Condos are governed by the D.C. Condominium Act of 1976 (D.C. Official Code Title 42, Chapter 19, §42-1901.01 et seq.), a comprehensive statute covering creation, governance, insurance, the assessment lien, resale certificates, and a structural-defect warranty for new and converted buildings. But the District also leaves two important gaps wide open: it does not require a reserve study or any reserve funding, and it has no periodic façade or structural recertification mandate. In a city full of prewar and mid-century buildings — many converted to condos or operating as cooperatives — that means nothing in the law forces an aging board to confront roofs, masonry, elevators, or garage decks until something fails. A D.C. document review is therefore less about confirming statutory compliance and more about reading three things the statute does not guarantee: whether the unit and building are current on assessments (the super-lien question), whether reserves are adequate without a mandate to make them so, and whether the master insurance policy meets the Act's 90%-replacement-cost floor as premiums climb. The Condominium Act's resale certificate (§42-1904.11) and binding statement of unpaid assessments (§42-1903.13(h)) are the buyer's primary tools, and they apply only to condos — non-condo HOAs run on recorded covenants plus the Nonprofit Corporation Act, and cooperatives run on proprietary leases and share loans, both with materially weaker statutory protection. Treat any cancellation deadline conservatively and verify the current window before relying on it. The practical discipline in D.C. is to surface delinquency, reserve, and insurance risk early, because the District's lien regime turns a few thousand dollars of unpaid dues into a six-figure title problem.
Super-priority lien — the HOA foreclosure that can erase your mortgage
This is the District's defining risk. Under D.C. Code §42-1903.13, six months of unpaid condominium assessments are a super-priority lien that sits ahead of the first mortgage. The D.C. Court of Appeals held in Chase Plaza Condominium Ass'n v. JPMorgan Chase (2014), reaffirmed in Liu (2018) and Wonder Twins, LLC v. 450101 Housing Trust (2024), that an association's foreclosure on that six-month slice can extinguish the first deed of trust entirely. A unit owner roughly six months behind on dues can trigger a power-of-sale foreclosure that wipes out a six-figure mortgage for a few thousand dollars in arrears. Confirm the unit is current on assessments, review the building's overall delinquency rate, and scrutinize any unit whose title traces to a prior association foreclosure.
No reserve mandate in a city of aging buildings
D.C. does not require associations to commission a reserve study, update one on a schedule, or fund reserves to any level. The Condominium Act treats reserves as a budget power (§42-1903.08) and forces disclosure of reserve status at resale (§42-1904.11(a)(3)) and in new-offering statements (§42-1904.04), but it sets no funding floor. Because the floor is zero, a thin reserve is legal — but it is a strong red flag in a market dominated by prewar and mid-century buildings facing roof, elevator, masonry, and mechanical replacement. Post-Surfside Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwriting now scrutinizes reserve adequacy, so weak reserves also threaten financeability, not just future assessments.
No façade or structural inspection mandate
Unlike New York's FISP, Chicago, or post-Surfside Florida, D.C. has no law requiring condo buildings to undergo periodic façade or structural recertification based on age or height. Inspections are generally permit-triggered or complaint-triggered, not calendar-driven. The Act's two-year structural-defect warranty (§42-1903.16) catches early-life defects in new and converted buildings but does nothing for buildings decades past warranty. With no inspection mandate and no reserve mandate, nothing forces an aging board to confront façade, balcony, garage-deck, or structural deterioration until it becomes a code violation or a failure — so buyers must seek out engineering and condition reports that may not exist.
Insurance mandates and a hardening market
D.C. has stronger insurance mandates than most states. Under §42-1903.10 the master policy must cover the common elements at no less than 90% of replacement cost, and — unusually — individual unit owners must carry HO-6 coverage (currently at least $10,000 dwelling and $300,000 liability). Pending 2025 legislation (the Condominium Insurance Amendment Act) would raise those minimums substantially and increase the deductible an owner can owe when damage originates in their unit. Combined with the national hard market and GSE underwriting tightening, master-policy premiums and deductibles are rising and the financeable buyer pool is narrowing. Verify the master policy meets the 90% floor, check the deductible structure, and confirm flood coverage where the building sits near the Potomac, the Anacostia, or combined-sewer flood zones.
Cooperatives and non-condo HOAs fall outside the Condominium Act
Cooperatives are common in older D.C. buildings, and a co-op buyer purchases shares and a proprietary lease — not real property. The Condominium Act's resale certificate and super-lien provisions do not govern co-ops; diligence must look at the proprietary lease, the corporation's underlying blanket mortgage, share-loan recognition agreements, and transfer approval. Non-condo HOAs have no dedicated D.C. statute at all — they run on recorded covenants plus the Nonprofit Corporation Act (Title 29, Chapter 4), so the resale certificate, reserve disclosure, records-access, and insurance mandates that protect condo buyers generally do not apply. Identify the legal structure first, because it determines which protections you actually have.
