Abstract
Nearly twenty years ago, Nevada positioned itself as a leader in HOA reform, importing the Uniform Common-Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA) and promising oversight that would protect homeowners from costly and unfair governance. Yet today the CICCH Commission falls short, confidentiality shields accountability, and Nevada’s ADR system never met lawmakers’ visions. The framework looks like oversight from the outside, but inside it is hollow — leaving homeowners governed by boards treated like corporate directors, but without the constitutional checks that protect citizens in public life.
This blog traces how Nevada let its institutions wither, why homeowners face the worst of both corporate and municipal models, then outlines a path forward: rebuilding the system with real accountability, workable dispute resolution, and the standards of honesty and fairness that homeowners were promised.
Twenty Years Later: Abandoned and Weakened
In 2005, Susan French, one of the nation’s leading scholars on community association law, published an article titled Making Common Interest Communities Work: The Next Step. French did not mince words. She warned that the system prevailing in most states left homeowners to their own resources — or the courts — to resolve disputes and confront abusive or negligent management.
Simply gathering all the applicable rules was daunting; interpreting them was harder; and identifying default rules in the absence of express ones was nearly impossible. As she explained, neither the law governing cities, nor the law governing corporations, is well suited to common-interest communities.[1] After concluding that they are different in important respects, she went on to discuss the developing body of community association law and then proposed that more is needed: states should take the next step and provide administrative support for community association governance.
She called for plain-language statutes, uniform default bylaws, and trained decision-makers to create a body of law owners could actually use. Without these reforms, she argued, common-interest communities would remain “unfinished governments.”
That was 2005. Here in Nevada, that same year, then–State Senator Mike Schneider was in Sacramento addressing the California Assembly. Nevada had just gone through a sweeping legislative overhaul of its HOA statutes, amending and restructuring NRS Chapter 116. Schneider’s message was one of progress: Nevada had imported the Uniform Common-Interest Ownership Act model and built a regulatory framework designed to give homeowners a fighting chance. The expectation — and, for a time, the reality — was that Nevada was leading the way toward what French described: a system where private governments were paired with true public oversight.
French also pointed to the Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes, Chapter 6 as an emerging guidepost. By codifying duties of fairness, prudence, and reasonableness in community association governance, the Restatement offered both lawmakers a model for reform and judges a framework to evaluate board conduct under existing statutes.
But twenty years later, the record is sobering. What Schneider helped start was never finished. The problem is not the absence of teeth from lawmakers — it is the Commission’s failure to bite, and NRED, perhaps predictably, working to be sure it does not.
Unfortunately, some of the core protections have not just been neglected — they have been quietly weakened. The “unfinished” HOA system French warned about is exactly what Nevada homeowners live under today. Neglect has not left the framework untouched; instead, industry interests — like termites — have been invited to work on the foundation, leaving the structure standing- for now- but hollowed out.
The CIC Commission: Insightful but Unrealized
The Commission for Common-Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels was conceived as the backbone needed to shore up Nevada’s HOA system. Its creation was an insightful trail blazing reform: lawmakers recognized that prior to the Commission framework, the only path for owners to resolve disputes was costly civil court litigation.
The Commission was meant to change that by providing an expedient and inexpensive forum for adjudicating disputes outside the courts and by exercising authority to approve regulations and set rules to guide associations. Pairing adjudication with rulemaking placed it in the best position to learn from recurring conflicts and refine the law accordingly. The Commission was also charged with an advisory role -- to provide independent guidance and policy direction, complementing the Division’s administrative work while ensuring that the interests of all stakeholders were represented in the process.
Yet this backbone has never been realized. From the outset, the Commission has failed to fulfill its potential, operating more as a passive observer than as the independent regulator lawmakers envisioned. Instead of acting as a meaningful check within the system, it has often deferred—regularly simply rubberstamping Division actions. Its advisory role has likewise never matured, leaving stakeholders without the independent guidance and litigation alternative the statutes promised.
Confidentiality as a Shield
The extraordinary use of confidentiality now serves as a shield. Telling both owners and, inexplicably, the Commission itself, actions of NRED are “confidential.” This not only locks homeowners out and leaves the Commission sidelined from the cases it was meant to adjudicate, but also isolates the very body with the duty to regulate and advise. Even when violations are found, sanctions are often modest fines that do little to change board behavior. Structural or systemic abuses — conflicts of interest, failures of transparency, and other systemic issues — are almost never addressed. This leaves owners with an enforcement system that punishes paperwork errors while sidestepping deeper substantive failure and abuses of power.
Interpretation Abandoned
The advisory opinion process was intended to provide clarity. When Nevada first built its HOA regulatory framework, the Nevada Real Estate Division could issue opinions to interpret ambiguous statutes and governing documents. These were supposed to give both owners and boards reliable guidance, reduce disputes, and promote consistency.
In practice, that promise has evaporated. Advisory opinions are now rare, non-binding, and sometimes quietly retracted. Homeowners who seek clarity are often met with silence, delays, rejection, or statements that carry no real authority.
This leaves owners without the public guidance they were promised, while boards rely on private attorneys whose interpretations often serve industry interests.
Rulemaking Stalled
The Commission’s rulemaking authority was intended to keep Nevada’s HOA regulatory system current and effective. Under NRS 116 and NRS 233B, the Commission has the power — and the duty — to adopt regulations that explain how laws will be implemented and how proceedings will unfold. Rulemaking is how vague statutory directives are turned into workable procedures, ensuring fairness and predictability for homeowners and boards alike.
In practice, that authority has gone largely unused. The last significant rulemaking occurred in 2022 — and those approved regulations have yet to be published in a form where owners can easily access them. More troubling, the Division has issued no regulations at all governing how rulemaking itself will be implemented, despite the clear mandate in NRS 233B. This leaves critical questions of procedure and due process to ad hoc interpretation, with homeowners bearing the uncertainty.
Education Neglected
The education requirement for HOA directors was intended to prepare volunteers, often reluctant to serve, having no board experience, acting in areas where they have little experience. Nevada’s framework recognized that directors exercise powers similar to those of public officials, and so new board members were required to complete a training course to understand their duties.
In practice, that promise has fallen flat. The education requirement is a one-time class that can be completed online in a matter of hours. The Division’s educational content is thin, rarely probing the ambiguities in existing law or the governance challenges emerging on the ground — a failure that underscores Susan French’s call for trained decision-makers capable of building a consistent body of community law.
This leaves boards heavily dependent on industry attorneys and management companies for direction, creating a cycle where those with the most to gain financially shape the very governance structures meant to oversee them.
Dispute Resolution Weakened
The alternative dispute resolution (ADR) system was intended to keep homeowners and associations out of costly civil court battles. By requiring mediation or arbitration Nevada lawmakers sought to provide a fair, affordable, and efficient forum for resolving HOA disputes.
In practice, ADR can be little more than a speed bump for entities intent on pursuing civil litigation. Associations and their attorneys often treated mediation as a box to check before filing suit, not a genuine opportunity to resolve disputes. And recently in Kosor v. SHCA (2025), the Nevada Supreme Court made matters worse, holding that ADR is not jurisdictional. That ruling transformed what was already a weak safeguard into an optional step that can be bypassed entirely if no party raises the issue. Read more at the NVHOAReform blogs Nevada Supreme Court Ignores the Law on HOA Disputes—Become Policy Makers In Robes.
This leaves owners in need of an overhauled ADR system that does what lawmakers originally intended — and what French envisioned in 2005 — avoid high-cost litigation and provide a fair, affordable path to resolve disputes.
The CIC Task Force: A Missed Chance
Nevada did attempt to pick up the hammer again. In 2019, the Legislature passed SB 392, creating the CIC Task Force. Senator Joyce Woodhouse led the effort, presenting what looked like a genuine opportunity for Nevada to return to the unfinished work Mike Schneider had started in 2005. On paper, the Task Force was charged not only with recommending reforms, but with a rare opportunity to bypass the usual legislation bottlenecks by submitting proposed statutory changes directly to lawmakers for approval. It was exactly the kind of review Susan French had called for years earlier.
But in practice, the effort fell off a cliff — and never resurfaced after a few nominal meetings. SB 392 dictated who “must” be included: the Real Estate Division, the Ombudsman’s office (itself housed within NRED), the Attorney General’s office, and representatives of the industry. Missing were the very people the system was supposed to serve — homeowners. And because both NRED and the Ombudsman have long been viewed as captured by the industry they regulate, those statutory seats did little to counterbalance the trade groups at the table.
Industry groups, effectively alone, were apparently successful at ensuring the structure would remain weak rather than strengthened. Nevada had once again invited the termites to work on the foundation, leaving the framework standing but hollowed out.
The Path Forward
Susan French warned in 2005 that common-interest communities would remain “unfinished” until states built systems ordinary owners could actually use. Nevada once claimed to be doing just that. Instead, it let the framework deteriorate. What remains today looks like oversight from the street, but inside the foundation is hollow.
Nevada can still pick up the hammer. But finishing the job requires more than minor tweaks — it requires addressing the very gaps that have quietly widened over the past twenty years.
The CIC Commission must step up to its critical role. Created to be the enforcement backbone of Nevada’s HOA system, the Commission has failed in two fundamental ways:
Allowing NRED to all but close the adjudication door. The Commission must take an active role in monitoring who — and importantly, who does not — get through its door to justice. Right now, owners rarely gain access. NRED then relies on an extraordinary use of secrecy, telling both owners and, inexplicably, the Commission itself, “it’s confidential.” That shield not only locks homeowners out and leaves the Commission sidelined from the cases it was meant to adjudicate, but also isolates the very body with the added duty to regulate and advise.
Rubber-stamping and ignoring rulemaking. Instead of exercising independent oversight or updating regulations as required, the Commission has largely deferred to NRED’s direction and allowed rulemaking to stall. As noted earlier, the last significant rules adopted was in 2022. That effort has yet to be easily accessible to owners and no clear procedures exist for how the Commission’s own processes should unfold.
CIC stakeholder restructuring. The deeper problem is structural: industry interests hold a majority of stakeholder seats on the Commission. They are certainly entitled to representation, but not domination. Without clear homeowner voices-the user constituents - the Commission cannot be expected to fulfill the role lawmakers intended.
Use the Restatement 2000 as a guide. French pointed to Chapter 6 of the Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes as a model for modernizing HOA law and as a benchmark for judges applying the statutes already on the books. It spells out duties of fairness, prudence, and reasonableness that could have grounded Nevada’s system in clear, enforceable standards. But Nevada lawmakers and courts have all but ignored that path. The result is a framework that still talks about protecting homeowners yet leaves them without the guardrails French laid out two decades ago.
ADR with teeth. Lawmakers intended ADR to keep disputes out of costly court battles, but in practice it became little more than a speed bump — and after Kosor v. SHCA (2025), it can now be bypassed entirely. This leaves homeowners in need of a restructured ADR system, staffed by trained neutrals, that delivers what lawmakers intended — and what French envisioned in 2005 — a fair and affordable path to resolve disputes. Read about the Collation's solution here and Dispute resolution (ADR) reform must be a Legislature’s priority.
Protecting owners from fee shifting. As long as the civil courts remain a recourse for disputes, prevailing-party clauses must be addressed. The laws two-way fee-shifting have turned litigation into a weapon or shield rather than a remedy. This leaves homeowners afraid to raise even legitimate concerns, knowing they could be bankrupted if they lose. Restoring balance requires closing a fee abuse strategy and protecting owners from catastrophic liability. For a deeper dive read here Nevada Knows Fee-Shifting Is Dangerous — But Uses It In HOAs
Advisory Authority. Revisit how advisory opinions are issued. Under current law that authority is vested exclusively in the Division’s Administrator. The Commission is cut out of the process. One result, few opinions are issued. This has left owners to turn to the courts. A proven alternative exists in Nevada’s own gaming framework: the Gaming Control Board investigates, but the Gaming Commission itself issues declaratory rulings. That structure ties interpretation of laws and regulations to the body with adjudicatory and rulemaking powers, creating coherence and consistency. Extending a similar model to common-interest communities would reconnect interpretation with the Commission and give all stakeholders the clarity they lack today.
Review of governing documents. Nevada’s 2005 overhaul took important steps aimed at making owners’ lives easier by creating clearer statutory paths. But scrutinizing governing documents, outside a few disclaimers, was left to the owners. This was likely a compromise to appease — or at least accommodate — an industry bent on treating HOAs as private and contract-based. Having it both ways creates problems. By law, the Division and Commission were effectively handcuffed — told to stay away from CC&Rs altogether. That means no review for clarity, no guidance on fairness, and no attempt to standardize the documents that shape daily life in these communities. Owners are left with pages of dense, developer-drafted contracts — much as if every citizen were handed a credit card agreement, lacking regulatory review, and told to make sense of it alone. Until those handcuffs come off, homeowners will remain without the very support French identified as essential.
Education that equips. A one-time, virtual training course is no match for the responsibilities HOA directors carry. This leaves volunteer and often unprepared boards dependent on industry attorneys and managers, whose interests can diverge from those of owners. Proper, ongoing education with a heavy focus on fiduciary duty and governance is essential if directors are to serve the communities they represent.
These reforms are not radical or new ideas. They are the “next step” Susan French described, the work Senator Schneider started in 2005, and the opportunity Senator Woodhouse tried to revive in 2019 with SB 392. Two decades later, the truth is unavoidable: Nevada’s HOA system remains unfinished. And in some respects, it is weaker today than it was then. Unless lawmakers pick up the tools and commit to finishing the job — and unless NRED opens the door already constructed rather than blocking it — homeowners will remain governed by half-built institutions that act like governments, collect money like governments, but lack the safeguards of governments.
Two Hurdles to Real Fairness
New and radical is not needed. The only notable exception is government review of CIC governing documents, which Nevada avoided from the start but which remains essential if owners are ever to have meaningful protection.[2]
The first hurdle is jumping the institutional gap — getting the system to work as designed. This hurdle is not simple, as Nevada’s experience shows, but it is doable with the tools already provided. Nevada once promised inexpensive and accessible oversight and fairness: a regulator to clarify rules, a Commission to enforce them, and a dispute-resolution process to keep homeowners out of costly court battles. Yet those promises withered. Rulemaking and advisory opinions slowed to a near halt, ADR never really worked, is now a perfunctory box-check, and the regulator insulated itself with layers of confidentiality. The framework exists on paper, but it no longer functions as a meaningful safeguard.
The second hurdle is harder: even if the machinery can be made to work, the playing field remains tilted. Meeting this challenge requires recognizing the deeper structural flaw. The core problem is that HOA law was grafted onto a corporate framework, with boards treated like business directors and governing documents treated like contracts. That framework brings with it a heavy presumption of deference — the Business Judgment Rule — but without importing the constitutional checks and balances that protect people when the decisions affect their daily lives.
Boards enjoy built-in advantages — vested legal counsel, repeat vendors, and a judicial doctrine that defers to their judgment. The potential for abuse is magnified during the declarant-control period — already a slanted “compromise” with developers. Nevada inexplicably extended that period, and it stands alone among the states in doing so.[3]
Homeowners, by contrast, are for the most part ordinary people defending their rights for the first and often only time. They cannot “sell their stock” and walk away; this is their home, their neighborhood, their largest investment. And unlike citizens facing a city council, they cannot rely on constitutional guarantees of due process or equal protection to discipline vague, aesthetic, or discretionary controls. Yes, as French points out, “the corporate model theoretically protects owners from abusive boards and management companies by giving them power to elect and remove the board of directors. However, individual owners who lack the political clout to mount a recall or successful run for the board have little recourse against board misconduct.”
In corporations, shareholders are protected by disclosure regimes, securities laws, derivative suits, and above all the ability to exit by selling their stock. In municipalities, residents are protected by due process, equal protection, open meeting laws, and judicial review that does not defer blindly.
But in HOAs, owners get the worst of both worlds:
Deference of corporate law, where courts say “we won’t interfere.”
Regulatory and constitutional limits absent, because HOAs are private.
That is why French and others argue HOAs require a special legal framework: one that acknowledges they govern communities of homes — where exit is costly, rules may be vague, and decisions touch quality of life — and that therefore they need safeguards more akin to public law than corporate law.
Jumping this second hurdle is not simple, because the “tools” do not yet exist. They must be made. Only when the first hurdle — restoring institutional oversight — is cleared can the systems and lawmakers begin the harder work of creating those protections. Without that foundation, the call for fairness rings hollow; with it, Nevada can truly finish what it started.
Conclusion
Susan French’s warning in 2005 was not abstract. She foresaw exactly what has unfolded in Nevada: a system that looks like governance but is hollow where it matters most. Senator Mike Schneider promised progress that year, and Senator Joyce Woodhouse tried to revive. Efforts pointed toward finishing the work. None succeeded. Instead, industry influence — the termites at the foundation — insisting HOAs are private has ensured Nevada homeowners remain governed by institutions that are half-built and poorly guarded.
If Nevada does nothing, this will remain the status quo: unfinished private governments that collect money and wield power without the protections Nevadans deserve. But Nevada does not have to leave the job undone. Hold the institutions, it has already built, accountable and then creating the fair-play protections homeowners need. Then Nevada has truly finish what it started.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Nevada CIC Commission supposed to do?
The Commission was designed to provide oversight of HOAs, including adjudicating disputes and creating regulations. In practice, it has mostly deferred to the Real Estate Division and has not delivered the independent oversight lawmakers envisioned.
Why is Nevada’s HOA system called unfinished?
Legal scholars warned as far back as 2005 that Nevada built the framework but failed to finish it — advisory opinions, rulemaking, and dispute resolution all remain weak, leaving homeowners without reliable safeguards.
What reforms are needed for Nevada HOAs?
Experts argue Nevada must strengthen the CIC Commission, give ADR real teeth, curb fee-shifting abuses, and ensure homeowner voices are represented alongside industry interests.
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[1] See Wayne S. Hyatt, Common Interest Communities: Evolution and Reinvention, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 303, 304–06 (1998) (acknowledging that CICs were “a vast social experiment” whose legal framework was underdeveloped. Even industry-leaning commentary recognized that the model was structurally unfinished and overly reliant on developer and vendor influence); Paula A. Franzese, Privatization and Its Discontents: Common Interest Communities and the Rise of Government for “The Nice”, 37 Urb. Law. 335, 340–43 (2005) (observing that boards, financed by owners’ dues, can “launch a missile to kill a mouse” and noting that the HOA legal structure fosters disproportionate enforcement rather than equitable resolution); Steven Siegel, The Constitution and Private Government: Toward the Recognition of Constitutional Rights in Private Residential Communities Fifty Years After Marsh v. Alabama, 6 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 461, 464–67 (1998) (describing HOAs as “governments without citizens” and emphasizing the mismatch between corporate law analogies, which assume market exit, and the immobility of residential ownership).
[2] To be fair, most states, including Nevada, require by statute that declarations and bylaws contain certain provisions, but those mandates are not sufficient. They do not amount to oversight, standardization, or clarity. Regulator rulemaking is a possible path ahead.
[3] Most states adopting the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA) limit declarant control to the earlier of a fixed number of years (often 3–5) or a percentage of units conveyed to purchasers. This is usually 75%- a number already skewed toward the declarant particularly given other provisions aimed at safeguarding the declarant’s investment. See Unif. Common Interest Ownership Act § 3-103(c) (1982, amended 2008). Nevada uniquely extended declarant control beyond the UCIOA model, with AB 192(2015) allowing developers to retain board dominance until 90% of the units are conveyed, a threshold that in practice could take decades in large master-planned communities or maybe unattainable thus providing developer control indefinitely.
