Florida HOA Official Records: What Your Association Must Keep, and for How Long

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: HOAs

Chapter 720 does not leave the contents of your association's filing cabinet to the board's judgment. Section 720.303(4) names fourteen categories of documents that are official records by operation of law, sets a floor of at least seven years for nearly all of them, and requires that the records be kept in Florida. Two categories run on a one-year clock instead. And since 2024 the board must publish a written retention policy rather than simply having one in its head.

What makes a record official

A document is an official record because the statute says it is, not because the board treats it as important or because someone labeled the folder. Section 720.303(4) opens with one sentence that does most of the work: the association shall maintain each of the listed items, when applicable, for at least 7 years unless the governing documents require a longer period, and those items constitute the official records of the association.

Three consequences follow from that sentence. First, the list is a floor. Your declaration or bylaws may require a longer period, and where they do, the longer period controls. Second, the phrase "when applicable" excuses the association from keeping a record it has no reason to have. It does not excuse the association from creating a record the statute elsewhere requires it to create, such as minutes or an account for each member. Third, the fourteenth item is a catchall broad enough to cover most of what an association generates in a year.

Official status carries two separate consequences. It starts the retention clock, and it determines what a member may inspect under § 720.303(5), which is a different subsection with its own ten-business-day deadline, its own rules, and its own list of protected material. Keeping a record and producing it are related questions, but they are answered in different places. The response process and the deadlines that go with it are covered separately.

The fourteen categories in § 720.303(4)(a)

Here is the list as the 2026 edition of the statute numbers it. The subparagraph numbers matter, because a demand letter or a complaint will cite them and because the exemptions in § 720.303(5)(g) are keyed to categories rather than to documents.

Item 10 has its own internal list. The financial and accounting records include accurate, itemized and detailed records of all receipts and expenditures; a current account and a periodic statement of the account for each member; all tax returns, financial statements and financial reports of the association; and any other records that identify, measure, record or communicate financial information. An association that keeps only bank statements and an annual report is not keeping what the statute describes.

The seven-year floor and the two shorter clocks

Seven years is the default for everything on the list. The two departures are easy to state and easy to get backwards.

• Bids. Bids received by the association for work to be performed are official records, and they must be kept for 1 year. The contract that came out of the bidding is a different record, and it is kept as a current contract while it is in force.
• Election material. Ballots, sign-in sheets, voting proxies and all other papers and electronic records relating to voting must be maintained for at least 1 year after the date of the election, vote or meeting. The clock runs from the event, not from the end of the fiscal year.

Two points about the seven-year floor that boards misread. It is a minimum, not a destruction deadline. Nothing in Chapter 720 requires an association to destroy a record at seven years and one day, and there are good reasons to keep some categories permanently. Plans, permits and warranties for the common areas, recorded instruments, and minutes are the obvious ones: a community that intends to exist in fifty years should not be discarding the construction record of its own infrastructure on a seven-year cycle.

The second point is that the clock is suspended by litigation. Once the association reasonably anticipates a claim, the ordinary retention policy yields to a litigation hold, and deleting records on schedule after that point is a separate problem from the statute. Section 720.303(5)(e) makes knowing and intentional destruction of accounting records a criminal matter, which is covered below.

Where the records have to be kept

Section 720.303(5)(a) sets the location rule. Unless the law or the governing documents provide otherwise, the official records must be maintained within this state for at least 7 years, and must be made available to a parcel owner for inspection or photocopying within 45 miles of the community or within the county in which the association is located, within 10 business days after the board or its designee receives a written request.

Read that carefully, because it contains two different obligations. The records must be kept in Florida. Separately, they must be produced within 45 miles of the community or in the county. An association whose management company stores everything in a warehouse in Orlando has satisfied the first obligation and not the second.

The statute offers a way out of the 45-mile problem. The subsection may be complied with by having a copy of the official records available for inspection or copying in the community, or by making the records available to a parcel owner electronically via the Internet, or by allowing the records to be viewed in electronic format on a computer screen and printed on request. For most associations the electronic route is now the practical answer, and it is covered in our guide to digital records and the association website.

What 2024 changed

The 2024 session was the largest single change to HOA records law in two decades. HB 1203, Chapter 2024-221, Laws of Florida, took effect July 1, 2024 and rewrote much of § 720.303. A second bill, Chapter 2024-202, added the obligation to put the rules and covenants in every member's hands. The pieces that affect what an association keeps are these:

1. A website posting obligation for larger associations. An association with 100 or more parcels had to post a specified set of documents on a website or make them available through a downloadable mobile application by January 1, 2025, under § 720.303(4)(b).
2. A written retention policy. Section 720.303(4)(c) now requires the association to adopt written rules governing the method or policy by which official records are retained and how long they are kept, and to make that information available to owners through the website or application.
3. Criminal exposure for records conduct. Sections 720.303(5)(d), (e) and (f) created a second degree misdemeanor for a director, board member or community association manager who knowingly, willfully and repeatedly denies access; a first degree misdemeanor for defacing, destroying or failing to create or maintain accounting records with intent to cause harm; and a third degree felony for refusing to produce records to avoid detection or punishment for a crime.
4. New record categories to keep. The posting list at § 720.303(4)(b)1. reaches director certifications under § 720.3033(1)(a), contracts and transactions between the association and a director or an entity in which a director has an interest, and conflict of interest documents. Those are records the association must now be able to produce on demand, in a form fit for publication.

The section was touched again in 2026, but not substantively. Chapter 2026-14, Laws of Florida, is Senate Bill 104, a reviser's bill effective May 12, 2026. Reviser's bills delete obsolete provisions, correct cross-references and fix grammatical errors; they do not change the rules. If a form or policy in your files cites § 720.303, the citation is still good. Whether the underlying rule is still good is a different question, and our HOA official records legislative updates track each session.

The written retention policy under § 720.303(4)(c)

This is the obligation boards most often have not met, because it is short and easy to read past. The association shall adopt written rules governing the method or policy by which the official records are to be retained and the time period such records must be retained under § 720.303(4)(a), and that information must be made available to parcel owners through the association's website or application.

A workable policy is not long. It should name each of the fourteen categories, state the retention period the association will apply to it, say where that category is stored and in what format, name the position responsible for it, state how records are destroyed at the end of the period, and state that destruction stops when litigation is anticipated. It should be adopted by the board at a properly noticed meeting like any other rule, and the minutes should reflect the adoption.

One drafting caution. A policy that commits the association to keep a category for longer than seven years is enforceable against the association. Do not promise permanent retention of every e-mail in order to look thorough. Promise what the association will actually do, and then do it.

The records boards forget they are creating

The fourteenth category, all other written records related to the operation of the association, is where disputes usually start. It is not limited to documents the board generated, to paper, or to records held at the management office. In practice it reaches:

• Architectural review applications, the committee's file, and the approval or denial letters.
• Violation files: inspection notes, photographs, warning letters, hearing notices and the fining committee's determination.
• Vendor correspondence, change orders, invoices and proposals, whether or not a contract resulted.
• Reserve studies, engineering reports, inspection reports and the responses to them.
• Committee records, where the committee is acting for the association rather than as a social club.
• Insurance claim files, adjuster correspondence and proof of loss submissions.

Board e-mail is the hard case. Chapter 720 does not address whether messages sent from directors' personal accounts and stored on personal devices are official records of the association, and the Division has not resolved it for HOAs. The safe operating assumption is that association business conducted in writing is discoverable in litigation regardless of the account it moved through, and that the cleanest answer is to keep board business on association channels. Our guidance on board e-mail and text messages goes further into this.

A records system that survives a manager change

Most records failures are not decisions. They are the result of a transition nobody documented. A practical structure:

1. Adopt the written retention policy required by § 720.303(4)(c) and post it where owners can find it.
2. Take an inventory once, category by category against the fourteen items, and write down where each one lives and in what format. Note every gap rather than quietly leaving it blank.
3. Put the association's ownership of its own records in writing in the management agreement, with a delivery deadline and a format requirement on termination. The records belong to the association, not to the vendor holding them.
4. Keep the permanent set separately: recorded instruments, plans and permits, warranties, minutes, audited financial statements, insurance policies and claim files.
5. Calendar the two one-year clocks. Bids and election material are the categories associations most often keep too briefly and, occasionally, too long.
6. Confirm annually that the person who would have to answer a records request in ten business days can actually find each category. If the answer depends on one employee's memory, the association does not have a system.

Our records retention checklist sets the categories out in a form a board or manager can work through at a single meeting. Good meeting minutes are the other half of the job, since minutes are the one record that proves what the board actually decided.

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 helps Southwest Florida homeowners association boards build records systems that hold up: retention policies that meet § 720.303(4)(c), management agreements that keep the association's records in the association's hands, and answers when a request arrives that the board is not sure how to handle. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Official Records page.