What Counts as a Common Area

"Common areas" means property that the association owns, maintains, repairs, or administers. 

That list is four alternatives, not four conditions. Property that the association merely maintains or administers is a common area, even though the association does not own it. A strip the association mows, a private lane it plows, a basin it administers under a plat note: each can be a common area for the Act's purposes.

Limited common areas are common areas described in the declaration and allocated for the exclusive use of one or more lot owners. Think things like balconies or driveways. The allocation has to be in the declaration, so a limited common area is not created by practice or by a board's say-so.

Who Maintains What

Except as otherwise provided in the declaration or the insurance provisions in Part 4, the association is responsible for the maintenance, repair, and replacement of the common areas, and each lot owner is responsible for the owner's own lot.

Read the opening words. This is a default, and your declaration can move the line, but the Act is not silent on the question, which owners are often told it is.

The board may enter a lot from time to time during reasonable hours as necessary for common area maintenance, or to make an emergency repair, after reasonable notice to the occupant. Reasonable notice is defined as a written notice hand delivered to the lot at least 24 hours before the proposed entry, or for an emergency repair, a notice that is reasonable under the circumstances.

If the association damages the common areas or the lot it uses to reach them, it is liable to repair the damage within a time reasonable under the circumstances. 

None of That Applies During Developer Control

This is the provision most worth knowing on this page, and it runs against the community association owner. Subsections (2), (3), and (4) do not apply during the period of administrative control. 

All three go off together. While the declarant still appoints or removes the board, there is no statutory allocation of maintenance responsibility, no statutory 24-hour written notice before entry into your lot, and no statutory duty on the association to repair damage it causes. Whatever protection exists in that window comes from the declaration.

Rules About Using the Common Areas

Unless the declaration provides otherwise, an association may, by rule, regulate the use, maintenance, repair, replacement, and modification of common areas, and may impose a payment, fee, or charge for the use, rental, or operation of the common areas except limited common areas, and for a service provided to a lot owner. 

Three limits sit alongside that power. A rule shall be reasonable. A rule may not, to the detriment of a lot owner and over that owner's written objection to the board, alter the allocation of financial burdens among the lots. And no rule may alter the method of levying assessments or increase assessments as provided in the declaration.

Note the written objection. Subsection (8)(a) is one of the few protections in the chapter that operates only if the owner puts something in writing to the board, so objecting at a meeting does not use it.

Amenities the Association Does Not Control

A rule, or an action by the association or the board, may not interfere with the use or operation of an amenity that the association does not own or control, or with the exercise of a right associated with an easement. 

This matters in developments where a golf course, marina, or clubhouse is owned by someone else, and in developments where lots carry easements over neighboring land. The association's rulemaking power stops at the edge of what it owns or controls.

Losing Access for Nonpayment

A board may terminate a delinquent owner's utility service paid as a common expense, or the owner's right of access to and use of recreational facilities, but only if authorized in the declaration, bylaws, or rules, and only by following a set procedure.

The notice must state that the association will terminate, the amount due, including interest and late fees, and the owner's right to request a hearing. It must allow at least 14 days to pay. 

An owner may request an informal hearing in writing within 14 days of receiving the notice. If the owner requests a hearing, the association may not terminate anything until the board conducts the hearing and enters a final decision. A written request stops the clock; a phone call is not what the statute describes.

On payment, the association must take immediate action to reinstate. It may charge for the cost of reinstating utility service and may require payment of the estimated cost up front only if it was stated in the notice. Both parts of Subsection (8) speak only to utility service. There is no authority in this section to charge a fee for restoring access to a pool or a clubhouse.

Section 57-8a-218(8)(b)(iii) also lets an association deny use privileges to an owner who is delinquent in assessments, abuses the common areas, or violates the governing documents. 

You Cannot Opt Out by Not Using Them

An owner shall pay the owner's proportionate share of the common expenses and any other assessments levied by the association. An assessment levied against a lot is a debt owed by the owner at the time it is levied. Declining to use the pool does not reduce that share, and neither does leaving the lot empty.

If the Association Wants To Sell a Common Area

Unless the governing documents provide otherwise, an association may sell, convey, transfer, or otherwise dispose of all or part of the common areas by an affirmative vote of at least 67% of the voting interests. Because of the opening words, that 67% is a default, your documents can change.

The vote binds every lot owner, and each owner must execute the instruments necessary to carry out the sale. An authorized representative may act as attorney-in-fact for the owners.

And the consequence owners underestimate: where the sale is properly done and results in someone other than the association owning that ground, the general easement of ingress, egress, and use granted through the recorded governing documents is extinguished in the portion sold. The access does not survive the sale.

One protection during developer control. A declarant may not sell or otherwise encumber any part of the common areas during the period of administrative control, apart from the municipal and county provisions that the section references, and a transfer to a condemnor under threat of condemnation.

What the Act Does Not Answer

The Community Association Act does not define "amenity" or "recreational facilities," nor does it address pools, playgrounds, clubhouses, gyms, tennis courts, guest access, or the allocation of parking spaces among owners.

So the hours, the guest policy, the reservation system, and the key fob rules come from your declaration and your association's rules, measured against the reasonableness requirement and the specific limits above. That is where to look.

For the rules process itself, read design review and architectural control, and yard and property rules. For what the association must maintain and when, read maintenance and repairs. For assessments and delinquency, read assessments and collections. To get the documents themselves, read records and record requests.

Reviewed against Utah Code, current as of September 9, 2026.