Did Your HOA Opt In to the Arkansas Horizontal Property Act?

In most states, the property statute that governs an HOA or condominium just applies. Arkansas is different — its main HOA-related statute, the Horizontal Property Act, only governs your community if the developer expressly opted in by recording a master deed. That single fact changes how everything else about your rights gets analyzed. For your specific situation, a licensed Arkansas attorney is the right resource. This is general information, not legal advice.

What § 18-13-103 says

The Horizontal Property Act establishes the regime through an express election by recordation:

Under Ark. Code § 18-13-103, "there shall be established a horizontal property regime" whenever a sole owner or the co-owners expressly declare, by recording a master deed setting forth the particulars enumerated in § 18-13-104, their desire to submit the property to the regime.

That language has two consequences:

1. No master deed, no HPA. A community that never had a master deed recorded under § 18-13-104 isn't governed by the HPA at all.
2. The master deed has to meet § 18-13-104's requirements. A defective or incomplete master deed could call the election into question.

What "master deed" means here

Section 18-13-104 lists the particulars the master deed must include — describing the land, individual apartments (units), common areas, and the percentage of ownership pertaining to individual apartments. The master deed is the document that turns ordinary real estate into a "horizontal property regime" under Arkansas law.

In a typical Arkansas condominium, you'll find the master deed in the county recorder's records for the property. For a single-family HOA, finding such a document is far less common — and its absence usually means the community is governed by the declaration and the Nonprofit Corporation Act, not the HPA.

Why the threshold matters

If the HPA applies, your community is operating under a property-statute layer that covers things like assessment liability (§ 18-13-116), insurance (§ 18-13-117), and the basic structure of the regime. Even where the HPA is concise, those statutory provisions are still real protections.

If the HPA doesn't apply, your community runs almost entirely on the declaration, the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 (for incorporated HOAs), and general Arkansas contract and property law. The framework is different — not necessarily worse, but different — and confusing them is how owners and boards lose disputes that should have gone their way.

How owners commonly figure this out

People typically:

• Pull the recorded declaration / master deed from the county recorder's office for the property
• Look for language expressly submitting the property to the HPA under § 18-13-103
• Check whether the document satisfies § 18-13-104's master-deed requirements
• For incorporated HOAs, pull the articles of incorporation from the Arkansas Secretary of State and confirm the entity is a nonprofit corporation

A licensed Arkansas attorney can confirm which framework governs a specific community in a way owners often can't reliably do on their own.

Sources

• Ark. Code § 18-13-103 — Establishment of horizontal property regimes (Justia)
• Ark. Code §§ 18-13-101 to 18-13-120 — Horizontal Property Act (chapter)
• Ark. Code § 4-33 — Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 (overview)