HOA Records Exempt From Owner Inspection: The Nine Categories in Section 720.303(5)(g)

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

A Florida homeowners association may withhold very little from a member who asks for records. Section 720.303(5)(g) sets out nine categories that are not accessible to members or parcel owners, and everything outside those nine is producible within ten business days. The list protects privileged communications, transfer approval files, gated community guest data, personnel and medical records, personal identifying information, the association's own security measures, and two narrow technical categories. That is all of it.

A closed list, not a standard

The exemptions in Chapter 720 are not a balancing test. The statute does not ask whether production would be embarrassing, whether the requesting owner is acting in good faith, or whether the board thinks the record is none of the member's business. Section 720.303(5)(g) names nine things that are not accessible and stops.

That structure decides most disputes before they begin. The question is never whether the board would prefer to withhold a document. It is whether the document, which is an official record under the fourteen categories in § 720.303(4)(a), or some identified content inside it, falls within one of the nine categories. If the answer is no, it goes out within ten business days. Section 720.303(5)(g) also confirms the same point from the other direction: the association may adopt reasonable written rules about inspections, but it may not require a parcel owner to demonstrate any proper purpose for the inspection or to state any reason for it.

One more structural point. Exempt status follows the record, not the folder. A file does not become exempt because it sits in a drawer labeled "legal" or "personnel." Each record is assessed on its own content, and where a category protects information rather than a whole record, each piece of protected information is assessed on its own.

Privileged and litigation material

Section 720.303(5)(g)1. protects any record protected by the lawyer-client privilege as described in § 90.502, and any record protected by the work-product privilege. The work product branch is defined in the statute itself: a record prepared by an association attorney, or prepared at the attorney's express direction, which reflects a mental impression, conclusion, litigation strategy or legal theory of the attorney or the association, and which was prepared exclusively for civil or criminal litigation or for adversarial administrative proceedings, or in anticipation of such litigation or proceedings, until the conclusion of the litigation or proceedings.

Three limits are built into that sentence, and boards routinely miss all three.

• Work product ends. The protection runs until the conclusion of the litigation or the adversarial proceeding. A file from a lawsuit that settled four years ago is not shielded by the work product branch, though a genuinely privileged communication inside it may still be protected under § 90.502.
• "Exclusively" means exclusively. A document prepared for both a business purpose and a litigation purpose is not work product under this wording. An inspection report obtained to decide whether to repair the roof does not become protected because the association later sues the roofer.
• Copying the attorney does not create privilege. Forwarding a vendor proposal to counsel does not convert the proposal into a privileged record. The privilege attaches to confidential communications for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, not to every document that has passed through a law firm's inbox.

Legal invoices are the recurring fight. There is a real difference between the fact and amount of a fee and a narrative description of what counsel did and advised, and the second can reveal strategy and advice while the first usually does not. The conservative and defensible course is to produce the invoice with the narrative entries redacted and a short written explanation of what was removed and why. Our guidance on board confidentiality and privilege covers how to keep privileged material privileged in the first place.

Transfer approval files and gated community guest data

Section 720.303(5)(g)2. protects information obtained by an association in connection with the approval of the lease, sale or other transfer of a parcel. This is the screening file: the application, the background information supplied with it, and what the association gathered in evaluating it.

The protection is important for two reasons that have nothing to do with the requesting owner. Screening files routinely contain credit and criminal history, income information, and family composition, and the last of those is a fair housing problem waiting to happen if it circulates. An association that produces a screening file to a curious neighbor has created a discrimination exposure and a privacy exposure in a single act.

Section 720.303(5)(g)3. protects information an association obtains in a gated community in connection with guests' visits to parcel owners or community residents. Gate logs, visitor registrations and the access records that go with them are not available to members. This category comes up constantly in neighbor disputes, where one owner wants the gate log to prove what another owner's household has been doing. The answer is no.

Personnel and medical records

Section 720.303(5)(g)4. protects personnel records of association or management company employees, including but not limited to disciplinary, payroll, health and insurance records. Section 720.303(5)(g)5. protects medical records of parcel owners or community residents.

The personnel category has an edge that boards misjudge. It protects employee records. It does not convert every document that mentions an employee into a personnel record, and it does not shield the association's own decisions from review. A vendor contract is not a personnel record because an employee negotiated it. Board minutes recording that the association terminated its maintenance staff are minutes, and minutes are producible; the individual's disciplinary file is not.

The medical category protects the records of parcel owners and community residents. It reaches the documentation supporting a request for a reasonable accommodation, which is where most associations encounter it. Treat accommodation files as closed and store them apart from the general owner file, so that a routine records request never puts a board member in the position of deciding, under time pressure, what to pull out of a folder.

Personal identifying information, and what is not protected

Section 720.303(5)(g)6. is the category that touches nearly every request, and the exclusion inside it is the part boards get wrong. The protected items are social security numbers, driver license numbers, credit card numbers, electronic mailing addresses, telephone numbers, facsimile numbers, emergency contact information, any address for a parcel owner other than as provided for association notice requirements, and other personal identifying information of any person.

Then the statute excludes four things from that protection: the person's name, parcel designation, mailing address and property address. Those are producible. An association that refuses to give a member the ownership roster because it contains personal information is withholding what the statute says is not protected.

The subparagraph also contains a directory provision that surprises people. The association may print and distribute to parcel owners a directory containing the name, parcel address and all telephone numbers of each parcel owner. An owner may exclude his or her telephone numbers from the directory by requesting that in writing, and an owner may consent in writing to disclosure of other contact information described in the subparagraph.

Finally, the statute limits the association's exposure. The association is not liable for the disclosure of information protected under the subparagraph if the information is included in an official record of the association and was voluntarily provided by an owner rather than requested by the association. That is narrow. It does not cover information the association asked for, and it is not a reason to relax the redaction process.

Security measures, software, and acknowledgments

Three categories close the list, and they are short.

1. § 720.303(5)(g)7. Any electronic security measure used by the association to safeguard data, including passwords. Gate codes, camera system credentials, portal administrator passwords and network configuration are not member records.
2. § 720.303(5)(g)8. The software and operating system used by the association which allows the manipulation of data. A member is entitled to the data. The member is not entitled to the accounting system itself.
3. § 720.303(5)(g)9. All affirmative acknowledgments made pursuant to § 720.3085(3)(c)3., which arise in the assessment collection process.

Item 8 answers a question that comes up in contentious communities. An owner who asks for the association's general ledger is asking for data, and the data is producible in some form. An owner who asks for a backup of the accounting database, or for administrative access to the system, is asking for something the statute places outside the right of inspection.

Start with the record, not the redaction

Section 720.303(5)(g) is written as a rule about records. It provides that, notwithstanding the rest of the subsection, the following records are not accessible to members or parcel owners, and then it lists the nine. So the first question on any request is the statutory one: is this record accessible? Items 1, 4, 5 and 9 answer it at the level of the record itself. Privileged and work product records, personnel records of association and management company employees, medical records of parcel owners and residents, and the affirmative acknowledgments under § 720.3085(3)(c)3. are not accessible, and a record that fits one of those is withheld as a record.

Items 2, 3 and 6 are different. They describe information the association holds rather than a file it keeps: information obtained in connection with a transfer approval, information obtained in a gated community about guests' visits, and the personal identifying information listed in item 6. Item 7 names an electronic security measure and item 8 names the association's software and operating system, and item 8 says in terms that the data is part of the official records.

Redaction is what that second group produces, and only after the first question has been answered. Where a record is accessible but contains information one of those categories protects, the association produces the record and removes the protected information. Item 6 is the clearest case. It protects social security and driver license numbers, e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers and emergency contact information, but excludes the owner's name, parcel designation, mailing address and property address from that protection. A roster holds both, and the roster is accessible. Subsection (5) does not itself direct the association to redact anything; the express redaction duty in this section is in § 720.303(4)(b)4., which requires protected information to be redacted before it is posted to the association's website. In our view redaction is nevertheless the right answer whenever an accessible record carries protected information, because the alternative is to withhold a record the statute makes accessible.

Two habits are worth keeping once that call is made. Keep an unredacted copy in the association's file. And send a short cover note stating what was withheld and the subparagraph relied on. The statute requires neither. Both matter if a member sues, because the association's position is stronger when the file shows an itemized decision made at the time than when the board reconstructs its reasoning months later.

What over-withholding actually costs

Boards tend to treat withholding as the safe choice. Under Chapter 720 it is the expensive one.

A failure to provide access to the records within 10 business days after receipt of a written request sent by certified mail, return receipt requested, creates a rebuttable presumption that the association willfully failed to comply. A member denied access is entitled to actual damages or to minimum damages of $50 per calendar day for up to 10 days, beginning on the 11th business day after receipt. And under § 720.305(1) the prevailing party in an action to enforce Chapter 720 or the governing documents is entitled to reasonable attorney fees and costs, which is what turns a $500 statutory exposure into a five-figure one.

Set against that, the cost of producing a document the board would rather not produce is usually nothing. The association is not endorsing the contents by producing them, and a record that is producible does not become less producible because the requesting member intends to make an issue of it. Where the call is genuinely close, and the privilege category is where it usually is, the time to ask counsel is before the ten business days run, not after a demand letter arrives. The deadlines, fees and penalties that govern the response are covered in full in our companion guide.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes advises Southwest Florida HOA boards and managers on close records calls: what § 720.303(5)(g) actually protects, how to redact a document so it can be produced, and when a request needs an attorney's eyes before the ten business days run. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Official Records page.