Director eligibility
Who is allowed to run for your board, and who decides that.
Whether a member can run for your board depends on your state's statute and your association's own governing documents, not on a nationwide rule. Common restrictions include unpaid assessments, term limits, minimum membership duration, and conflicts of interest, but no state imposes all of these, and many states leave eligibility entirely to your bylaws.
Two different places write the rules
A few states, including California and Nevada, write candidate-eligibility rules directly into their common-interest-development statutes. Florida's statute sets one narrow rule of its own, tied to delinquency, and otherwise hands election procedure to the association's own documents.
Most states have no comparable statute at all. For those associations, eligibility is written entirely into the CC&Rs and bylaws the board itself adopted, so check your own documents before assuming a rule you read about elsewhere applies to you.
The categories that commonly show up
Where a state or an association does restrict who can run, the restrictions tend to fall into a small set of categories. Whether any of these apply to your election, and how strict they are, depends entirely on your state statute and your governing documents.
| Restriction category | How one state has written it |
|---|---|
| Delinquent assessments | Florida bars a candidate who is delinquent as of the nomination deadline |
| Term limits | California allows associations to adopt a maximum number of consecutive terms in their own rules |
| Minimum membership duration | California allows associations to require a minimum length of ownership before a member can run |
| Relationship to a sitting director | Nevada restricts close family members of a sitting director from running, with several exceptions |
You can usually nominate yourself
Even where a state regulates eligibility in detail, it tends to protect one thing consistently: a member's right to put their own name forward.
"A nomination or election procedure shall not be deemed reasonable if it disallows any member from nominating themself."
Source: California Civil Code Section 5105, California Legislative Information
Florida's statute takes the same position: a member may nominate themself at the meeting where the election is held, and a missing nominating committee does not block that right. Neither state requires the board's permission first.
Losing eligibility once you're already in office is different from removal
Eligibility questions do not end on election day. Florida treats a director who becomes significantly delinquent after taking office as having automatically abandoned the seat, no vote required. That is a distinct legal event from removing a director, which typically does require a vote of the membership.
Whether losing eligibility mid term triggers an automatic vacancy, a removal vote, or nothing at all depends on your state and your bylaws. Check both before assuming either answer.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
A member wants to run for the board, but no one nominated them and there is no nominating committee. Under the self-nomination guarantee found in both California's and Florida's statutes, what can they do?
A newly elected director becomes significantly delinquent on assessments soon after taking office. Under Florida's statute, what happens to that director's seat?
A board member reads online that HOA candidates everywhere must own their home for at least one year before running. Is this true?
- California Civil Code, Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act, Section 5105, California Legislative Information
- Florida Statutes, Section 720.306 (2024), The Florida Senate
- Nevada Revised Statutes, Section 116.31034, Nevada Legislature
Elections
Once you know who can run, the next question is how a nomination actually gets made. See Candidate nominations.
Which restrictions apply, delinquency, term limits, minimum membership duration, relationship to a sitting director, and what happens if a director loses eligibility after taking office, all vary by state statute and by your own CC&Rs and bylaws.