A member asked to see the records. What the law requires you to do.

By Carlos Castellano · Current as of July 21, 2026

A member emails the board asking to see the association’s contracts. Someone hands the secretary a letter at a meeting asking for two years of bank statements. These requests arrive without warning, and in Florida the board’s response is on a short clock that starts the day the request is received. Miss it and the damages are automatic. Here is what the statutes actually require, for both HOA and condominium boards.

The deadline is the whole game

Almost every records dispute comes down to one number. Both statutes give the association ten days to make the records available, counted from receipt of a written request, and both let the member inspect within 45 miles of the community or within the county where the association is located.

• HOA: 10 business days. Section 720.303(5)(a), Florida Statutes, requires records to be made available for inspection or photocopying “within 10 business days after receipt by the board or its designee of a written request from the parcel owner.”
• Condo: 10 working days. Section 718.112(12)(b) requires records to be made available “within 10 working days after receipt of a written request by the board or its designee.”

The clock runs from receipt, not from your next board meeting. That is the single most common way a board falls behind: the request arrives, it waits for the meeting three weeks out, and by then the deadline is long gone. Date-stamp the request the day it comes in and work from that date.

What counts as an official record

Both statutes list the records an association must keep, and both lists end with a catch-all that is broader than most boards expect. The HOA version, Section 720.303(4)(a)14., covers “all other written records of the association not specifically included in this subsection which are related to the operation of the association.” The condo version, Section 718.112(12)(a)21., is worded nearly the same way.

The named categories on both lists include:

• The declaration or covenants, articles of incorporation, bylaws, and every amendment to them, plus the current rules.
• Minutes of board and member meetings.
• A current roster of owners with mailing addresses and parcel or unit identification.
• All current insurance policies.
• Every contract the association is a party to, including management agreements and leases, plus bids received for work to be performed.
• The financial and accounting records: itemized receipts and expenditures, each owner’s account statement, tax returns, and financial reports.
• Ballots, sign-in sheets, proxies, and other voting records.

Condo boards keep several categories the HOA list does not name separately, including bills of sale for association property, rental records where the association acts as rental agent, building permits, structural and life-safety inspection reports, and copies of completed board-member education certificates. That last one is worth noting: your directors’ certificates are themselves official records that a unit owner can ask to inspect.

How long you have to keep it

Retention is where the two chapters diverge most, so check the one that governs your association rather than assuming.

HOA. Section 720.303(4)(a) sets a single general rule: the association keeps each listed record “for at least 7 years, unless the governing documents of the association require a longer period of time.” Two carve-outs sit inside the list. Bids received for work to be performed are kept for one year, and ballots, sign-in sheets, proxies, and other voting records are kept “for at least 1 year after the date of the election, vote, or meeting.” The association must also adopt written rules setting out its own retention policy, and make that policy available to owners.

Condo. Section 718.112(12)(b) is tiered. The governing documents and the minutes, meaning items 1 through 6 of the list, “must be permanently maintained from the inception of the association.” Bids are kept at least one year after receipt. Everything else is kept in Floridafor at least seven years. Three categories run much longer: structural integrity reserve studies “must be maintained for at least 15 years after the study is completed,” structural and life-safety inspection reports must be maintained for 15 years after receipt, and ballots and voting materials are kept one year from the election or meeting. Recordings of meetings held by video conference are kept at least one year after the recording is posted.

The practical difference: an HOA can generally purge minutes after seven years, and a condominium association never can.

The records you must not hand over

A records request is not unlimited. Both statutes carve out categories that are not accessible to members, and producing them can create its own liability. Section 720.303(5)(g) and Section 718.112(12)(c)5. protect substantially the same material:

• Records protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work-product privilege, including material prepared by or at the direction of the association’s attorney for litigation or in anticipation of it.
• Information obtained in connection with the approval of a lease, sale, or other transfer.
• Personnel records of association or management-company employees. Note the exception in both statutes: written employment agreements and the budgetary or financial records showing what an employee is paid are not protected personnel records.
• Medical records of owners or residents.
• Social Security numbers, driver license numbers, credit card numbers, email addresses, telephone and fax numbers, emergency contact information, and other personal identifying information.
• Electronic security measures including passwords, and the association’s software and operating systems.

The HOA statute also protects information a gated community collects about guests’ visits. When protected material sits inside a document that is otherwise producible, redact the protected part and produce the rest. Withholding an entire contract because one line is privileged is not what either statute contemplates.

What it costs to get this wrong

The consequences are specific, and they escalate. Start with the civil exposure, which is the part most boards will ever encounter.

The presumption. Missing the deadline creates a rebuttable presumption that the association willfully failed to comply. Here the two chapters differ in a way that matters a great deal. Under Section 720.303(5)(b), the HOA presumption attaches only when the written request was “submitted by certified mail, return receipt requested.” The condo statute has no such qualifier: under Section 718.112(12)(c)1., simply failing to provide the records within 10 working days after receipt of a written request creates the presumption. A condo board should treat every written request as clock-starting.

The damages. Both statutes set the same figure. A member denied access is entitled to actual damages or minimum damages, and the minimum damages are $50 per calendar day for up to 10 days. The calculation begins on the 11th business day (HOA) or the 11th working day (condo) after receipt of the request. So the statutory floor tops out at $500 per request, but actual damages are not capped at that figure.

Attorney fees, in condo only. Section 718.112(12)(c)1. provides that the failure to permit inspection “entitles any person prevailing in an enforcement action to recover reasonable attorney fees from the person in control of the records who, directly or indirectly, knowingly denied access to the records.” There is no equivalent fee provision in Section 720.303. For a condominium board, the fee exposure is usually far larger than the $500.

The criminal provisions. Both chapters make certain records conduct a crime, and both require serious intent, so ordinary lateness is not what these reach. Under Sections 720.303(5)(d) through (f) and Sections 718.112(12)(c)2. through 4., knowingly and willfully violating the inspection requirement with intent to cause harm is a second-degree misdemeanor, and for HOA boards “repeatedly” is defined as two or more violations within a 12-month period. Knowingly defacing or destroying accounting records, or failing to create or maintain them, with intent to cause harm is a first-degree misdemeanor. Refusing to produce records to avoid detection, arrest, trial, or punishment for a crime is a third-degree felony. On the condo side, a director convicted under these provisions must be removed from office and the seat declared vacant.

Condo boards: the checklist that protects you

This is the most useful provision in the whole section and the one boards most often miss. Section 718.112(12)(c)1.b. requires that “in response to a written request to inspect records, the association must simultaneously provide to the requestor a checklist of all records made available for inspection and copying,” and that checklist “must also identify any of the association’s official records that were not made available to the requestor.” The association keeps a copy for seven years.

The payoff is in the next sentence of the statute: “An association delivering a checklist pursuant to this sub-subparagraph creates a rebuttable presumption that the association has complied with this paragraph.” In other words, the same mechanism that works against a board that blows the deadline works for a board that documents its production. A condo board that delivers the checklist every time has built its own defense in advance. There is no equivalent requirement in Chapter 720, but an HOA board would be sensible to keep the same record voluntarily.

What the board may and may not require

Boards have some room to set procedure, and a hard limit on what they can demand from the requesting member.

• You may adopt reasonable rules governing the frequency, time, location, notice, and manner of inspections. The HOA statute adds that those rules may not limit an owner’s right to inspect to less than one eight-hour business day per month.
• You may not ask why. Section 720.303(5)(g) provides that the association may not require a parcel owner “to demonstrate any proper purpose for the inspection, state any reason for the inspection.” The condo statute says the association “may not require a member to demonstrate any purpose or state any reason for the inspection.” A member does not owe the board an explanation, and asking for one does not pause the clock.
• You must let them photograph the records for free. The HOA statute expressly allows a member or their authorized representative to use a smartphone, tablet, scanner, or similar device to make an electronic copy instead of the association providing copies, and provides that the association “may not charge a fee” for the use of that device.
• You may charge for copies you make. Under the HOA statute the association may charge up to 25 cents per page for copies made on its own machine, plus personnel costs not exceeding $20 per hour when retrieval and copying take more than half an hour. Personnel costs may not be charged at all for requests producing 25 or fewer pages.
• A condo renter’s access is narrower. Under Section 718.112(12)(c)1.a., a renter may inspect and copy only the declaration, the bylaws and rules, and the statutory inspection reports.

Two related duties boards forget

Handing records over after an election. Section 718.112(12)(f) requires an outgoing board or committee member to relinquish all official records and association property in their possession or control to the incoming board within five days after the election, and the Division may impose a civil penalty on one who willfully and knowingly refuses. If your board just turned over, that five-day window is running now.

Posting records online. Both chapters now require larger associations to maintain an official-records website or mobile application with an owner-only protected area. The condo duty applies to an association managing a condominium with 25 or more units that does not contain timeshare units, and requires each covered record to be posted within 30 days after the association receives or creates it. The HOA duty applies to associations with 100 or more parcels. Posting records online does not replace the inspection duty, though the condo statute does let an association satisfy a request by directing the requestor to the website where the records are already posted. The condo posting requirement is covered in more detail in the 2025 condo law changes and what your board has to do.

Building a process before the request arrives

Boards that handle records well are not faster readers. They decided in advance who receives requests, where the records live, and what gets redacted. Three things to settle at a meeting rather than under a deadline:

• Name the designee. Both statutes start the clock on receipt “by the board or its designee,” so decide who that is and make sure requests reach them the day they arrive.
• Adopt the written retention policy. HOA boards are required to, under Section 720.303(4)(c), and must make it available to owners. It also tells a future board what it may safely purge.
• Keep the records organized. The condo statute requires records to be “maintained in an organized manner that facilitates inspection,” and adds that if records are lost or destroyed, the duty to maintain them includes a good-faith obligation to recover them as far as reasonably possible. A missing file is not a defense.

Recordkeeping is one of the four topics the Florida HOA certification curriculum is required to cover, which is a fair signal of how central the legislature considers it. For how those duties land on one seat in particular, see the board secretary’s job, explained, and for the standard of care behind all of it, see fiduciary duty for board members, explained.