The Las Vegas HOA resale package: how to read it in five days

In Nevada the seller has to deliver the HOA resale package, and the buyer may cancel the purchase without penalty until midnight of the fifth calendar day after receiving it. That is NRS 116.4109, and it is a real review period rather than a formality, provided you know the order to read in. This guide is that order, plus who orders the package, what it costs, what happens when it arrives late, and what a lender wants out of it. For what an association is, what the dues buy and how the lien works, start with the Las Vegas HOA guide; this page picks up where its document table stops.

The share counts homes inside a master-planned community or named district with a published boundary, the closest public proxy for association membership; plenty of homes outside those boundaries are in an HOA too.

Who orders it, when, and what it costs

The seller orders it, or the seller's agent does, and the right day is the day escrow opens. The request goes to the association, which in the valley almost always means its management company, and from that written request the association has 10 calendar days to furnish the governing documents, the budget and year-to-date financial statement, and a certificate carrying the unit-level facts. The selling guide puts the same task on the seller's calendar.

The fee is the seller's. As of the July 2026 text of NRS 116.4109 the association may charge its actual cost, capped at $185 for the certificate, plus up to $100 to expedite it when the owner wants it sooner than three business days. Both caps rise yearly with the Consumer Price Index by no more than 3 percent, so check the Nevada Real Estate Division's current fee form rather than quoting this page at a manager. Documents come electronically; where they cannot, copying is capped at 25 cents a page for the first ten pages and 10 cents after, and nothing else may be charged. Rush fees are avoidable money.

A master plan with a sub-association is two associations, so two packages, two fees, two clocks. And the demand statement, the association's figure for what is owed on the unit through closing, is a separate item escrow orders: also 10 calendar days, also capped (up to $165 as of the July 2026 text, plus up to $100 for three-business-day service), and effective for a period it names that cannot be shorter than 15 business days.

The clock

Calendar days, not business days. A package received on a Friday leaves you until midnight the following Wednesday, and the weekend is two of your five days. The filled dots are the two moments the file leaves your hands.

Day 1: the reserve study

A reserve study is a licensed reserve specialist's inventory of everything the association must eventually replace, with a remaining life and a cost against each item, and a funding plan for getting the money there in time. Under NRS 116.31152 a Nevada association has one done at least every five years by a person holding a permit under chapter 116A, reviews the result annually, and adjusts the funding plan annually. The package carries the summary. On request, the association has to make the entire study available to a purchaser, and if the summary worries you at all, that is the ask to make on day 4.

Read three things. Percent funded is reserve cash against what a fully funded schedule says should be there.

The component list is where the money actually is, item by item, with a remaining useful life beside each: roofs, streets, pools, elevators, paint. And the funding plan says whether dues are already scheduled to climb, which is the difference between a community that has seen the bill coming and one that has not.

Keep two kinds of assessment apart. One has been voted and is in the package as a fact, with an amount and a date. The other is what the arithmetic predicts: nothing has been voted, nobody has to disclose it, and it is the more common of the two. Here is that arithmetic on a 180-unit townhome community.

Day 1: the budget, read against it

The budget is one page of arithmetic with four lines worth your attention. Dues against total expenses: if they only balance because something is transferred out of reserves, the reserve study you just read is being drained to hold dues down, and a dues increase is a matter of timing. The transfer to reserves line says what the community is actually setting aside, which is the number the funding plan assumed.

Then insurance, the line that has moved dues most in the valley in recent years: master policy premiums on Nevada condo and townhome associations rose sharply through the 2020s, and a budget still carrying an old premium is a budget that will be reopened. Ask what the last three renewals did. Then the management fee, the utilities the association pays (water for common landscaping is not small here), and the delinquency rate, which is the share of owners behind on dues. A high delinquency rate is two problems at once: less money than the budget says, and a number a lender will look at. Dues themselves belong in your monthly figure, not in a separate mental column; the payment calculator folds them in beside principal, tax and insurance, and what HOA fees cover is the short version.

Day 2: the CC&Rs and the rules

Do not read the declaration end to end. Read it for the things that would change what you were planning to do with the home. Rentals: minimum lease term, a cap on the number of rented units, and whether short-term rentals are banned outright, which many valley associations do. Parking: work trucks, RVs, boats, and whether street parking is allowed at all on private streets. Pets, by number and by weight. Exterior changes, paint colors and the architectural review process, which is usually slower than you expect.

Some limits Nevada takes off the table. Under NRS 116.330 an association cannot prohibit drought tolerant landscaping in the yard you occupy exclusively, and the statute counts decorative rock and artificial turf as drought tolerant, though it still requires you to submit plans for architectural review and to be compatible with the community's style. Solar sits under NRS 116.333 and 116.334: you submit a request, the association has 35 days to approve or deny it, silence is approval, and any denial has to rest on rules that themselves stay inside the statute's limits. Those sections were amended recently, so confirm the current text before relying on a detail.

Two habits. Rules amend far more often than the declaration does, so ask in writing for the current set rather than assuming the copy in the package is current. And ask for the last two years of board minutes: they are not part of the statutory package and the association does not have to put them in it, but they are where a coming assessment gets discussed before it is voted. If the home is age-restricted, read the occupancy rule itself and not a summary of it; a 55+ community binds buyers and heirs.

Day 3: the account, the litigation, the violations

The association's statement for this unit says what the seller owes today. Unpaid assessments run with the home unless the contract clears them at closing, which is normally what escrow arranges out of the seller's proceeds. NRS 116.4109 gives the buyer a floor here: you are not liable for an unpaid assessment or fee greater than the amount the association's certificate states, and if the association blew the ten days entirely, you are not liable for the delinquent assessment at all. An open violation is different and travels with the property, so an unfinished paint citation or an unpermitted patio cover becomes yours, along with the cost of curing it.

Litigation splits two ways. A suit by the association against the builder for construction defects, run through the Chapter 40 process at NRS 40.600 to 40.695, is common in newer valley communities and is mostly a lending problem: many lenders will not fund in a project with active defect litigation, whatever you think of the home. A suit against the association is a reserves question instead, because the defense and any judgment come out of the same money the roofs do. Unpaid dues are also why an association's lien can outrank a mortgage in Nevada; that is a super-priority lien, covered in the HOA guide and the Nevada foreclosure guide.

What the lender asks

For a condo or an attached townhome, your lender sends the association a project questionnaire built from the same documents. The common agency tests look at the owner-occupancy share, whether one entity owns too many units, the delinquency rate, pending litigation, and whether the budget puts something like 10 percent of revenue into reserves. Treat those thresholds as the usual conventional requirements rather than fixed law, because they move; your loan officer has this year's. FHA and VA work differently again, each keeping its own list of approved projects, and a project that is not on the list is not financeable with that loan.

The practical point: a package can fail the lender even when it satisfies you. If the home is in a project with active defect litigation or heavy delinquency, find that out on day 3, not in underwriting three weeks later when your contingency deadlines have passed. Feed the package to your loan officer as soon as you have read it.

When to walk, and how

Cancelling is a written notice to the seller or the seller's agent before midnight of the fifth calendar day, hand delivered, mailed prepaid, or sent electronically. There is no penalty and no negotiation, and your earnest money comes back. Say plainly that you are cancelling under NRS 116.4109, date it, and send it a way you can prove.

The reasons that usually decide it:

• Percent funded under about 30 percent with a major component due inside five years.
• A special assessment already voted and not credited in the price.
• A rental restriction that breaks what you were going to do with the home.
• Litigation that your lender will not fund through.

The reasons that usually do not: dues higher than you hoped, which is a pricing question you can take back to the seller, and rules you dislike but can live with.

If the package arrives late, the five days still run from the day you receive it, so a late package pushes your decision rather than removing it. Your contract's own deadlines are a separate matter and can collide with the statutory window, and whether a late or missing package lets a buyer cancel outright is a question for a Nevada real estate attorney on the specific contract, not for a general page. Tell your escrow officer the day the package landed and get the review window in writing.

Questions for the community manager

Send these as one message on day 4, with the answer due before your fifth day ends. Each one should match a document you already have; where the answer and the document disagree, the disagreement is the finding.

Where the numbers live

The HOA guide is the overview and carries the lien. The buying guide puts the package in the escrow calendar beside the inspection and the appraisal, and what happens after an offer is accepted is the same sequence in short. A new home from a builder has a different document with its own cancellation right, covered in the new construction guide. Dues on any specific home are on the Las Vegas listings, and the payment calculator turns them into a monthly figure. The vocabulary is in the glossary: HOA, escrow, contingency. Complaints about an association or its manager go to the Nevada Real Estate Division's Office of the Ombudsman for Common-Interest Communities. Your agent will track these deadlines with you if you have one; Kouzr is a research platform and does not represent buyers or sellers.

General information about Nevada common-interest communities, not legal, tax or financial advice. NRS chapter 116 governs, statute figures here are the text effective July 1, 2026 and the fee caps rise with inflation, and the declaration in your own resale package binds you, not this page. Kouzr Inc. is a research platform, not a brokerage, lender or law firm.