§66-27-201 et seq.) for projects created on or after January 1, 2009, and the older Horizontal Property Act (T.C.A. §66-27-101 et seq.) for pre-2009 buildings — but planned-community HOAs have no governing statute at all and run entirely on their recorded covenants plus the Tennessee Nonprofit Corporation Act. There is no state condo or HOA regulator and no ombudsman, so enforcement is private. The one recent, product-relevant development is a 2023 reserve-study law (T.C.A. §66-27-403(g), effective January 1, 2024) requiring condo boards to obtain a reserve study where common elements exceed $10,000 to replace — but Tennessee still does not require boards to fund reserves to any level, and the mandate does not reach HOAs. A Tennessee document review is less about confirming heavy compliance and more about reading reserve discipline, master-policy adequacy in a tornado-and-storm market with no state FAIR Plan, and the difference between a condo's statutory protections and an HOA's near-total reliance on contract.
Reserve studies are now required for condos — but funding never is
Tennessee's 2023 reserve-study law (T.C.A. §66-27-403(g), effective January 1, 2024) requires a condo board overseeing common elements worth more than $10,000 to replace to obtain a reserve study and update it at least every five years, and to make it available to owners. That is the first hard reserve line in Tennessee law — but it stops there. The state does not require the board to fund reserves to the study's recommendation, or at all, and the mandate does not apply to planned-community HOAs. The common Tennessee trap is a condo that satisfies the study mandate while the reserve balance sits near zero. Read the study and the funded balance together; an existing study with thin funding still points to special assessments.
HOAs have no governing statute
Tennessee has no general HOA or planned-community statute — no analog to Florida's or California's frameworks. Planned-community HOAs are organized as nonprofit corporations under the Tennessee Nonprofit Corporation Act (T.C.A. Title 48) and otherwise run entirely on their recorded Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions. That means HOA-level reserve, disclosure, insurance, meeting, and voting protections are contractual, not statutory. For an HOA purchase, the CC&Rs and the association's financials carry the diligence load, and there is no statutory resale-disclosure package to fall back on.
Storm-driven insurance with no FAIR Plan backstop
Tennessee has no hurricane coast, yet homeowners pay above the national average because of severe convective storms — tornadoes, straight-line wind, and hail — plus rising rebuild costs. Master policies increasingly carry separate percentage wind/hail deductibles that push first-dollar storm losses onto owners and associations, and flood is excluded from standard policies (the 2010 Nashville flood remains the cautionary reference). Tennessee is also one of the minority of states with no FAIR Plan, so a non-renewed or hard-to-place association must turn to the costlier, less-regulated surplus-lines market. Condos must insure common elements to at least 80% of replacement cost (T.C.A. §66-27-413), and any repair cost above insurance proceeds plus reserves becomes a common expense — a direct path to a special assessment.
Two condo statutes by era, and a short defect clock for new towers
Which statute governs a Tennessee condo depends on when it was created: the Condominium Act of 2008 for post-2009 projects, the older Horizontal Property Act for pre-2009 ones, with certain 2008-Act provisions reaching all condos for post-2009 events. Layered on top is a short construction-defect statute of repose (T.C.A. §28-3-202) — generally four years from substantial completion (up to roughly five) — which compresses the window for associations in Nashville's wave of new high-rises to pursue developers for defects. For a new tower, confirm warranty and developer-transition status before that clock runs out.
Limited disclosure and a narrow cancellation right
For condos, T.C.A. §§66-27-501 to 507 give a prospective purchaser the right, on written request, to a defined information package — governing documents, recent financials and budget, the reserve statement, 24 months of minutes, an insurance statement, litigation disclosures, and an association-wide delinquency snapshot — delivered within 10 business days or at least 10 days before closing (§66-27-502). But the buyer's ability to cancel is narrow: a statutory rescission right applies only where the declarant still controls the association and fails to deliver the package on time (§66-27-505). Treat any general post-signing cancellation window as unsettled and do not assume one exists — build your protection into the purchase contract's contingencies and review periods. HOAs have no statutory resale-disclosure package at all.
