Estoppel certificates

A letter the HOA issues at closing that states your account status: dues balance, open violations, pending special assessments. Requested by you, prepared and emailed by the board.

What an estoppel certificate is

When you sell your home, the title company or buyer’s attorney needs a letter from the HOA confirming your account status as of the closing date: dues paid up or not, open violations, special assessments in flight. The letter is called an estoppel certificate (sometimes a resale or status certificate). Title companies usually ask for one before a sale closes, and some states set rules for what it covers and how quickly the association must provide it. The board prepares it, signs it, and emails it as a PDF.

Who requests, who fulfills

The resident who owns the unit submits the request from the /estoppel page. An admin then fulfills it from the admin estoppel queue. The resident never picks the numbers that go on the certificate; those are read out of the HOA’s books by the admin and signed by the board.

Submitting a request

Open /estoppel and click Request a Certificate. When you're signed in, the form pre-fills what it can: if your account is already linked to a property the property dropdown is set, and your name and email come from your profile. You add a closing date (optional but helpful for scheduling), any notes for the board, and submit. We email you a secure link to pay the certificate fee (the certificate is issued once the fee is paid), and the request shows up in your Your Requests list at the bottom of the page with an Awaiting payment badge.

Sending it to your title company or attorney

The form has a CC: field where you can list the title company, closing attorney, or anyone else who needs a copy. Separate multiple addresses with commas. When the board completes the request, the certificate is emailed to you, with everyone in the CC list copied. CC recipients see each other in the email headers, which is the point: the title company sees who else got the same document.

Status flow

Your request card shows one of three badges: Awaiting payment (submitted, fee not yet paid), In progress (the fee is paid or waived and the board is preparing the certificate), and Completed (the certificate has been signed and emailed). The badge follows the fee and the board’s work, so it moves on its own.

The board can fill in and sign the certificate before the fee arrives. A signed draft goes out automatically once the fee is paid. Until then the draft, including the balance, violation and assessment figures and the board’s internal notes, stays on the board’s side: your request card shows only the address, dates and status.

While a request is still Awaiting payment, its card has a Cancel request button, for example if you didn’t realize there was a fee. Once the fee is paid or the certificate is issued it can’t be cancelled; contact the HOA if you need a refund.

The fee

Most HOAs charge a fee for the certificate, and the title company typically pays it, not the seller. The fee is collected on your community’s own Stripe account, the same one residents use to pay dues, so the money goes straight to the HOA. The board sets the base amount and how long a certificate stays valid in the Estoppel certificate fee card on the Dues & Payments admin page (/admin/dues), which needs the Dues module’s admin permission. The HOA keeps the fee, and an admin who fulfills estoppel requests can waive it per request for legacy or comp cases, as long as it hasn’t already been paid. On top of the HOA’s fee, neighbors.fyi adds a small processing fee for running the automation; the payment page shows both lines and the total so nothing is hidden. The board sees the fee status on the request and can send the title company a payment link. If the fee is paid twice, the second payment is refunded automatically in full. The certificate is gated on this: it won’t be issued until the fee is paid or explicitly waived by an admin. If you’re unsure who’s paying, mention it in the notes field on the request form.

The certificate itself

Once the board completes the request, the certificate is generated as a PDF with the HOA’s branding, the property address, the financial snapshot (dues current or a stated balance, open violation count, pending assessment count), the fee line, a “valid through” date, and the board signer’s hand-drawn signature captured at completion time. The PDF is emailed to you as an attachment. Your request card flips to Completed and shows aView certificate → link that opens the same PDF in-browser.

The web preview, the admin preview, and the email attachment are the same PDF served from a single backend route, so what the title company sees is byte-for-byte what you and the board see. Your in-browser view is auth-gated to your account; the file isn’t public.

When a non-resident needs one

Sometimes a sale starts before the seller has activated their resident account, or the request comes in from a title company directly. In those cases an admin can create the request on behalf of the owner from the admin estoppel page. The property is picked from the roster, owner name and email auto-fill from the property record, and the same flow runs. The owner still ends up as the To: on the email so the original seller stays in the loop.