A moving truck pulls up at a house on the corner, a new family moves in, and the board finds out a month later when a neighbor asks who they are. Nobody on the board has a phone number for the household. The owner lives two states away and answers email when he gets to it.
A tenant registration rule closes that gap. The hard part is deciding what to ask for, because the association has to collect, store and justify every item on the form. Whether the board can require registration at all, and in which document, comes first; our guide to HOA rental restrictions works through it.
What registration is for
Start with the purpose, because the purpose decides the fields. A registration requirement does a handful of jobs:
- It lets the association reach the people living in the home when something affects them: a water shutoff, a gate code change, a storm.
- It keeps a rental cap's count accurate, if the community has one.
- It confirms the tenants have received the rules they're expected to follow.
- It tells the board where violation notices go, and to whom.
Any field that doesn't serve one of those jobs can come off the form.
What a registration form can cover
Within what your documents and your state's law allow, a form built around those purposes might ask for:
- The name, phone number and email address of each adult who will live in the home.
- The date the lease starts and its term.
- Vehicles and plates, if the community has parking rules that depend on them.
- The owner's own mailing address and contact details, if the owner lives elsewhere.
- The owner's signed acknowledgment that the tenants have received the community rules and that the owner remains responsible to the association.
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The association's relationship is with the owner, and a signed acknowledgment puts the owner's responsibility for the household in writing before any problem comes up. Who owes the dues when a home is rented is a separate question, answered in Do Renters Pay HOA Fees?
Where state law limits the list
Some states set out what an association may and may not ask. Texas is specific. Property Code section 209.016 says a property owners' association may not adopt or enforce a provision that requires "a lease or rental applicant or a tenant to be submitted to and approved for tenancy by the property owners' association." It also bars requiring "a consumer or credit report" on an applicant or tenant, or the lease or rental application the tenant gave the landlord.
The section names what a Texas association may request: "contact information, including the name, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address of each person who will reside at a property in the subdivision under a lease," and "the commencement date and term of the lease." The same section says it doesn't prohibit a dedicatory instrument from "establishing a restriction relating to occupancy or leasing."
Other states take their own approach, and some may have nothing this specific. In a state that lists what an association may request, trim the form to match. Before the board adopts a form, check your state's current law and your declaration, and ask the association's attorney if either is unclear.
Questions the form should never ask
HUD's Fair Housing Act overview says the Act "protects people from discrimination when they are renting or buying a home, getting a mortgage, seeking housing assistance, or engaging in other housing-related activities." The protected classes it lists are race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and disability.
A registration form has no reason to ask about any of them. A question about children in a household can touch familial status. A question about medical conditions or service animals has no place on a registration form; if an accommodation request comes up, handle it separately with counsel. Asking suggests the answer matters to the board, whatever the board intended. Our post on fair housing mistakes HOAs make covers more of them, and the association's attorney should see any field the board is unsure about before the form goes out.
Handling what you collect
Once the forms come in, the association is holding personal information about people who aren't members. Decide who on the board can see it, where it's kept, and how long it's kept after a tenant moves out, and write those answers into the rule. Ask the owner to update the registration when a lease renews or the household changes, and remove a departed tenant's details on the schedule your retention policy sets.
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In HOA-OS a board can build its tenant registration form with the form builder, which has 14 field types, including File Upload for a lease summary and Signature for the owner's acknowledgment. Completed forms arrive in the board's submissions inbox. The form builder is part of the Community plan, and every plan starts with a 30-day free trial with no credit card at signup. The plans are at hoa-os.com/pricing.
Related Reading
- The New-Resident Welcome Packet That Prevents Problems
- HOA Document Retention: What to Keep and How Long
- HOA Short-Term Rental Rules: What Your Board Needs to Know
Every field on the form is something the association will have to store and explain.