What This Statute Says
Where an Arizona neighborhood is organized as a condominium or planned community, the homeowners or condominium association has a power that an individual owner does not: it can clean up the unlawful restriction for the whole community at once.
If a governing instrument contains an unlawful restriction, the board of directors of the association of owners may, by majority vote at a regular or special meeting, submit to the recorder for recordation in the land records of the county in which the real property described in the governing instrument is located an amendment to remove the unlawful restriction. The amendment applies to all real property described in the governing instrument.
A.R.S. § 33-534The board acts on its own authority. No vote of the entire membership is required to record the amendment, although the board must follow normal meeting and notice procedures.
When This Statute Comes Into Play
This section is most useful for older planned communities and condominium projects whose recorded declarations were drafted decades ago. Boards often discover unlawful language during a routine review of the governing documents, or in response to a homeowner inquiry. The streamlined amendment path keeps the cleanup from becoming a multi-meeting project requiring a community-wide vote.
What This Means for Arizona Families
If you live in or inherit a property in an Arizona HOA or condominium community and discover an unlawful covenant in the recorded declaration, the right starting point is usually the association board, not the recorder. The board has the more efficient remedy because the amendment it records cleans the document for every parcel at once. An individual amendment under 33-533 only cleans the chain of title for the one owner who recorded it.
For board members and association managers, this section reduces the procedural friction of cleanup work. A quick agenda item, a board vote, and a recorded amendment are all that the statute requires. Our FAQ on deed defects in Arizona covers related cleanup mechanics for individual owners. The CC&Rs that govern your community can be brought into compliance with current law without redrafting the whole document. The amendment slots into the recorded chain alongside the original.