Washington HOA and condo resale cancellation window

If you are buying an existing home in a Washington common interest community, RCW 64.90.640 gives you a statutory right to walk away after you receive the association's resale certificate. You cancel by delivering a written notice of cancellation to the seller no later than the fifth day after you first receive the certificate, and before the unit is conveyed to you.

The timing has two edges. If the certificate was first provided to you more than five days before you signed the contract, this section does not give you a right to cancel. And if it arrives less than five days before your closing date, you may extend closing to a date no more than five days after you received it, so a late certificate does not quietly run out your window. Either way, once you accept conveyance of the unit the right is gone.

The resale certificate is Washington's financial and legal snapshot of the association for a resale. RCW 64.90.640 requires it to include, among other items:

• A statement, current to within 45 days, of any assessment on a unit that is more than 30 days past due.
• The current operating budget, the most recent balance sheet and revenue-and-expense statement, and the prior year's annual financial statement, including the audit report if one was prepared.
• Whether the association has a current reserve study, with a prescribed warning to the buyer if it does not.
• A statement of any unsatisfied judgments against the association and the status of any lawsuits it is involved in.
• A description of the association's insurance coverage and its insurance contact.

RCW 64.90.640 adds a protection a buyer should not overlook. You are not liable for any unpaid assessment or fee greater than the amount the association stated in the certificate. If the association understates the balance, the certificate amount is the ceiling, and the seller, not you, answers for the difference. The certificate also carries a plain warning that the association holds a statutory lien on each unit for unpaid assessments, which can lead to foreclosure.

That matters because an HOA balance follows the property. Washington separately caps a late fee at the lesser of $50 or 5 percent and bars a lien foreclosure until the owner owes the greater of three months or $2,000 in assessments for at least 90 days (RCW 64.90.485), but at the moment of purchase the cleanest protection is the certificate figure itself. Confirm the amount, and confirm it is current.

The resale certificate and the five-day cancellation right used to be a condominium rule. As of January 1, 2026, Washington applies them to every common interest community, condominium or HOA, regardless of when the community was formed. If you are buying in a plat-style HOA that once fell under the older Homeowners' Association Act, which gave no cancellation right, you now get the same five-day window a condo buyer gets.

So the question is no longer whether your community is a condominium. It is whether the certificate reached you in time and what it says. Make sure your purchase contract calls for it, and that you receive it with days to spare.

Five days is short. Spend them on the parts of the certificate that carry the money risk:

• Whether there is a current reserve study, and what it says, since an underfunded reserve is what turns into a special assessment.
• The operating budget and the financial statements, for a deficit or an assessment that is set to rise.
• The past-due-assessment statement on the unit, and the certificate amount that caps what you can owe.
• Any unsatisfied judgment or pending lawsuit against the association, which can become a future assessment.

Your cancellation window is the one stretch of a Washington purchase where the association documents alone can get you out, with your deposit intact. After conveyance, your options narrow to whatever contract contingencies still apply. The risks that justify walking, an underfunded reserve, a looming special assessment, an unpaid balance on the unit, all sit in the certificate you receive at the start of the five days.

An HOA Notes brief reads the full resale certificate the day it arrives, flags the reserve, the budget, the unpaid assessments, and the rules that affect you, and cites the page behind every finding. You spend the window deciding, not reading.

Washington Revised Code 64.90.640 (Resale certificate and buyer cancellation). On the resale of a unit in a Washington common interest community, the seller must furnish the buyer a resale certificate, and the buyer may cancel the purchase contract within five days after first receiving it (RCW 64.90.640); the association must furnish the certificate within 10 days of the owner's request, the preparation charge may not exceed $275 (or $100 for an update within six months), and the buyer is not liable for any unpaid assessment or fee greater than the amount stated in the certificate; since January 1, 2026 this applies to all Washington common interest communities, not only condominiums. The association may charge the statutory preparation fee and may rely on the information current as of the certificate date; the buyer's cancellation right does not apply if the certificate was provided more than five days before the contract was signed, and it may be waived only where the certificate is unavailable as provided in RCW 64.90.600.

When you read the disclosure packet, watch for no resale certificate or disclosure package provided to the buyer before closing, resale certificate preparation fee exceeding $275, and purchase agreement purporting to waive the buyer's five-day cancellation right. HOA Notes flags each of these against the statute and tells you which restrictions are actually enforceable.