If you are buying a condo in Maine, one statutory fact reshapes how you should read the association's finances: Maine has no 6-month "super-priority" lien. This runs against the assumption many buyers, agents, and even out-of-state attorneys carry into a Maine transaction, because most states that adopted the Uniform Condominium Act give associations a limited priority over first mortgages for unpaid dues. Maine does not. Understanding why — and what it means for your diligence — is one of the highest-value things you can do before closing.

What 33 M.R.S. §1603-116 actually says

The Maine Condominium Act creates an association lien on each unit for any assessment or fine from the time it becomes due (§1603-116(a)). The lien is foreclosed "in like manner as a mortgage," and recording the declaration provides record notice — no separate lien filing is required to perfect it (§1603-116(d)). Late charges, fees, fines, and interest are enforceable as assessments unless the declaration says otherwise.

The pivotal provision is the priority rule in §1603-116(b). The association lien is prior to other liens except three categories:

1. Liens recorded before the declaration;
2. A first mortgage recorded before or after the assessment became delinquent; and
3. Real-estate tax and other governmental liens.

Read carefully, that second exception is the whole story. A first mortgage beats the association lien entirely. There is no carve-out for any number of months of dues — not six, not three, not one. In plain terms, the bank's mortgage is never primed by the association's unpaid assessments.

The 2015 bill that would have changed this — and didn't

This is not an accident of drafting. In 2015, the Maine Legislature considered LD 994, "An Act To Create a Priority Lien Securing 6 Months of Assessments under the Maine Condominium Act." The bill would have inserted a 6-month "priority amounts" carve-out ahead of first mortgages, bringing Maine in line with many other Uniform Condominium Act states.

It failed. LD 994 received an "Ought Not to Pass" report and was not enacted. Maine therefore remains a non-super-lien state by deliberate legislative choice, not by oversight. If you have read a generic "HOA law by state" summary that lists Maine as having a 6-month priority, that summary is wrong — and it may be relying on the proposed bill rather than the enacted statute.

Why this is good news for lenders

For a lender, Maine is safer than super-lien states. In a state with a 6-month super-lien, a first mortgagee that forecloses can find its recovery reduced by up to six months of the association's assessments, which prime the mortgage. In Maine, that risk does not exist: the mortgage comes first, full stop. This is one reason Maine condo lending is comparatively low-friction on the lien-priority dimension.

Why it still matters — a lot — for buyers

It would be a mistake to conclude that "no super-lien" means delinquency is irrelevant. The opposite is true: in Maine, a high community delinquency rate is a financial-health red flag precisely because the association is weak on collection.

Here is the mechanism. Because the first mortgage primes the association lien, when a delinquent unit goes to bank foreclosure, the foreclosing first mortgagee's sale extinguishes the association's pre-sale arrears. Under §1603-116(i), common-expense assessments accrue free of the foreclosing first mortgagee's lien from and after the date of the foreclosure sale — meaning the buyer at the bank's sale owes dues going forward, but the association generally cannot recover the unpaid dues that accumulated before the sale.

So in a building with chronic delinquency:

• The association loses the pre-sale arrears when units fall to bank foreclosure.
• Paying owners absorb the shortfall through higher regular dues or special assessments.
• The community's financial trajectory deteriorates even though no individual buyer's title is clouded by a super-lien.

That is why, in Maine, you read delinquency as a financial-distress signal for the community, not as a title-priority threat to your own purchase. A 5% delinquency rate in a healthy building is noise; a 20%+ rate in an aging seasonal building is a warning that special assessments are coming.

How collection and foreclosure work in Maine

A few mechanics round out the picture:

• Judicial foreclosure. Maine is a judicial-foreclosure state, and association liens are foreclosed like a mortgage. Section 1603-116(f) expressly permits a deed in lieu of foreclosure.
• Fees to the prevailing party. A judgment "shall include costs and reasonable attorney's fees for the prevailing party" (§1603-116(g)).
• Six-year enforcement window. A lien is extinguished unless enforcement proceedings begin within 6 years after the full assessment amount became due (§1603-116(e), amended by PL 2019, c. 3).
• Recordable statement. On written request, the association must furnish within 10 business days a recordable statement of unpaid assessments, which is binding on the association (§1603-116(h)).

That last item is useful diligence: you can request a binding statement of what is actually owed on the unit you are buying.

What to request and read

Because the title-priority question is settled (the mortgage wins), your diligence on the lien front should focus on the community's collection health, not on protecting your own title from a super-lien:

• The association-wide delinquency rate and collection ledger.
• The recordable statement of unpaid assessments for your specific unit (§1603-116(h)).
• Recent minutes for any judicial foreclosure suits, deeds in lieu, or write-offs of uncollectible arrears.
• The budget to see whether delinquency is being backfilled through dues increases.
• Any special-assessment history that traces back to collection losses.

The §1604-108 resale certificate also caps your exposure: a purchaser is not liable for any unpaid assessment greater than the amount the certificate states, so confirm the certificate is current and reconcile it against the ledger.

The bottom line

Maine's no-super-lien rule is the clearest example of why state-specific diligence beats generic checklists. The headline — "no super-lien" — sounds like good news, and for your title it is. But it quietly shifts the risk onto paying owners in poorly collecting associations, which is exactly why a Maine buyer should read delinquency, foreclosure history, and the budget together. The threat is not to your title; it is to your future dues.

What CondoSignal surfaces

We pull the association-wide delinquency rate, the unit-level unpaid-assessment statement, foreclosure and deed-in-lieu activity from the minutes, and the budget's treatment of bad debt into a single Maine-specific risk summary. We flag the financial-distress pattern — high delinquency paired with bank foreclosures that wipe pre-sale arrears — that the no-super-lien rule makes consequential for paying owners. The goal is to help a Maine buyer read delinquency correctly: not as a title threat, but as a predictor of the special assessments that close the gap.