Virginia HOA Leasing Limits: $50 Fee Cap, No Deposits, but the Declaration Still Controls (Va. Code § 55.1-1806)

Section 55.1-1806 of the Property Owners' Association Act is a list of things a Virginia association may not do about leasing, and it is important to read the opening words before the list. The prohibitions apply "Except as expressly authorized in this chapter, in the declaration, or as otherwise provided by law." The recorded declaration is therefore the escape hatch, and it swallows the headline item: subdivision A 1 bars an association from conditioning or prohibiting the rental of a lot, but only where the declaration has not expressly authorized that condition or prohibition. Virginia buyers should treat the recorded declaration, not the Code, as the document that decides whether they may lease at all.

What survives the declaration exception is the fee structure, and here the numbers are specific. Subdivision A 2 caps any rental fee, application fee or other processing fee "of any kind" at $50 during the term of any lease. That is $50 for the lease, not $50 a year and not $50 per tenant. Subdivision A 3 forbids an annual or monthly rental fee, or any other fee not expressly authorized by § 55.1-1805. Subdivision A 5 forbids the association from taking any deposit at all, from either the owner or the tenant. In a condominium the same three prohibitions appear verbatim at § 55.1-1973 A 2, A 3 and A 5, with the fee authority cross-referenced to § 55.1-1904 rather than § 55.1-1805.

Three further prohibitions go to control rather than money. Subdivision A 4 bars the association from requiring the owner to use a lease or a lease addendum the association prepared, so a board may distribute a model lease but may not mandate it. Subdivision A 6 bars the association from evicting a tenant, and bars it from making the owner sign a power of attorney authorizing the association to evict. Eviction in Virginia remains the landlord's action to bring. Subdivision A 7 bars the association from refusing to recognize the person the owner designates as authorized representative under § 55.1-1823, although the representative must still satisfy § 55.1-1828 and the declaration before voting a proxy.

The association is not left blind. Subsection B lets it require the lot owner to supply the names and contact information of the tenants and authorized occupants, vehicle information for them, and the name and contact information of any authorized agent of the owner. It may also require the owner to produce the tenant's written acknowledgment of and consent to the association's rules and regulations. Subsection C exempts lots the association itself owns, so an association renting out a lot it took at foreclosure is not policing itself under this section.

What Virginia deliberately does not supply is the machinery most rental-restriction fights turn on in other states. There is no statutory percentage cap on the number of leased lots, no statutory minimum lease term, no grandfather clause protecting owners who were already leasing when a restriction was adopted, and no supermajority vote threshold for adopting a leasing amendment. Those questions are answered entirely by the declaration and by the amendment provisions in § 55.1-1830 and the association's own documents.

The fee cap has real teeth because of where the money question is routed. Section 55.1-1805 provides that no association shall impose a charge against fewer than all lot owners unless it is a fee for services provided, a charge related to use of the common area, or a fee expressly authorized in § 55.1-2316, and it goes on to give the Common Interest Community Board power to assess a monetary penalty against the association under § 54.1-2351 or against a common interest community manager under § 54.1-2349, and to issue a cease and desist order under § 54.1-2352. A rental fee that exceeds the $50 ceiling is an unauthorized charge of exactly this kind.

Section 55.1-1806 was enacted in 2015 (2015, c. 277) as § 55-509.3:1, amended in 2016 (c. 471), renumbered into Title 55.1 by the 2019 recodification (2019, c. 712), and amended again in 2022 (cc. 65, 66) to add the vehicle-information and tenant-acknowledgment language now in subsection B. Citations to § 55-509.3:1 are dead numbering.

1-1805 does not authorize. 1-2352. 1-1819 process: written notice of the alleged violation at the address of record, a reasonable opportunity to correct, then a hearing before the board on at least 14 days' notice hand delivered or sent by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, with the result delivered the same way within seven days. Charges are limited to $50 for a single offense or $10 per day for a continuing offense, and a continuing offense may not be charged for more than 90 days.

1-1833. 1-1819 A directs the court to award court costs and reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party. 1-1806 A 6 entirely, because the statute denies it that authority.