There Is No Competitive Bidding Requirement

The condominium act contains no requirement to solicit competitive bids, no requirement to take the lowest bid, and no request-for-proposal procedure. The phrases do not appear in the chapter. The Community Association Act is the same.

The word "bid" appears in the condominium act exactly once, and it appears on the other side of the question. Among the six grounds on which a management committee may close a meeting, Section 57-8-57(3)(b)(iv) permits the committee to discuss a matter relating to contract negotiations, including review of a bid or proposal.

Put the two facts together, because owners deserve both at once. The association need not solicit competing bids, and it is expressly allowed to review the bids it does solicit in private. If your association has a bidding obligation, it comes from the declaration or the bylaws. That is the document to read.

The six closed-session grounds are exhaustive. A committee that closes a meeting to discuss something outside that list is outside the statute, and contract review is genuinely inside it.

What Constrains the Committee Instead

Two things do real work here, and neither is a procurement rule.

The first is the budget. A contract must be paid for, and owners have a vote on the budget within 45 days of the meeting at which it is presented, with 51% of all allocated voting interests. Reserve money is fenced: it may not be spent on anything other than the purpose for which the fund was established, without a majority vote of the members.

The second is a conflict of interest, which extends to the contract itself. Because most Utah associations are nonprofit corporations, Section 16-6a-825 applies. A conflicting-interest transaction is a contract or financial relationship between the corporation and a director, a party related to a director, or an entity in which a director serves as a director or officer, or holds a financial interest.

Such a contract is not automatically void. It is protected if the material facts were disclosed or known and it was approved in good faith by a majority of the disinterested directors, or approved by the members after disclosure, or if it is fair as to the corporation. Where none of that is true, a court may declare it void or voidable, set it aside, or award damages. 

Loans are stricter. A nonprofit corporation may not lend money, directly or indirectly, to a director or officer, to a natural person related to one, or to an entity in which any of them holds an ownership, management, or financial interest. A director or officer who assents to or participates in such a loan is personally liable for the amount until it is repaid.

So the honest description of the law is that Utah does not regulate how the association shops, but it does regulate who the association may do business with and on what terms of disclosure.

Declarant-Era Contracts Do Not Expire at Turnover

This is the rule that new committees learn too late.

A contract for services such as garbage collection, maintenance, lawn care, or snow removal, executed on behalf of the association during the period of administrative control, is binding beyond that period unless the management committee terminates it after administrative control ends.

Read that as a default. The contract continues on its own; ending it is an affirmative act that the new committee has to take. A committee that assumes turnover has cleared the decks will find the old agreements still in effect.

The termination right does not reach the expensive ones. Subsection (2)(b) carves out golf course and amenity management, utilities, cable services, and other similar services that require an investment of infrastructure or capital. The long, capital-backed agreements a new committee may want to exit are precisely the ones it cannot simply cancel.

Section 57-8-39 applies regardless of when the association was created.

A Preferred Vendor List Is a Recommendation, Not a Permission Slip

Owners who hire their own contractors are protected in two ways, and the protections are worded the same way.

A declaration may not restrict an owner from hiring a contractor or worker solely because the contractor is not on the association's preferred vendor list or does not hold a professional or occupational license, unless such a license is required by law.

A rule may not do it either. 

Note what the protection does and does not do: it stops the association from conditioning your choice of contractor on list membership. It does not override a licensing requirement that actually exists in law, and it does not exempt the work from design review or from the rules about the work itself.

What a Committee Can Delegate

Whether the committee may hire a manager at all, and what it may hand to that manager, are bylaws questions. Section 57-8-16(1) lists the powers and duties of the management committee, including whether it may engage the services of a manager, as subjects that the bylaws may address.

Note the verb. Section 57-8-16 says the bylaws may provide for those things. Nothing in the condominium act requires your bylaws to say anything about managers or delegation, so silence is common, and silence is not consent to anything in particular. 

Whatever the manager signs, the money stays fenced. The association must keep its funds in an account in its own name and may not commingle them with anyone else's. 

If You Think a Contract Was Handled Badly

Separate the complaints, because they have different answers.

"They did not get three bids" is usually not a statutory violation. Check the declaration and bylaws; if they impose a procedure, that procedure is enforceable through the governing document, and if they do not, this is a question for the next committee election rather than for a court.

"A committee member is connected to the vendor" is a different question, and Section 16-6a-825 is the provision. Ask, in writing, whether the relationship was disclosed and whether the contract was approved by the disinterested directors.

"We cannot see the contract" is the easiest to fix. The association's records duties run on a 10-business-day clock with a daily penalty attached, and a signed contract is an association record. Read records and record requests for how to make the request, and audits and financial records for what the association must be able to show you about where the money went. For notice and closed sessions, read management committees, and for the handover itself, turnover.

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