By North Carolina statute your association owes exactly one document: a written statement of the unpaid assessments and other charges against your lot, delivered within 10 business days of a written request, and it can charge you up to $200 for it. Everything else a buyer wants to see, the budget, the minutes, the reserve study, the rules and the insurance certificate, is not required by state law and only shows up because your contract asks for it.
This surprises sellers in Landfall, Porters Neck Plantation, Brunswick Forest and RiverLights every spring. They assume the association will hand over a tidy resale package the way a title company hands over a payoff letter. Some management companies do. Many do not, and the ones that do often treat it as a product they sell rather than a duty they owe.
Knowing the difference between what the law requires and what your buyer will ask for is what keeps an HOA from costing you your closing date. Here is how it actually works in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties, where our New Hanover County market update shows the median home taking 61 days to sell on September 2026 data, long enough that a two-week document delay is a real problem.
What the law actually requires
For a planned community, which covers most Wilmington-area subdivisions with a mandatory association, the governing provision is G.S. 47F-3-118. Subsection (b) says the association, on written request, must furnish a lot owner or the owner’s authorized agent a statement setting forth the amount of unpaid assessments and other charges against the lot. Three details matter to you as a seller.
First, the deadline is 10 business days after the request is received. Two calendar weeks, in other words, which is longer than most sellers assume and long enough to matter if you sign a contract with a short due diligence period.
Second, the statement is binding on the association, the executive board and every lot owner. That is the real value of it. If the association certifies that nothing is owed and a forgotten $400 fine turns up after closing, the association is bound by what it put in writing.
Third, it is not free. The statute lets the association, its manager or its agent charge a reasonable fee up to $200 per statement or request, plus an additional expedite fee up to $100 if the request comes within 48 hours of closing. That $100 is avoidable, and it is avoided by requesting the statement the week you go under contract rather than the day before you sign.
Condominiums run on a different chapter. Under G.S. 47C-4-109, on a resale it is the unit owner, not the association, who must furnish the buyer a statement of the monthly common expense assessment and any other fees payable by unit owners before the conveyance. If you are selling a condominium downtown, at Wrightsville Beach or on Carolina Beach, that obligation sits on you.
- 10 business days: the deadline for an association to furnish a statement of unpaid assessments after a written request N.C.G.S. 47F-3-118(b), read October 28, 2026
- $200: the maximum fee per statement or request N.C.G.S. 47F-3-118(b), read October 28, 2026
- $100: the maximum additional expedite fee if the request is made within 48 hours of closing N.C.G.S. 47F-3-118(b), read October 28, 2026
- 75 days after the fiscal year closes: when the association must make an annual income and expense statement and balance sheet available to owners at no charge N.C.G.S. 47F-3-118(a), read October 28, 2026
- Six items the seller must disclose about the association, from dues to pending lawsuits to transfer fees N.C.G.S. 47E-4(b1), read October 28, 2026
What you have to disclose yourself
Separate from anything the association hands over, North Carolina makes the owner disclose the association in writing. G.S. 47E-4(b1) requires an owners’ association and mandatory covenants disclosure statement covering six specific things: the name, address, phone or email for the president or manager; the amount of any regular assessments or dues; whether any services are paid for by those dues; whether any dues, fees or special assessments have been duly approved as of the date you sign; whether there are unsatisfied judgments against or pending lawsuits involving the lot, the planned community or the association, other than collection actions on other lots; and any fees the association or management company charges in connection with the transfer.
Read item four again, because it is the one that bites. The question is not whether you have been billed a special assessment. It is whether one has been duly approved as of the date you sign. A board that voted in September for a road project billing in January is a yes, even though nothing has hit your account. We would rather you disclose it and price for it than argue about it later.
You do have the option on these statements to say you make no representation. As we explained in our post on North Carolina seller disclosure requirements, that option is narrower protection than sellers think, and using it on the HOA questions tends to make a buyer order more documents, not fewer. One note on timing: the statute as published today reflects an amendment by Session Law 2025-25, and we could not confirm that amendment’s effective date at the source, so ask your closing attorney which version of the form applies to your contract.
What your buyer will ask for anyway
The statutory minimum is thin. A serious buyer, and certainly a buyer’s agent doing the job, will ask for the declaration and any amendments, the bylaws, the current rules, the approved budget, the last year or two of meeting minutes, a reserve study if one exists, the master insurance certificate and the transfer fee schedule. None of that is on the statute’s list. It arrives because the buyer’s offer asks for it, usually with a deadline attached.
That gap is where Wilmington-area deals get stuck. In building our own community guides, we have repeatedly found associations here that publish nothing current. Our St. James Plantation research found no publicly available current assessment, with club dues billed separately from the property owners association. Our Crow Creek guide reached the same conclusion for a community layered across multiple regimes. If your community is in that group, the documents exist but only the manager has them, and the manager works on their own calendar.
So do two things the week you list. Email the manager a written request for the statement of unpaid assessments and for the full document package, and ask in the same email what each costs and how long each takes. Then put those answers in front of your agent so the due diligence period in your contract is built around the association’s actual turnaround rather than a hopeful guess. Our listing services page explains how we handle that step, and what it really costs to sell a home here covers where these fees land on your settlement statement.
Who pays for all this is a contract question, not a legal one, and it is negotiable. Buyers often expect the seller to cover the statement and the document package because the seller is the one with standing to request it. Sellers often expect the buyer to pay for documents the buyer asked for. Both positions are defensible, and on a $200 statement it is not worth a fight. The place to spend your attention is the transfer fee, which your association sets and which the statute does not cap. Because the amount is rarely published in a declaration, you will not know yours until the manager tells you, and it can dwarf the statement fee. If your association has an active special assessment or pending litigation, that is a pricing conversation before you list, not a disclosure problem to manage after you are under contract.
Related questions people also ask
Can an HOA hold up my closing in North Carolina?
Not legally, but practically yes. A closing attorney will not disburse without knowing what the association is owed, so if the statement of unpaid assessments has not arrived, the closing waits. The statute gives the association ten business days to respond to a written request, which means a seller who waits until the last week of due diligence has created the delay themselves. Request it the week you go under contract.
Do I have to pay off HOA dues before closing in NC?
Yes, in practice. Unpaid assessments attach to the lot rather than to you personally, so a buyer and their lender will require them cleared at or before closing, and the closing attorney will collect them from your proceeds. That is one reason the certified statement matters: it fixes the amount in writing so the payoff is not a guess. If you disagree with a fine or a charge on that statement, raise it with the board before you are under contract, not during.
Does a seller have to provide HOA documents in North Carolina?
State law requires much less than most people assume. For a planned community the association owes a statement of unpaid assessments on request, and for a condominium resale the unit owner owes a statement of the monthly common expense assessment and other fees. The declaration, bylaws, budget, minutes and insurance certificate are not required by statute, so whether you must provide them depends entirely on what your purchase contract says. Read that paragraph of the offer carefully before you accept it.
Send your association manager one written email this week asking for the statement of unpaid assessments and the full resale document package, with the cost and turnaround time for each. Bring the reply to us before you set a list date and we will build your due diligence period around it rather than around a guess, and we will tell you plainly whether anything in that package needs to be priced in.
Sources: North Carolina General Statutes 47F-3-118 (association records and statements of unpaid assessments), 47C-4-109 (resales of condominium units) and 47E-4 (required disclosures, as amended by Session Law 2025-25), ncleg.gov, read October 28, 2026. Tidal Realty Partners St. James Plantation and Crow Creek community guides, our New Hanover County market update (three months ending September 2026) and our North Carolina seller disclosure post, 2026.
