HOA Records Requests: The 10-Business-Day Rule and Where Boards Go Wrong

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

Most HOA records claims are not about a document the board wanted to hide. They are about a calendar. Section 720.303(5)(a) gives an association 10 business days from receipt of a written request, and the statute attaches a presumption, daily damages, fee-shifting and, since 2024, criminal liability to the failure to meet it. Nearly every one of those consequences is avoidable by answering on time, in writing, even when the answer is incomplete.

The clock, and what starts it

Unless the law or the governing documents provide otherwise, the official records must be maintained within Florida for at least 7 years and 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 receipt by the board or its designee of a written request from the parcel owner.

Four details in that sentence decide cases.

• Business days, not calendar days. Ten business days is normally two calendar weeks plus holidays. It is not thirty days, and it is not the next board meeting.
• Receipt by the board or its designee. If the management company is the designee, the clock starts when management receives it, not when the board hears about it at the next meeting. A manager who sits on a request for a week has burned half the period.
• A written request. There is no statutory form. An e-mail is written. A letter handed to the manager is written. Do not treat an informal request as no request.
• Availability, not delivery. The obligation is to make the records available for inspection or photocopying, which is why a prompt written response offering an inspection date inside the window is the core of good practice.

The most common failure is silence. A board that cannot assemble everything in ten business days is far better off responding in writing on day three, producing what it has, stating what is still coming and when, and offering an inspection date, than producing everything on day eighteen. The statute does not expressly bless a partial response, but a documented, prompt one is what rebuts a presumption of willfulness.

Where the inspection happens

The 45-mile rule is the second trap. Records must be available within 45 miles of the community or within the county where the association is located. For a Southwest Florida community managed from Tampa or Miami, storing the records at the management office does not satisfy the statute on its own.

Section 720.303(5)(a) gives three ways to comply: keep a copy available for inspection or copying in the community, make the records available to the owner electronically via the Internet, or allow the records to be viewed in electronic format on a computer screen and printed on request. The electronic routes are what most associations should be using, and they pair naturally with the website posting obligation for associations with 100 or more parcels.

The same paragraph removes an old argument. A member or the member's authorized representative may use a portable device, including a smartphone, tablet or portable scanner, to make an electronic copy in place of the association providing copies, and the association may not charge a fee for the device. Telling an owner to put the phone away is a violation, not a house rule.

Rules you may adopt, and three you may not

Section 720.303(5)(g) lets the association adopt reasonable written rules governing the frequency, time, location, notice, records to be inspected and manner of inspections. A short written policy is worth having, because it converts an argument at the door into a reference to an adopted rule.

The same sentence sets three limits. The rules may not require a parcel owner to demonstrate any proper purpose for the inspection. They may not require the owner to state any reason for it. And they may not limit a parcel owner's right to inspect records to less than one 8-hour business day per month.

Those limits are where well-meaning policies go wrong. A rule requiring a request on the association's form, signed under oath and stating the purpose, is unenforceable in its most important respect. So is a policy allowing inspections only in a two-hour window on the first Tuesday of the month. Reasonable rules are about orderly process, not a filter on who gets to ask.

What you may charge

The fee provisions are in § 720.303(5)(g), and they are specific enough that there is no reason to improvise.

• The association may impose fees to cover the costs of providing copies, including copying costs and the cost of personnel to retrieve and copy the records, but only if the time spent retrieving and copying exceeds one-half hour, and only if personnel costs do not exceed $20 per hour.
• Personnel costs may not be charged at all for a request that results in the copying of 25 or fewer pages.
• The association may charge up to 25 cents per page for copies made on the association's photocopier.
• If the association has no photocopier where the records are kept, or the request exceeds 25 pages, it may have copies made by an outside duplicating service and charge the actual cost of copying as supported by the vendor invoice.
• There is no charge at all when the member uses a portable device to make an electronic copy.

Two mistakes recur. The first is charging an administrative or attorney review fee. The fee authority in § 720.303(5)(g) runs to the costs of providing copies and to the personnel time spent retrieving and copying. It does not reach the cost of reviewing a request, and there is no fee of any kind for inspection.

The second is treating a request to inspect and a request for copies as the same thing. They are not. An owner who asks to inspect is entitled to inspect, and access cannot be conditioned on payment; the same owner may photograph or scan the records with a portable device, and the association may not charge for the device. An owner who asks the association to make copies of specified records is asking it to spend staff time and money on work the statute prices. Section 720.303(5) does not say when the copying charge is payable. In our view, and this is a practice position rather than a statutory rule, an association may quote the authorized charge and require it before doing the copying, for the same reason Florida agencies collect for public records copies before they run them. Produce for inspection when an owner asks to inspect. Quote and collect when an owner asks for copies.

One limit on that. Where the association has a photocopy machine available where the records are maintained and the entire request is no more than 25 pages, § 720.303(5)(g) requires it to provide the copies on request during the inspection, and no personnel charge may be imposed on a request that small. Twenty-five cents a page is still chargeable, but a board that halts a nine-page request over $2.25 has converted a fee question into a records case.

A separate provision covers a different requester. Section 720.303(5)(h) governs prospective purchaser and lienholder requests, and it is covered below.

The presumption and the daily damages

Section 720.303(5)(b) is why the certified mail envelope matters. Failure of an association to provide access to the records within 10 business days after receipt of a written request submitted by certified mail, return receipt requested, creates a rebuttable presumption that the association willfully failed to comply.

Read that as a burden-shifting rule. Willfulness is normally the member's problem to prove. Once a certified request goes unanswered past the tenth business day, the association has to disprove it. A dated log, a prompt written acknowledgment and an offer of an inspection date rebut the presumption. A recollection that the manager thought someone had handled it does not.

Section 720.303(5)(c) sets the money. A member denied access to official records is entitled to actual damages or to minimum damages for the association's willful failure to comply, and the minimum damages are $50 per calendar day for up to 10 days, with the calculation beginning on the 11th business day after receipt of the written request. The statutory cap is therefore $500, and boards sometimes treat $500 as an acceptable cost of doing business.

It is not the number that matters. Section 720.305(1) entitles the prevailing party in an action to redress a failure to comply with Chapter 720 or the governing documents to reasonable attorney fees and costs, and a prevailing member may also recover amounts to reimburse his or her share of the assessments levied to fund the association's litigation expenses. A $500 claim with a fee statute attached is not a $500 claim.

The 2024 criminal provisions

HB 1203, Chapter 2024-221, Laws of Florida, effective July 1, 2024, added three criminal provisions to § 720.303(5). They are the reason records handling is no longer purely a civil compliance topic for HOA directors.

1. § 720.303(5)(d). A director or member of the board or association, or a community association manager, who knowingly, willfully and repeatedly violates paragraph (a) with the intent of causing harm commits a misdemeanor of the second degree. "Repeatedly" means two or more violations within a 12-month period.
2. § 720.303(5)(e). A person who knowingly and intentionally defaces or destroys accounting records that are required to be maintained during the period they must be maintained, or who knowingly or intentionally fails to create or maintain those records, with the intent of causing harm, commits a misdemeanor of the first degree.
3. § 720.303(5)(f). A person who willfully and knowingly refuses to release or otherwise produce association records with the intent to avoid or escape detection, arrest, trial or punishment for a crime, or to assist another person in doing so, commits a felony of the third degree.

These provisions have real elements, and an ordinary late response does not meet them. Paragraph (d) requires knowledge, willfulness, repetition across a 12-month period and an intent to cause harm. That is a high bar, and a board that is slow because it is disorganized is not a board that is committing a crime.

The practical effect differs from the legal one. Owners now cite these subsections in demand letters, and boards make worse decisions under that pressure than they would have made calmly. The right response to a letter threatening criminal referral is to call counsel, produce what is producible, and document everything. It is not to stop communicating.

Two requests that follow different rules

Not every demand for records is a member inspection request, and treating them alike causes problems.

Law enforcement subpoenas. Under § 720.303(5)(i), if an association receives a subpoena for records from a law enforcement agency, it must provide a copy of the records or otherwise make them available for inspection and copying within 5 business days after receipt of the subpoena, unless the agency or the subpoena specifies otherwise. That is half the member period. Notify counsel the day it arrives.

Prospective purchasers and lienholders. Section 720.303(5)(h) provides that the association need not give a prospective purchaser or lienholder information about the subdivision or the association beyond what the chapter requires be disclosed, and it may charge a reasonable fee for good faith responses, not exceeding $150 plus reasonable photocopying costs and any attorney fees incurred in responding. A title company request or a lender questionnaire is not a member records request and should not be charged on the per-page schedule.

Mediation comes before the lawsuit

A records dispute in an HOA does not go straight to court. Section 720.311(2)(a) requires presuit mediation for a defined set of disputes between an association and a parcel owner, and access to the official records of the association is on that list, alongside covenant enforcement disputes, disputes over amendments to the association documents, and disputes about board, committee and non-election membership meetings.

That matters tactically. Mediation is a structured chance to end a records dispute before fees accumulate, and fees are the exposure. An association that has produced everything producible and documented its process arrives in a strong position. Recall disputes under § 720.303(10) and election disputes follow a different track under § 720.311(1), which sends them to arbitration with the Division.

Eight fixes that prevent almost all of this

The associations that do not have records problems are not the ones with the best lawyers. They are the ones with a process.

1. Name one person as the designee who receives records requests, and say so in the management agreement and on the website.
2. Log every request the day it arrives: date received, how received, what was asked for, and the tenth business day, written down.
3. Acknowledge in writing within two or three business days, every time, even when the answer will take longer.
4. Produce in stages. Send what is ready, identify what is coming, and give a date.
5. Offer an inspection date inside the window rather than waiting for the owner to propose one.
6. Redact rather than withhold, and state in writing what was withheld and under which subparagraph of § 720.303(5)(g).
7. Adopt the inspection and fee policy now, at a noticed meeting, before you need it.
8. Call counsel on day one, not day eleven, when the request touches privileged material, personnel files, a pending claim, or an owner who has already retained a lawyer.

Our official records request checklist puts this on one page for a manager to work from, and our guide on responding to records requests walks through a full response from receipt to closing letter.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes helps Southwest Florida HOA boards answer records requests on time and on the record, drafts inspection and fee policies that hold up, and steps in when a request arrives with a demand letter attached. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Official Records page.