Compliance for HOAs and Condo Associations.
Your association is the building owner — and only the space it owns counts. Here’s what condo and HOA boards need to know.
July 1, 2027
Your compliance deadline, then re-reporting every five years.
Coverage
Is Your Association Covered?
You’re covered if the space your association owns — common areas plus any commercial space — comes to more than 20,000 square feet. Individually owned residential units are not subject to the standard, and their floor area is not counted at all.
That distinction does most of the work here. Commerce’s own example is a tower with 450,000 sq ft of gross floor area and 48,000 sq ft of common space: the 48,000 is the operative number, for coverage, for the incentive, and for any penalty. Common space means corridors, lobbies, mechanical rooms, elevator shafts and association-owned amenities inside the building’s thermal envelope — balconies, decks and patios outside it don’t count.
If your building is owned outright and leased to residents rather than owned unit by unit, the whole floor area counts instead — see multi-family buildings.
This Applies To
Boards, Associations and Managing Agents.
Condominium owners’ associations and homeowners associations in Washington, and the management companies that file on their behalf. The obligation sits with the association as a body, not with individual unit owners.
Requirements
Three Things to Compliance.
There is no performance target to hit. You calculate an energy use intensity target, report your actual performance against it, and that’s the whole obligation — no performance standard for these buildings takes effect before the end of the 2031 legislative session.
Benchmark
Twelve consecutive months of whole-building energy use in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, producing your weather-normalized energy use intensity.
Energy Management Plan
Energy performance goals, your EUI target, annual comparison against it, and how you inform residents about efficient energy use.
O&M Program
An inventory of major systems, maintenance tasks, frequencies and who is responsible for them, per ASHRAE Standard 100-2018.
The binding constraint is twelve consecutive months of whole-building energy data, measured within two years of submission — there is no way to manufacture that history retroactively. Your O&M program, by contrast, only has to be implemented by your compliance date; you do not need to run it for a year first.
The Stakes
What Non-compliance Costs.
The maximum administrative penalty is $0.30 per square foot, and it runs on the same figure coverage does — your common-area square footage, not the whole building. It is assessed every compliance period, meaning every five years, so paying it doesn’t discharge the obligation.
Miss the deadline and you’ll receive a notice with at least 30 days to cure. Respond within that window with documentation demonstrating compliance and fines are waived — and you may remain eligible to apply for the incentive. Respond without it, or elect to pay rather than comply, and you’re assessed the maximum and may lose incentive eligibility entirely.
For a board, the practical risk is that the clock runs across more than one term. The twelve months of energy data have to exist before anyone can file, so a year lost to a handover is a year that can’t be recovered.
Filing as an Association
Who Signs, and How.
Filing as an association is procedurally different from filing as a single owner, and it’s the part boards most often get stuck on.
Who the owner is
Where a condominium is subject to the standard, “building owner” means the owners’ association — not the individual unit owners, and not the management company.
Who prepares the filing
Associations and management companies designate a single qualified portal user, who needs shared access to the building granted through the Clean Buildings Portal.
Who signs
All owners must provide signatures, and each needs their own Secure Access Washington and Portal account.
Who submits
A Qualified Energy Manager files the application and signs Form A. That can be a board member or staff member who meets the definition — it does not have to be a consultant.
Surviving board turnover
Commerce recommends registering Portfolio Manager under a generic organizational account rather than an individual, so logins survive a change of board or managing agent.
For a large portfolio, Commerce can grant shared access in bulk rather than building by building.
Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions.
Just the common areas, plus any commercial space. Individually owned residential units are not subject to the standard and their floor area is not counted at all. Commerce’s own example is a tower with 450,000 sq ft of gross floor area and only 48,000 sq ft of common space — 48,000 is the number that decides coverage.
Corridors, lobbies, hallways, mechanical rooms and elevator shafts, plus resident amenities owned by the association — recreation centers, pools, athletic facilities, libraries. Conditioned, unconditioned and semi-heated space all count, as long as it sits inside the building’s thermal envelope.
No. Limited common elements outside the thermal envelope — doorsteps, stoops, porches, balconies, decks, patios — are excluded from gross floor area. Storage is the case worth checking: it counts if it sits inside the thermal envelope and the association owns or maintains it.
Commercial space is measured on its own. If the association-owned commercial space is between 20,000 and 50,000 sq ft, it is covered, as is common space plus interconnected association-owned commercial space in that range. Contiguous commercial space above 50,000 sq ft falls under a different, more demanding program with an energy performance target — worth confirming your figures before assuming which applies.
It can. If a single individual or entity owns more than five units, interconnected through conditioned space on contiguous property, and that floor area exceeds 20,000 sq ft, it meets the definition of a multifamily residential building and carries its own Tier 2 obligation separate from the association’s.
Yes, and it is calculated on the same basis as coverage — your common and commercial space, not the whole building. The base rate is $0.30 per square foot. The enhanced $0.75 rate is a different matter: it requires a signed Anti-Displacement Agreement and is available only to owners who rent or lease to residential tenants, which an association holding common areas generally does not.
Up to $0.30 per square foot — and, as with coverage, only the common-area square footage is subject to the standard, so the exposure is calculated on that figure rather than the whole building. It is assessed every compliance period, meaning every five years.
Possibly. If your gross floor area minus unconditioned and semi-heated space comes to less than 20,000 sq ft, the building may qualify for an exemption. Exemption applications go to Commerce and must be filed well ahead of your compliance date.
Setting your building up in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and feeding it twelve consecutive months of whole-building energy data. Portfolio Manager calculates your weather-normalized energy use intensity — total energy divided by gross floor area, in kBtu per square foot per year. You then share the property with Commerce read-only, and the Clean Buildings Portal pulls the numbers through as Form C.
It’s a living document the owner reviews and signs every year. It names an energy manager, and records your energy use in Portfolio Manager, your EUI target, and an annual comparison against it. It also documents changes in occupancy, operating hours and equipment; how you inform residents about efficient energy use; a training plan for maintenance staff; a capital plan for replacing failed equipment with ENERGY STAR rated models; and a contact list. The O&M program sits inside it.
Every system that uses energy — building envelope, HVAC, domestic hot water, refrigeration, lighting, controls, and power distribution. For each, you inventory the components, set a preventive maintenance schedule and task list, and define what unacceptable performance looks like. The plan names who performs each task and who authorizes it, and keeps records proving it’s running. Existing maintenance procedures can usually be updated to meet this rather than written from scratch.
Washington’s Condominium Act, RCW 64.90, governs what is a unit and what is a common element. Commerce points associations there when the split isn’t obvious from the declaration.
Still Not Sure?
Want the specifics for your building? Book a walkthrough and we’ll map it with you, or put your address into the Compliance Navigator for your tier, your deadline, and the property details behind them.