Florida condo records requests — the operational guide.

The 10-business-day rule

A written records request from a unit owner triggers a 10-business-day clock. By the end of the tenth business day, the records must be available for inspection at a location within the county where the association is located.

What triggers the clock.Receipt of a written request. Email counts. A signed note dropped at the front desk counts. A request from the owner’s authorized representative (an attorney, a contracted CPA, the spouse named on the unit) counts.

What “available for inspection” means.The records are physically or electronically present at a defined location, and the requesting owner has been given a defined time and reasonable means to inspect them. A vague “we’ll let you know when they’re ready” is not availability. Sending the owner a Dropbox link with the right files inside, with a confirmation that they can access it, does count.

What “business day” means. Monday through Friday, excluding state-recognized holidays. A request received on Friday at 4:55 PM starts the clock the next business day. A request received on a holiday starts the clock the next business day after.

A note on weekends and after-hours. The statute does not require records to be made available outside business hours. It does require them to be made available promptly within the 10-business-day window. Plan for the request that comes in Friday afternoon.

The official records list

Section 718.111(12)(a) enumerates the records the association must maintain. The list below is a working summary; the implementer should hyperlink each item to its full statutory definition for owner-facing use.

Declaration, articles of incorporation, bylaws, and rules

The governing documents and every amendment to them.

Minutes

Of every board meeting and every member meeting, kept for at least 7 years.

Current roster of unit owners

Names, mailing addresses, unit identification numbers, and (for owners who consent) email addresses.

All insurance policies

Current and cancelled, kept for at least 7 years.

All contracts to which the association is a party

Including bids and proposals received in the prior year, kept for at least 7 years.

All financial records

Receipts, invoices, bank statements, financial reports, audited or reviewed statements, kept for at least 7 years.

The most recent Structural Integrity Reserve Study (SIRS)

And the prior SIRS for comparison.

The most recent milestone-inspection reports

Phase 1 and Phase 2 if applicable.

Reserve schedules

Current and the prior year for comparison.

Director and officer certifications

Including 90-day education-course certificates and conflict-of-interest disclosures.

All correspondence with state regulators

DBPR notices, Division correspondence, and the association’s responses.

Voting records

For the past year, including ballots and proxies for the most recent annual meeting.

Building permits

Issued for work on common elements.

Records of maintenance

Performed on common elements.

A handful of records are excluded from owner inspection: attorney-client privileged communications, personnel records of association employees, certain owner personal information (Social Security numbers, payment account information), records relating to a pending civil or criminal action against an owner, and medical records. Excluded does not mean destroyed; the association still maintains them, but they are not produced on request.

Fees you can charge

The fee structure is statutory, not discretionary.

What you can charge.

• Actual cost of paper copies, at the statutory per-page rate.
• Actual cost of electronic media (a USB drive, for example).
• Personnel time exceeding the first 30 minutes, at the statutory hourly rate. The first 30 minutes are free.

What you cannot charge.

• A fee for the inspection itself.
• A “convenience” or “administrative” fee.
• A fee for emailing records you already have in digital form.
• A fee for the act of locating the records.
• An advance “deposit” before producing records.

How to invoice. Itemize. Lines for copies, lines for media, lines for labor over 30 minutes with the start and end times. Send the invoice with the records, not before. Producing the records is not contingent on the invoice being paid.

Websites and the 150-unit threshold

Associations of 150 or more units (excluding any timeshare-managed units) must maintain a website or mobile application that posts the official records. Owner access is through a private, owner-only login.

What must be posted. The current declaration, articles, bylaws, rules; the current and prior-year financial reports; the SIRS and the prior SIRS; the milestone-inspection reports; current contracts; current insurance policies; minutes for the past year; the budget and reserve schedule; and notice of any meeting at which a vote is being taken.

What is exempt. Personnel records, attorney-client privileged communications, owner personal information beyond name and unit, and records relating to pending litigation.

What “owner-only login” means. A unique credential per unit owner. Not a single shared password. Not the building Wi-Fi password. Not a public-facing page indexed by search engines. The login should produce an audit log of who accessed what and when. Counsel will ask for that log.

Associations under 150 units. Not required to maintain a website-of-record, but the 10-business-day inspection rule still applies. Many sub-150-unit associations choose to maintain a portal anyway because it is operationally easier than handling paper requests.

What constitutes refusal

Refusal is the legal trap. Many boards refuse without knowing they have refused. Each of the following has been treated as refusal in Florida community-association litigation.

1. 1.Silence past the 10-business-day deadline.

   No acknowledgment, no production, no written reason for delay. The clock ran out and the board did nothing.

2. 2.Conditioning production on the owner stating a purpose.

   The statute does not require the owner to explain why they want the records. Asking is not itself refusal; refusing to produce until the owner answers, is.

3. 3.Partial production without a written reason for the omission.

   Producing the minutes but not the contracts, with no explanation, is refusal as to the contracts.

4. 4.Producing in an inconvenient format.

   Handing over a stack of unsorted paper when the owner asked for digital copies the association already has, is treated as functional refusal.

5. 5.Charging an unauthorized fee as a precondition.

   A "deposit" before production, or an "administrative fee" not authorized by the statute.

6. 6.Routing the request through counsel without producing.

   Counsel may review, but the production deadline does not pause for legal review unless a defined exemption applies.

7. 7.Claiming a record does not exist when it should exist by statute.

   If the association is required to maintain it (a current insurance policy, a current roster), claiming it cannot be located is a separate violation in addition to refusal.

If any of the above applies, the board is exposed. Document a written reason in the same business day, contemporaneously with the partial production or the delay, and send it to the owner. A documented reason is not a defense in every case, but a contemporaneous record is materially better than a reconstructed one.

Templates

Three short templates. Each should be customized for the association’s name and counsel’s preferences.

Date: [Mon DD, YYYY]

[Owner name]
[Unit number]

Dear [Owner name],

The association received your written request for official records on [Mon DD, YYYY at HH:MM]. Under § 718.111(12)(c)1.a., we will make the requested records available for inspection by [Mon DD, YYYY], which is the tenth business day following receipt.

The records will be available for inspection at [location] from [time] to [time], or by digital access at [link] for which you will receive credentials separately.

If you would like copies, the statutory rates apply. We will provide an itemized invoice with the records.

Sincerely,
[Officer name]
[Officer title]
[Association name]

Records request reference: [RR-YYYY-####]
Owner: [name], unit [number]
Request received: [Mon DD, YYYY HH:MM]
Records produced: [Mon DD, YYYY HH:MM]

Itemized charges (per § 718.111(12)(c)1):

- Copies, [N] pages at $[rate]/page: $[amount]
- Electronic media, [N] units at $[rate]: $[amount]
- Personnel time, [N] hours at $[rate]/hour (first 30 minutes excluded): $[amount]

Total: $[amount]

Payment is requested but is not a precondition of production. The records have been provided.

Date: [Mon DD, YYYY]

[Owner name]
[Unit number]

Dear [Owner name],

The association received your written request for official records on [Mon DD, YYYY at HH:MM]. The following records, or portions thereof, are not being produced for the reasons stated:

- [Record description]: withheld under § 718.111(12)(c)3 as [attorney-client privileged | personnel record | pending litigation | other statutory exemption].

All other requested records are being made available in accordance with § 718.111(12)(c)1.a. by [Mon DD, YYYY].

If you believe a record has been withheld in error, you may respond in writing and the board will reconsider. You are also entitled to seek further remedy under § 718.111(12) and to file a complaint with the Division of Florida Condominiums.

Sincerely,
[Officer name]
[Officer title]

Common mistakes

Seven failure modes from the wild. Each is a documented basis for a successful owner suit.

The vacation gap.

The board secretary is on a 10-day vacation. A request comes in. No one else is monitoring the intake email. The owner files at day 11. The defense is "she was on vacation." The defense fails. Designate a backup.

The Friday-afternoon request.

Request arrives at 4:50 PM on Friday before a holiday weekend. The board secretary sees it Tuesday morning. By the time it routes to the CAM, two business days are gone. Set the intake to surface to a phone notification, not just an email.

The "what do you want this for" reflex.

Owner requests the vendor contracts. The board asks why. Owner refuses to say. Board declines to produce. Court holds the board refused. Do not ask.

The CAM-knew-but-didn’t-tell-the-board issue.

The CAM received the request, set a calendar reminder, and got busy. Day 6 the owner emails the board president directly. President had no idea. Defense fails. Centralize intake.

The "we sent it" without a delivery log.

Records were emailed on day 4. Owner says they never arrived. No delivery confirmation, no read receipt, no portal log. Defense is "we sent it." Defense fails on the burden-of-proof. Use a system that logs delivery.

The partial production.

Owner requests 12 categories of records. Board produces 9. The other 3 were "still being located." No written reason for the omission. The 3 missing categories are refusal as to those categories. Document the omission in writing, in the same response.

The fee-as-gatekeeper move.

Board produces the records on day 5 with an invoice for $340 and a note that the records will be released upon payment. The records have not been produced. Production is not contingent on payment. The clock was not stopped.

How HOA Rocket helps

Product surface → /features/documents

If you want this audit-ready by default, here is what we automate. Records requests come in through a single intake (board portal, owner-side form, or forwarded email) and get timestamped at receipt. The 10-business-day countdown surfaces on the board dashboard. Per-document access logs record who downloaded what, from where, and when. The 150-unit website-of-record posts the enumerated records automatically and gives each owner a unique login. Refusal letters generate from the template above with the statutory citation pre-populated.

We are not your lawyer. We built this so your lawyer has the timestamps, the access logs, and the production receipts when an owner files a complaint.

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