Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Pennsylvania’s Uniform Condominium Act puts the assessment-and-budget power in the board with no unit-owner vote requirement, but it does cap the interest rate on unpaid assessments at 15% per year.
Key statute: 68 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3314 (Assessments for common expenses) and § 3315 (Lien for assessments), Pennsylvania Uniform Condominium Act. NOTE: the citation originally supplied for this research (§ 3303) is INCORRECT: § 3303 governs executive board powers, fiduciary duties, and board-election procedures, not assessments.
How Pennsylvania lets an association approve it
Under 68 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3314, “assessments shall be made at least annually and shall be based on a budget adopted at least annually by the association.” No unit-owner vote or ratification threshold appears in §§ 3314 or 3315; the budget and assessment power sits with the association’s executive board, and no statutory owner-veto mechanism was found.
The notice you’re owed
Pennsylvania’s assessment and lien statutes, §§ 3314 and 3315, do not spell out a special-assessment notice requirement. The broader Uniform Condominium Act may address budget notice elsewhere in the code, so this should be read as unconfirmed rather than a confirmed absence of any notice rule.
Paying it: plan, interest, and late fees
Pennsylvania’s statutes do not address a right to an installment payment plan for a special assessment; that is left to each association’s declaration and bylaws. Interest is capped, though: “Any past due assessment or installment thereof shall bear interest at the rate established by the association not exceeding 15% per year.”
68 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3315: “The association has a lien on a unit for any assessment levied against that unit or fines imposed against its unit owner from the time the assessment or fine becomes due,” and “The association’s lien may be foreclosed in like manner as a mortgage on real estate,” with lien-enforcement proceedings extinguished if not started within four years after the assessment becomes payable.
Does Pennsylvania require a reserve study?
No reserve-study requirement appears in §§ 3314 or 3315, the sections governing assessments and liens. No Pennsylvania-specific structural reserve-study law along the lines of Florida’s post-Surfside SIRS rule was found, though the broader Act was not searched section by section for a reserve-study provision that might sit elsewhere.
Honest gaps
The citation originally supplied for this research, § 3303, turned out to govern board powers rather than assessments; the correct sections, §§ 3314 and 3315, were located and quoted directly from Pennsylvania’s official legislature site. Because the full, roughly 300-section Act was not reviewed section by section, the notice and reserve-study findings reflect only what appears in §§ 3314 and 3315.
Source note. Read from https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/68/00.033.014.000..HTM (§ 3314) and https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/68/00.033.015.000..HTM (§ 3315), both fetched directly from the official PA legislature site on September 4, 2026.
Related: HOA rules in a 55+ community · how a special-assessment foreclosure actually works · lump sum vs. a payment plan.
General information drawn from each state’s own statutes as read at its official legislature or code-publisher site (or a verbatim codified mirror where noted), not legal advice. Special-assessment law is state law, and every association’s own declaration and bylaws add rules on top of the statutory floor described here. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice.