You Decide Realty · Short Sale & Foreclosure Help Center
In Las Vegas this is not a hypothetical. HOA foreclosure filings rose 46% nationally between 2022 and 2025, and Nevada is one of just five states that together account for 85% of all HOA foreclosure filings in the country. Homeowners are losing houses over balances that started as a few hundred dollars in unpaid dues.
Nevada also gives you more tools to stop it than almost anyone realizes — including a hearing right before collection can even begin, and a redemption period after the sale that mortgage foreclosure does not offer. Here is the whole picture.
A Nevada association has a lien on your unit for unpaid assessments, and part of that lien has super-priority over your first mortgage — specifically nine months of assessments, plus certain abatement charges and capped enforcement costs. NRS 116.3116(3) Before it can take any collection action the HOA must first send you a fee schedule, a proposed repayment plan, and notice of your right to a hearing before the board. NRS 116.31162(4) After a notice of default is recorded you have a 90-day cure period and can pay until five days before the sale. If a sale happens anyway, you have 60 days to redeem. NRS 116.31166(3) Any surplus is owed back to you.
Your association’s lien is generally junior to a first deed of trust recorded before the delinquency. But a slice of it jumps ahead. Under NRS 116.3116(3), the HOA’s lien is prior to the first mortgage to the extent of three things:
The super-priority portion of collection costs is capped by statute. Only one trustee’s sale guaranty may be included.
| Item | Statutory cap |
|---|---|
| Demand or intent-to-lien letter | $165 |
| Notice of delinquent assessment | $325 |
| Intent to record a notice of default letter | $90 |
| Notice of default | $400 |
| Trustee’s sale guaranty | $400 |
The 2015 amendments (Senate Bill 306) excluded attorney’s fees from the super-priority amount. If a collection company’s payoff demand loads legal fees into the super-priority figure, that is worth questioning — in writing, with the statute cited.
In principle yes — the statute is still on the books and SFR Investments Pool 1 v. U.S. Bank (2014), which held that proper foreclosure of a super-priority lien extinguishes a first deed of trust, has never been overruled. In practice it almost never happens anymore, for four reasons.
The risk to a Las Vegas homeowner in 2026 is generally not that your bank loses its lien. It is that you lose the house over a comparatively small assessment balance — and the mortgage debt survives and follows you. The bank is largely protected now. You are the one exposed.
Before an association may send a notice of delinquent assessment or take any collection action, NRS 116.31162(4) requires it to do specific things first — and doing something with them stops the whole track.
Collection may then proceed only if, within 30 days of that mailing, the obligation has not been paid in full and you have not entered into a repayment plan and you have not requested a board hearing.
Requesting the hearing, or entering the repayment plan, within that 30-day window stops the foreclosure track. It is a written request. It costs nothing. And most owners throw the envelope away because it looks like more collection mail.
Fines alone generally cannot support a foreclosure. Under NRS 116.31162(6), an association may not foreclose based on a fine or penalty for violating the governing documents unless the violation poses an imminent threat of a substantial adverse effect on health, safety or welfare, or the penalty is for failing to adhere to a required schedule. Fines for paint color, landscaping, or a parked vehicle are not a foreclosure basis.
Government shutdown protection. NRS 116.311627 bars an association from foreclosing against a federal, tribal or state worker, a member of their household, or such a worker’s landlord during a shutdown and for 90 days after it ends, unless a court finds the shutdown did not materially affect ability to pay. The association must affirmatively inform owners of this. A knowing violation is a misdemeanor and exposes the association to damages and fees.
Fee schedule, proposed repayment plan, and notice of your right to a board hearing. NRS 116.31162(4)(a)
Mailed certified or registered (or by authorized electronic transmission), stating the amount due. NRS 116.31162(1)(a)
Not less than 30 days after the notice of delinquent assessment is mailed. The association must also record an affidavit naming every holder of a security interest and their mailing addresses, and may not foreclose if it failed to mail copies of the notice of default and notice of sale to each of them. NRS 116.31162(1)(b), (1)(e), (5)
The sale may proceed only if the amount of the lien, including costs, fees and expenses incident to its enforcement, remains unpaid for 90 days following the recording of the notice of default — and remains unpaid through a period expiring five days before the sale. NRS 116.31162(1)(c)–(d)
Recorded, posted for 20 consecutive days, published three times, with certified copies to the owner, lienholders, and the Ombudsman, carrying a 14-point bold warning. NRS 116.311635
The unit is sold at public auction; the association may credit bid up to the lien amount. NRS 116.31164
Sale proceeds are distributed in a statutory order: expenses of sale; expenses of securing, holding and preparing the unit; satisfaction of the association’s lien; satisfaction of subordinate claims in order of priority; and then remittance of any excess to the unit’s owner. NRS 116.31164(8)(b) If your home sold at an HOA auction for more than the total of the liens, that money is yours. Be careful with surplus-recovery companies. Nevada regulates those agreements under NRS 40.463: such an agreement may not be entered into within 30 days after the foreclosure sale, and a fee exceeding $2,500 (excluding attorney’s fees and costs) is presumed unreasonable. Check the county recorder and the trustee yourself first — it may cost you nothing at all.
Say this to whoever is representing you on day one. Two things make it urgent:
One: Fannie Mae’s $6,000 allowance for subordinate lienholders in a short sale covers subordinate mortgage liens and deeds of trust only. It expressly excludes HOA liens, judgments, mechanic’s liens and materialmen’s liens. The association balance is a separate negotiation with its own money.
Two: the HOA’s foreclosure track runs on its own clock, entirely independent of your mortgage short sale. An association can record a notice of default and set a sale date while the servicer is still evaluating your offer. Nobody coordinates these for you.
The Nevada Real Estate Division’s Ombudsman for Owners in Common-Interest Communities handles HOA disputes, and Nevada’s Department of Business & Industry maintains an HOA complaint portal. If a collection company is charging beyond the statutory caps or skipping the pre-collection notice requirements, that is exactly what these offices are for.
Questions we get every week
Yes. A Nevada association has a lien on the unit for unpaid assessments and, under NRS 116.31162, can foreclose non-judicially. Nevada is also a 'super-priority' state: part of the HOA's lien — nine months of assessments plus certain abatement charges and capped enforcement costs — is prior to your first mortgage under NRS 116.3116(3). This is not theoretical in Las Vegas; HOA foreclosure filings rose 46% nationally between 2022 and 2025, and Nevada is one of five states accounting for 85% of them.
The single most effective step is early and free: before an association can take any collection action, NRS 116.31162(4) requires it to send you a fee schedule, a proposed repayment plan, and notice of your right to a hearing before the executive board. If you request that hearing or enter the repayment plan within 30 days, the foreclosure track stops. After a notice of default is recorded, you have a 90-day cure period and can pay the lien amount until five days before the sale. Telling your mortgage servicer also helps — they have a strong incentive to pay the super-priority amount to protect their own lien.
The super-priority portion of an HOA lien includes unpaid assessments not exceeding the amount that would have come due in the nine months immediately preceding the recording of the notice of default, based on the association's adopted periodic budget and without acceleration. The statute permits that window to be shortened only if Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac regulations require it, and never to less than six months. See NRS 116.3116(3)(b).
Yes — 60 days. Under NRS 116.31166(3), a unit sold at an HOA foreclosure may be redeemed within 60 days after the sale by the former owner, their successor in interest, or a holder of a recorded subordinate security interest. The redeeming party pays the purchase price plus 1% per month interest, plus any assessments, taxes or payments toward prior liens the purchaser made after the sale, plus any reasonable amount the purchaser necessarily spent to maintain and repair the unit. This is notable because there is no redemption right at all after a mortgage trustee's sale in Nevada.
Generally no. NRS 116.31162(6) bars an association from foreclosing based on a fine or penalty for violating the governing documents unless the violation poses an imminent threat of a substantial adverse effect on the health, safety or welfare of owners or residents, or the penalty was imposed for failing to adhere to a schedule required under NRS 116.310305. Fines over paint color, landscaping or parking are not a basis for foreclosure.
It is owed back to you. NRS 116.31164(8)(b) sets the distribution order: reasonable expenses of sale, expenses of securing and preparing the unit, satisfaction of the association's lien, satisfaction of subordinate claims in order of priority, and then remittance of any excess to the unit's owner. Be cautious with companies that approach you offering to recover surplus proceeds for a fee. NRS 40.463 regulates those agreements: one may not be entered into within 30 days after the sale, and a fee exceeding $2,500 excluding attorney's fees and costs is presumed unreasonable.
Once a Nevada trustee’s sale is held, title vests in the purchaser with no right of redemption — there is no undo. But until then, an owner-occupant’s right to reinstate generally runs to five days before the sale, and a pending offer is a reason to ask for a postponement.
702-843-0044Ken Calder · Nevada Broker B.1001776 · Speak to a licensed broker, not a call center.
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No judgment, no sales pitch, and no pressure to list anything. If the right answer is a loan modification, a bankruptcy attorney, or a HUD counselor instead of us, that is what we will say. We are a licensed Nevada brokerage, not a foreclosure rescue company — and we never charge a homeowner a fee to look at their situation.
We do not publish a figure, a deadline, or a statute we have not read. Every claim above traces to one of these. If you find something here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it and re-stamp the page.