Common Interest Ownership Act

The Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA) was originally promulgated in 1982 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (Uniform Law Commissioners or ULC). It is the act that succeeds and subsumes the earlier Uniform Condominium Act (1977) (1980), the Uniform Planned Community Act (1980), and the Model Real Estate Cooperative Act (1981). UCIOA is a comprehensive act that governs the formation, management, and termination of a common interest community, whether that community is a condominium, planned community, or real estate cooperative. It also provides for disclosure of important facts about common interest property at sale to a buyer, including resale disclosure for any sale after the initial sale by the developer of the property; for warranties of sale; for a buyer’s recission rights in a sale contract, and for escrow of deposits made to secure a sale contract. These are the four principal elements of consumer protection under UCIOA.

In 1994, the ULC has promulgated a series of amendments to UCIOA. These amendments do not change the general format or structure of UCIOA. They reflect the experience in states that have adopted UCIOA or one or more of its predecessor acts, and analyses that have appeared, occasionally, in the scholarly literature. Both actual experience and scholarly commentary have affirmed and reaffirmed the basic structure and content of UCIOA. These amendments are designed to enhance its basic effectiveness.

This summary is intended to highlight the most important of these amendments. A broader description of UCIOA is available in an earlier summary prepared in 1982. There is substantial literature, as well, available to anyone who wants to study the whole of UCIOA in more detail.

Basic UCIOA (PDF)