The HOA bills on the floor as California's session closed

August 31 was the last day for each house of the California Legislature to pass bills this session, per the 2026 legislative calendar. Anything that cleared both houses now goes to the Governor, who has until September 30 to sign or veto it; statutes signed this year take effect January 1 unless the bill says otherwise.

Several bills in that final pile concern common interest developments — the legal category every condominium in Los Angeles County sits in. One would change how buildings fund reserves. Three would change what an association can stop an owner installing. One exists only for LA County.

One caveat first. The bill descriptions below come from the hot-bills page maintained by CAI-CLAC, the Community Associations Institute's California legislative committee, last updated July 6. Floor votes from the closing two weeks are not reflected there and we are not going to guess at them. This is what was proposed — not what became law.

The reserve bill is the one that costs money

AB 2050 (Caloza) is the significant one. As tracked by CAI-CLAC, which supports it, the bill would require a reserve study to identify the minimum annual contribution needed to keep the association's reserve balance from falling below zero over the following 30 years. If the projection goes negative at any point in that window, the association would have to move at least 15% of its gross annual budget into reserves each year until it no longer does.

FindHOALaw, which tracks Davis-Stirling legislation, records two amendments worth knowing about: an April 16 change stretching the interval for a reserve funding special assessment from once every three years to once every nine, and a June 18 change adding the 15% transfer. CAI-CLAC puts that special assessment at 5% of the operating budget.

The start date is the part most coverage skips: January 1, 2032. This is not a bill about next year's budget.

15% is the same number Fannie Mae landed on

That figure should look familiar. From January 4, 2027, an association going through a Fannie Mae Full Review has to budget at least 15% of annual income for reserves, up from 10% — one of the agency changes we wrote up two weeks ago. The triggers differ entirely: the lender rule bites when someone tries to finance a unit, the state bill only where a 30-year projection runs dry, and only from 2032. But an association that reaches 15% to stay financeable in 2027 has already done most of what the state bill would ask of it five years later.

Two different bodies, working from different premises, arrived at the same number for the same reason: 10% was not enough.

Why a 30-year projection bites harder here

Of the 4,870 LA-area condo buildings in our database, 4,699 have a year built on file. The median is 1983; just under 60% predate 1990 and 38% predate 1980.

A 30-year projection on a building completed in 1983 is not a theoretical exercise. Within that window sit roof replacement, elevator modernisation, plumbing risers, and in many cases a full exterior envelope. Associations that have kept dues flat by deferring those line items are exactly what a mandatory 30-year projection is designed to catch, and a market this old has plenty of them.

An LA-only bill about CC&Rs that expired

AB 2692 (Irwin) applies to Los Angeles County alone. Per CAI-CLAC, it would establish a process for reinstating expired or terminated declarations for associations in the county, sunsetting January 1, 2028. Some older declarations were drafted with their own expiration dates; when the CC&Rs lapse, the association's authority to levy assessments and enforce rules becomes a question rather than a fact, and that question travels straight into escrow.

Three bills about what your association can stop you installing

A cluster of bills would void governing-document provisions that restrict specific equipment. CAI-CLAC lists all three:

• AB 1684 (Ward) would make any governing document, architectural guideline, deed restriction or policy that prohibits or restricts the installation, upgrade, replacement or use of a cooling system void and unenforceable, with a civil penalty of up to $2,000 payable to the member for a willful violation. CLAC's position is oppose unless amended.
• SB 222 (Wiener) would void provisions preventing the replacement of a fuel-gas-burning appliance with an electric one, and provisions restricting heat pump water heaters or heat pump HVAC systems. CLAC opposes.
• SB 908 (Wiener) would prohibit governing documents from limiting an owner's replacement of existing windows with California Energy Code compliant windows.

For a townhouse-style association these read as consumer protection. For a high-rise on the Wilshire Corridor or in Century City, they run straight into architectural control, because cooling equipment and window glazing are the exterior. There is a wide gap between "cannot prohibit" and "cannot regulate how it is done," and where each bill landed after amendment matters more than the headline.

One more worth watching: SB 1238 (Wahab), which CLAC opposes on other grounds, would require a seller to give a prospective purchaser a separate disclosure regarding exterior elements and units requiring imminent repairs. Balcony and walkway condition is currently something a careful buyer has to dig for.

Meanwhile, in new for-sale supply

In Pasadena's Playhouse Village, 49 condominiums came to market at 127 N. Madison Avenue — a five-story building over subterranean parking, designed by Struere, residences from 1,036 to 1,856 square feet, asking $1.5 million to $2.7 million, per Urbanize LA. Urbanize calls it the largest single batch of new condominiums to open in Pasadena in recent years, and the numbers support that: of the 428 Pasadena buildings we track, 15 were completed in 2020 or later. The developer's nearest comparable, One Seventy Eight Euclid, is five storeys and 42 residences, finished in 2022.

In Santa Monica, a 12-story, 32-home building was filed for 1517 15th Street near the E Line's 17th Street/SMC Station — the city's second project under SB 79, which took effect in July 2026 and allows multifamily residential as a by-right use near major transit stops across Los Angeles County. Apartments, not condominiums. But Santa Monica is the largest single market in our database at 711 buildings, and SB 79 changes what can go up next door to a building somebody already owns a share of.

What to do with any of this

Nothing above is law. If you are buying, the useful move is not tracking bill numbers but asking for the reserve study itself and reading its projection instead of taking a percent-funded figure at face value — which is roughly where we always end up. A projection that runs to zero is a fact about the building today, whether or not the Legislature ever requires anyone to calculate it.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Bill descriptions and CAI-CLAC positions are drawn from CAI-CLAC's legislative hot-bills page as last updated July 6, 2026, and from FindHOALaw's tracking of AB 2050; session deadlines are from the 2026 Tentative Legislative Calendar compiled by the Office of the Secretary of the Senate and the Office of the Assembly Chief Clerk. We have deliberately not stated whether any of these bills passed, because floor action in the session's final days was not reflected in the sources available to us. Building counts and years built are from the Condos of LA database. Confirm anything that affects a decision with your association's counsel.