A Board's Operating Guide to Official Records: Condominium, Cooperative and HOA Rules Side by Side

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 25, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: Condominiums · HOAs · Cooperatives

Official records are the one area where a board can be doing everything else right and still lose. The obligation is continuous, the deadlines are short, the damages are automatic, and the statute puts them on the association even when the records sit in a management company's office forty miles away. This guide sets the condominium, cooperative and HOA rules in one table, then describes the system that keeps a board on the right side of all three.

Three chapters, three sets of rules

Boards that manage more than one kind of community, and managers with a mixed portfolio, tend to carry one mental model of "the records rule" and apply it everywhere. That works until it does not. The condominium rules are in § 718.111(12). The cooperative rules are in § 719.104(2). The HOA rules are split across § 720.303(4) for what must be kept and § 720.303(5) for inspection and copying. They were written at different times and amended in different years, and the differences are not cosmetic.

Three of those differences cost real money. The condominium clock runs in working days and the HOA clock runs in business days, which is the same thing in ordinary weeks and not the same thing around a holiday. The condominium chapter requires six categories of records to be kept permanently; the cooperative and HOA chapters set a flat seven-year floor. And the HOA presumption of a willful failure is tied to a request sent by certified mail, return receipt requested, while the condominium and cooperative presumptions attach to any written request.

This guide does not restate the full list of what each chapter requires. Those lists live in our detailed pages on condominium official records, cooperative official records and HOA official records. What follows is the operating layer: the comparison a board needs in front of it, and the system that makes the lists survive a turnover of directors.

The comparison table

Two entries on that table deserve a second look. The condominium checklist requirement is new enough that most association forms still do not contain one, and it is the easiest violation in the chapter to prove: the requester either got a checklist or did not. And the HOA certified-mail trigger cuts both ways. An owner who walks a request into the office has not started the presumption clock, but the association still owes access within 10 business days under § 720.303(5)(a), and an association that ignores an in-person request because it was not certified is building the other side's case.

Who is the custodian

The statutes make the association responsible and say almost nothing about who inside the association holds the records. That silence is where most of the trouble starts. In practice you want one named custodian, identified in a board resolution, with a named backup.

The secretary is the conventional choice, and in a self-managed community it is usually the right one. In a professionally managed community the working custodian is the manager, and the secretary's real job becomes oversight: confirming that records reach the manager, that the board's own documents get filed, and that the association can get everything back. Neither arrangement changes the legal answer. The association is the record holder and the association pays the damages.

Write down three things when the board designates a custodian. First, what happens when a request arrives while the custodian is on vacation, because 10 working days does not pause. Second, who has authority to say a record is exempt, which should be counsel and not the manager. Third, what the custodian does with a request that looks like the opening move in a dispute, which is send it to the association's attorney the same day. Our guide on when to call the association attorney covers that judgment call.

Where the records actually live

All three chapters require records to be maintained within Florida and made available within 45 miles of the property or in the county. A board should be able to answer, in one sentence per category, where each kind of record physically is. Most cannot.

• Recorded documents — declaration, amendments, plats, articles. The county official records are the authoritative copy and cannot be lost, but the association still has to hold one.
• Corporate records — bylaws, rules, minutes, membership roster, director certifications. These are the ones that go missing between boards.
• Financial records — ledgers, bank statements, invoices, audits, tax returns. Usually with the manager or the accountant, often in two places with no reconciliation.
• Contracts and vendor files — including bids, which a condominium must keep for at least one year after receipt.
• Engineering and construction records — milestone inspection reports, structural integrity reserve studies, permits, warranties, as-builts. These are the records boards most regret not having.
• Insurance — current policies and, more importantly, expired ones, which are what you need years later on a latent-damage claim.

The category that ruins boards is the sixth. An association that cannot produce a 2003 policy declarations page or the original roof warranty has not committed a records violation, but it has lost an asset. Treat old policies, construction documents and warranties as permanent no matter what the retention floor says. Our page on records retention periods sets out the statutory minimums; a sensible board keeps some things longer.

Dividing the work with the management company

A management agreement that says the manager will "maintain the association's records" is not enough. The agreement should answer five questions in writing, and a board reviewing its contract should check each one. Our management agreement review guide goes through the wider contract.

1. Which records the manager holds, and which the board holds, stated by category rather than in general terms.
2. How a records request is routed: who receives it, who acknowledges it, who determines exemptions, and the internal deadline, which should be shorter than the statutory one.
3. What the manager charges for copies and personnel time, and whether that matches what the statute allows the association to charge the owner.
4. Where the electronic records live, in whose account, and who holds the administrator credentials.
5. What the manager must deliver on termination, in what format, and within how many days.

The last point is the one boards skip and later pay for. If the association's documents sit in a portal the management company owns, and the contract is silent, the only thing the board has at the end of the relationship is whatever goodwill remains. Our companion guide on running association records digitally deals with that problem in detail.

Responding without creating a new problem

The mechanics of a single request are covered in our guide to responding to records requests, and the common errors in records request mistakes. Two points belong here because they are system problems rather than response problems.

First, exemptions are not self-executing. Each chapter lists records that are not accessible to members, and each list is narrower than boards assume. Attorney-client privileged material, personnel and medical records, and owners' personal identifying information are protected. General unhappiness with the requester is not a category. Withholding a record that is not on the list is how a routine request turns into a claim with prevailing-party fees attached.

Second, redaction is the association's job and it is a job, not a formality. When a producible record contains protected information, the association redacts and produces rather than withholding the whole document. Doing that well requires someone who has read the exempt list for the right chapter. See records exempt from inspection for the condominium list and the HOA equivalent.

The annual records health check

Once a year, ideally in the month before budget work begins, put this on an agenda as an action item. It takes one meeting and one follow-up.

1. Confirm in writing who the custodian and backup are, and that both still hold the position.
2. Pull the current statutory list for your chapter and mark each category present, missing, or unknown. Unknown counts as missing.
3. Test one retrieval. Ask for a specific 2018 invoice and a specific expired insurance policy, and time how long it takes to arrive.
4. Confirm the records are within Florida and reachable within 45 miles or in the county, including anything the manager stores off site.
5. If your association is subject to posting, open the website as an owner would and check that everything required is there and current. Condominium associations with 25 or more units post under § 718.111(12)(g); HOAs with 100 or more parcels post under § 720.303(4)(b).
6. Review what was destroyed in the last year and under what authority, and confirm nothing under a preservation obligation was on the list.
7. Re-read the response template, including the condominium checklist, and update the fee schedule against the statute.
8. Confirm that outgoing directors from the last election returned everything, as § 718.111(12)(f) and § 719.104(2)(e) require within 5 days.
9. Identify one gap and fix it before the next meeting. One is enough. Boards that try to fix everything fix nothing.

Record the result in the minutes. A board that can show a documented annual review has a materially better position if an owner later claims the association is hiding something, and a much better chance of finding the document that decides a construction or insurance dispute five years from now.

For community association managers: see An owner asked for association records: what does the manager do next? and Official Records Compared in the Manager Resource Center.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes builds and audits records systems for condominium, cooperative and homeowners associations across Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties, and advises boards on individual requests before a response goes out. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Official Records page.