(a) and ask the court to sell the unit in the same manner as a mortgage foreclosure. Once the foreclosure is filed the owner owes a reasonable rental for continued occupancy and the association may have a receiver appointed to collect it.

The association may bid at its own sale. What it cannot do is take the property outside court, and what it does not get is priority: the recorded first mortgage survives the association sale, so the buyer takes subject to it. For a subdivision HOA under Chapter 30, enforcement of an unpaid assessment runs on the recorded declaration and, for money claims within the seven-thousand-five-hundred-dollar limit, in magistrates court under Sections 27-30-160 and 22-3-10. An owner who believes the governing documents were never recorded should raise Section 27-30-130, which makes unrecorded governing documents unenforceable.