Which Condominium Records Are Exempt From Owner Inspection in Florida

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

A condominium association does not get to decide that a record is too sensitive to produce. Section 718.111(12)(c)5. sets out the only categories that are not accessible to unit owners, and everything outside those categories goes to the owner who asks. The list is shorter than most boards assume, and nearly every item on it is narrower than its label suggests. Knowing where each exemption stops is what keeps a records request from becoming a fee award.

The list is closed and the exemptions are narrow

Section 718.111(12)(c)1.a. gives every association member, and any person the member authorizes as a representative, the right to inspect and copy the official records at all reasonable times. Section 718.111(12)(c)5. then carves out the records that are not accessible to unit owners. That carve-out is the association's entire authority to withhold anything. There is no general exemption for records the board considers confidential, sensitive, commercially delicate, embarrassing, or not the owner's business.

Read that way, the analysis on any request is straightforward. Identify the record. Ask which lettered exemption covers it. If none does, produce it. If one covers part of the document, redact that part and produce the rest. A board that starts instead from whether it wants the owner to have the document is starting in the wrong place and will usually reach the wrong answer.

The redaction point deserves emphasis because it is the single most common error. An exemption attaches to information, not to a file. A ledger containing one owner's credit card number is not an exempt ledger. It is a producible ledger with a redaction on one line.

Attorney-client privileged and litigation-prepared material

The first exemption covers records protected by the lawyer-client privilege under section 90.502 and records protected by the work-product privilege. The work-product side reaches records prepared by the association's attorney, or at the attorney's express direction, that reflect a mental impression, conclusion, litigation strategy or legal theory, and that were prepared exclusively for civil or criminal litigation or for adversarial administrative proceedings, or in anticipation of such proceedings, until the matter concludes.

Two limits should be stated plainly to a board. Copying counsel on an e-mail does not make it privileged. The privilege protects communications made for the purpose of obtaining or giving legal advice, not every message a lawyer can see, and a vendor complaint forwarded to the attorney remains a vendor complaint. Second, work-product protection is tied to litigation or an adversarial administrative proceeding that exists or is genuinely anticipated. A report commissioned in the ordinary course of managing the property is not work product merely because litigation later happens.

What the association must still produce is more than boards expect. Legal invoices are accounting records. The association may redact narrative billing entries that would reveal privileged advice or strategy, but the existence of the invoice, the amount and the payment are financial records of the association. Our guide to confidentiality and privilege for boards covers how to keep privileged material separate in the first place, which is what makes this analysis easy later.

Transfer approval information

Information obtained by an association in connection with the approval of the lease, sale or other transfer of a unit is not accessible to unit owners. This is the exemption that protects the application file: the background check, the credit report, the references, the financial disclosures and the interview notes a screening process generates.

The scope question boards ask most is where the file ends. Material obtained in connection with the approval is protected. The association's own documents are not part of the applicant's file and remain ordinary records: the transfer provisions in the governing documents, the adopted screening criteria, the transfer fee schedule, and the minutes of any board action approving or denying a transfer. So is an executed lease the association holds under a leasing provision in the declaration, although the personal identifying information inside it is separately protected.

Treat this exemption as a reason to keep the application file physically and electronically separate from everything else. When screening material is stored inside general correspondence, every request covering that period becomes a redaction project.

Personnel records, and the compensation carve-out

Personnel records of association or management company employees are exempt, including disciplinary, payroll, health and insurance records. The statute then does something boards consistently miss. It says the term personnel records does not include written employment agreements with an association employee or with the management company, and does not include budgetary or financial records that indicate the compensation paid to an association employee.

So the answer to the owner who asks what the association pays its on-site manager is that the compensation figure is producible. The employment agreement is producible. The performance write-up, the health insurance enrollment and the disciplinary file are not. A board that refuses the entire subject because it involves an employee is withholding records it has no authority to withhold, and it is doing so on the topic owners are most motivated to pursue.

Note also who is covered. The exemption reaches employees of the association and of the management company. An independent contractor is not an employee, and a landscaping contract, a pool service agreement or a vendor invoice is an ordinary record whatever the board would prefer.

Medical records and owner personal identifying information

Medical records of unit owners are exempt outright. In practice these reach an association through a request for a reasonable accommodation, through an emergency, or through an insurance claim, and the right handling is to keep them out of the general file entirely rather than to rely on redaction later.

The personal identifying information exemption touches the most documents. It covers social security numbers, driver license numbers, credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, facsimile numbers, emergency contact information, addresses other than the mailing address used for notice, and other personal identifying information.

The exceptions matter as much as the rule. An owner's name, unit designation and mailing address are generally accessible, which is what makes the roster producible in redacted form. An address, e-mail address or fax number an owner provided to receive association notice is accessible for that purpose. An association may print and distribute a directory containing owner names, unit addresses and telephone numbers, and an owner may exclude a telephone number by written request. An owner may also consent in writing to the release of information that would otherwise be protected.

Security measures, software, and acknowledgments

Three narrower exemptions close the list. Electronic security measures used by the association to safeguard data, including passwords, are not accessible. The software and operating system used by the association that allow the manipulation of data are not accessible, even if the owner owns a copy of the same software, though the statute is explicit that the data itself is part of the official records. Affirmative acknowledgments under section 718.121(4)(c), by which an owner acknowledges a change in how the association delivers assessment invoices or statements of account, are also not accessible.

The software exemption is the one most often stretched. It protects the program, not the contents. An owner is not entitled to the association's accounting software license, but the owner is entitled to the ledgers, statements and reports inside it. "It is in the software" is not an answer to a records request, and an association that cannot export its own data has a management problem that will surface again in a far more expensive setting. Keeping the data in a form the association controls is one reason to read our guide on electronic records and website posting before signing a portal agreement.

Note that there is no general exemption for records relating to the physical security of the condominium property. Gate codes and access system passwords fall within the electronic security measures exemption. A security guard's contract or an incident log is not covered by anything on the list, and a board that wants to withhold one should call counsel rather than decide at the table.

The cost of withholding too much

Over-withholding is treated exactly like refusing. If the association does not make the records available within 10 working days after receipt of a written request, there is a rebuttable presumption that it willfully failed to comply, and the association is exposed to minimum damages and to the requesting owner's attorney fees. A board that produces ninety percent of a request and withholds the rest on a theory that is not in the statute has not protected itself. It has created a smaller dispute with the same fee exposure. Those consequences are set out in our guide to the mistakes boards make on records requests.

There is also a reputational cost boards underweight. Owners who suspect concealment escalate. A request answered fully and quickly usually ends. A request answered partially, with no explanation of what was withheld or why, produces a second request, then a Division complaint, then counsel.

The discipline that avoids all of this is a withholding log. For every record not produced, write one line: the document, the lettered exemption relied on, and the date. Then give the owner the checklist the statute requires under section 718.111(12)(c)1.b., identifying what was made available and what was requested but not made available. The log takes minutes and does three things. It forces the board to name an exemption, which is where bad decisions get caught. It gives counsel something to work from. And it is the best evidence available that the association acted in good faith rather than willfully.

When a request reaches genuinely contested ground, the sequence that works is to produce everything clearly producible on time and to put only the contested items in front of counsel. Holding the whole production while one document is analyzed is how associations miss the deadline on records nobody disputed. Our guide to responding to records requests sets out the workflow.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes reviews records requests for Southwest Florida condominium boards, advises on what must be produced and what may be redacted, and defends associations when a request has already become a dispute. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Official Records page.