Academy/HOA & Community Association 101
What is a sub-association?
A community association that keeps its own board, but hands some of its power to a bigger organization above it.
A sub-association is a community association with its own board, budget, and declaration that has delegated some of its authority, often over shared roads or amenities, upward to a separate master association. That delegation is not automatic. It exists only to the extent the sub-association's own declaration actually grants it.
A sub-association is still its own association
Joining a master association does not dissolve your community's own governance. A sub-association still has its own board, its own declaration, and its own budget. Owners still elect that board, and that board still runs the community day to day.
What earns the "sub" label is narrower: the sub-association's declaration hands some specific piece of authority, commonly over a shared road, a clubhouse, or another amenity used across several communities, up to an organization that sits above it. That upward organization is the master association. Everything else about how the sub-association governs itself stays exactly where it was.
The master association only gets what your declaration gives it
This is the part boards get wrong most often. A master association does not come with built-in authority over its member communities. Its power is a delegation, and the delegation has to be traceable to an actual document.
"A master association may exercise the powers set forth in paragraph (b) of subsection 1 of NRS 116.3102 only to the extent expressly permitted in: (a) The declarations of common-interest communities which are part of the master association or expressly described in the delegations of power from those common-interest communities to the master association."
Source: Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 116, NRS 116.212, Nevada Legislature
In plain terms: if the master association wants to set a rule for your community, the first question is not whether the master association's board voted for it. It is whether your own community's declaration actually handed that power over. Nevada's statute states this delegation rule explicitly; confirm how your own state's common-interest law and your declaration handle it.
How to check what your community delegated
Read your sub-association's declaration for the section addressing the master association, sometimes labeled "master association" or "delegation of powers." It should name specific powers, not a blanket grant. A declaration that delegates architectural review over shared entryways does not thereby delegate authority over paint colors on individual lots, and it certainly does not delegate authority the master association was never given at all.
If a master association directs your board to do something and you cannot point to the clause that grants it that power, that is a question for your association's attorney, not something to assume away in either direction.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
Your master association tells your board to enforce a new paint color rule across your subdivision. What should the board check first?
A sub-association's board wants to know if it still controls its own budget after joining a master association. What's true?
Which best describes what makes an association a "sub-association" rather than just an independent HOA?
Sources
- Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 116, Common-Interest Ownership (Uniform Act), Nevada Legislature
Related elsewhere in the Academy
HOA & Community Association 101
Next, learn what a master association can and cannot do on its own, so you know where its authority actually ends.
Whether your community sits under a master association at all, and exactly what powers your declaration delegates upward, varies by community and by state. NRS 116.212's delegation rule is Nevada's; other states' common-interest statutes may structure master association authority differently.