Academy/Membership & Annual Meetings
LLC/company-owned properties
When the name on title is a company, not a person, who actually shows up to vote.
Yes. Unlike an individual owner, a corporation or LLC is a separate legal entity that can hold title to a unit in its own name, and it can appoint a representative to vote, attend, and serve on the board in its place. Confirmed for California; check your state statute and governing documents for the rule that applies to you.
Why entities are not like individual owners
An individual owner, or two individual owners who co-own a unit, cannot simply hand their vote to a stand-in. But a corporation or LLC is a different kind of owner. It is a legal person in its own right, so it can hold title directly and it can act through whoever it authorizes, the same way it signs contracts or opens a bank account through an authorized officer.
"Both corporations and LLCs are separate legal entities and are thus capable of holding title to real property in their own corporate names." "A corporation or LLC may select a representative to act on its behalf in HOA matters, including voting and board participation."
Source: California HOA: Who Qualifies as an Owner Fact Sheet, MBK Chapman
This is a real contrast with a trust-owned property, where a trust cannot hold title itself, so the trustee is the actual member and typically must vote in person.
How the representative gets authorized
Here is what the research does not settle: a single, universal procedure for proving who speaks for the LLC or corporation at your meeting. That process, an authorization letter, a corporate resolution, or something else entirely, is set by your state statute and your own governing documents, and it is worth confirming before the meeting, not during it.
Do not assume this works exactly like a proxy or a power of attorney. Those are mechanisms for one member to authorize someone else to cast that member's vote. An LLC or corporation sending its own representative is arguably just the member itself showing up through an agent, which may be governed by a different rule entirely. Ask your association's counsel which category applies.
What to check before accepting the vote
When a representative arrives claiming to speak for an entity-owned unit, three questions protect the association: Is the entity actually the owner of record? Does the person have written authorization naming them specifically? And does your state statute or your CC&Rs say anything about entity ownership at all? Some states and some governing documents address this directly; many say nothing, in which case the board is left applying general principles and should loop in counsel for anything contested.
See Eligible voters for the underlying question of who counts as a member before you get to who can represent one.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
Meridian Properties LLC owns a unit in your association and sends someone other than an LLC member to vote at the annual meeting. Why can it do this in a way an individual owner generally cannot?
The Alvarez Family Trust owns a unit next door to one owned by Meridian Properties LLC. A board member assumes the trust can send a representative to vote the same way the LLC does. What is the key difference?
Your association is in Texas, not California, and receives a letter naming a representative for an LLC-owned unit. What should the board do first?
Sources
- California HOA: Who Qualifies as an Owner Fact Sheet, MBK Chapman
Membership & Annual Meetings
Not sure who counts as an eligible voter in the first place? Read Eligible voters next.
Whether a corporation or LLC may appoint a representative to vote, and what document proves that appointment, is confirmed here only for California. Other states' statutes and your own bylaws may set a different rule, or none at all.