Walk the central courtyard at Meadowcreek Station on a fall afternoon and you would not guess that the redwood decks on one side of the path carry a legal obligation the identical-looking decks across the path do not. The complex sits at the base of the Ring Mountain and Tiburon Ridge preserves, built between 1987 and 1990 by the architecture firm behind Sea Ranch, and it holds 84 townhomes and 64 condominiums under one homeowners association. Same builder, same decade, same wood framing, same HOA board. Different disclosure packet.
That split is not a quirk of Meadowcreek Station. It is a quirk of California law, and as of January 1, 2026, it changed what every condo seller in a Corte Madera common interest development has to hand a buyer before closing, while leaving townhome sellers in the exact same community untouched.
What Changed on January 1
For years, California sellers in a homeowners association have had to assemble a disclosure packet under Civil Code section 4525 before the buyer removes contingencies. The packet includes governing documents, the budget, reserve information, and any pending litigation. Senate Bill 410, effective this year, added one more item to that list for condominiums: the association's most recent exterior elevated element inspection report, the one required under Civil Code section 5551 (better known as SB 326, the balcony law passed after a wood-framed balcony collapse in Berkeley).
That report has existed since the first statewide inspection deadline of January 1, 2025, a deadline that applied to condominium associations with no extension, unlike the parallel deadline for apartment buildings, which Sacramento pushed to 2026. So the report was already sitting in HOA files. What SB 410 did was move it from something a curious buyer could request into something a seller must proactively include in the standard packet, with the same delivery obligations as the budget and the CC&Rs.
Why the Same Complex Splits in Two
Civil Code section 5551 applies to condominiums, full stop. It does not apply to planned developments, where the owner holds fee simple title to both the structure and the land beneath it, the way most Corte Madera townhomes are set up. A condo owner holds title to airspace inside their unit and a shared interest in the common areas, including the decks and walkways the association is obligated to maintain. A townhome owner in a planned development typically owns their own balcony outright, and the maintenance obligation, along with the inspection law tied to it, stays with them individually rather than the HOA.
At Meadowcreek Station, that legal distinction runs straight through a single HOA board. The 64 condo units share ownership of elevated walkways and decks the association must inspect and, since January 1, disclose. The 84 townhome units do not carry that same association-level obligation, because their owners hold the land under their own decks.
The same pattern likely runs through other Corte Madera communities with mixed or condominium-form ownership, including the Mariner Green complex on Mariner Green Drive, built in 1966 and marketed today as condominiums. A 1966 wood-framed condo building is squarely inside the window SB 326 was written for. Older lagoon-front communities like Madera Gardens, built on filled marshland with ranch-style single-family homes and private docks, sit outside this framework entirely, since they are not organized as condominium common interest developments in the first place.
If you are selling in Corte Madera's HOA-governed stock this year, the first question is not what the market is doing. It is which legal category your unit falls into, because that answer determines what paperwork you are required to produce.
The Timing Problem Nobody Budgets For
Here is where the new disclosure line item stops being a compliance footnote and starts being a scheduling problem.
Once an association receives a written request for the section 4525 packet, it has 10 calendar days to deliver it under Civil Code section 4530. Sellers who wait until they are in escrow to ask often discover their HOA management company treats that 10 days as a floor, not a ceiling, especially when the packet now has to include a structural inspection report that may need to be pulled from a separate engineering file.
Once the buyer actually has the packet in hand, they get a statutory five-day window to cancel the purchase agreement, no explanation required, independent of whatever inspection or loan contingencies are already in the contract. If the packet goes out by mail instead of hand delivery, add time under the state's mailing rule, which can stretch the effective review period closer to ten days. That right survives even if the buyer has waived every other contingency in the deal.
A buyer who has waived their inspection contingency, locked their rate, and started measuring for furniture can still walk on day four if the balcony report was worse than expected. That is not a hypothetical. That is the plain language of the statute.
Stack a slow HOA response against that five-day clock and a seller who assumed a clean 30-day escrow can watch two full weeks disappear before the buyer has even started their own inspection period.
A Pre-Listing Sequence Worth Following
- Confirm the legal structure of your unit before you price the listing. Condominium or planned development changes what you owe a buyer.
- If you are in a condominium, ask your HOA management company for the date of the association's last exterior elevated element inspection and when the next one is due under the nine-year cycle that runs from the first report.
- Request the section 4525 packet in writing the day you decide to list, not the day you accept an offer. The 10-day association clock starts on the written request, not on mutual acceptance.
- Ask for the itemized fee estimate the association is required to provide before charging you for the packet, so there is no surprise invoice mid-escrow.
- If the inspection was never completed, do not treat that as good news. A missing report is itself a disclosable fact, and it tends to raise more buyer questions than a completed one with minor findings.
- Build your closing calendar backward from the five-day buyer review period, not forward from your preferred move-out date.
If You Own the Townhome Side
Townhome owners at Meadowcreek Station and similar planned developments will not see the SB 326 report appear in their own disclosure packet this year, because the statute was not written for them. That does not mean the physical building is irrelevant to a sale. Buyers touring a 1987 wood-framed unit still tend to ask about the deck, the flashing, and the last time anyone looked at either, disclosure requirement or not. The legal obligation runs to the association's condominium units. The buyer's curiosity does not stop at that line.
FAQ
Does this apply if I'm selling a single-family home in Corte Madera? No. Civil Code section 5551 and the SB 410 disclosure addition apply only to condominium common interest developments, not to detached single-family homes, even ones on lagoon lots inside a homeowners association like Madera Gardens.
What if my HOA never completed the January 2025 inspection? You still have to disclose that. The absence of a required report is a material fact under the existing disclosure framework, and sellers who stay quiet about a missed deadline are the ones most likely to hear from a buyer's attorney after closing.
Does the five-day cancellation right replace my normal inspection contingency? No. It runs alongside whatever contingency period is written into the purchase agreement and survives even after other contingencies are removed. Treat it as a separate clock, not a substitute for one.
Selling in a Corte Madera HOA this year means reading your own governing documents before you read the market. If you want a second set of eyes on which packet your unit actually requires, and a closing calendar built around the real clock rather than the assumed one, Staal Real Estate is glad to walk through it with you. Schedule a consultation.
