Arkansas HOA Records Inspection

Section 1: Overview

Start with the split, because Arkansas runs records access down two different tracks. For condominiums, the state imposes one narrow duty through the old Horizontal Property Act. For planned communities, it imposes none at all — owners there lean on the recorded CC&Rs and bylaws, not on a state inspection law.

The condominium rule lives at Ark. Code § 18-13-110, “Book of receipts and expenditures — Examination.” It tells the association to keep a detailed, chronological book of receipts and expenditures, and to open that book and its vouchers to every co-owner.¹ Notice what kind of rule this is. It sets an availability standard, not a deadline: the records must be “available for examination by all the co-owners at convenient hours on working days,”¹ and it reaches mainly the financial books — not a long list of inspectable records.

For planned communities, the right is contractual. It flows from the declaration and the bylaws, because the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 — the corporate framework behind most associations — leaves out the member records-inspection sections you find in the model nonprofit act and in many other states.² That puts Arkansas among the reasonableness-and-document-driven states, a long way from hard-clock jurisdictions like Florida and California, and without even the corporate member-inspection backstop that nonprofit-act states like South Carolina give owners. The table and the sections that follow lay out the split, the missing clock, and the thin remedies an owner has when an Arkansas association keeps its records shut.

Section 2: Quick-Reference: Arkansas HOA Records Inspection

Section 3: The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

Arkansas splits records access by community type, and the two regimes open very different sets of documents. Take a condominium organized as a horizontal property regime: the only records the statute makes inspectable are financial. Ark. Code § 18-13-110 tells the administrator, board of administration, or whatever administering body the bylaws name to keep “a book with a detailed account, in chronological order, of the receipts and expenditures affecting the building and its administration,” and to open “both the book and the vouchers accrediting the entries made thereupon” to the co-owners.¹ The Horizontal Property Act gives no statutory right to minutes, contracts, insurance policies, reserve studies, or a membership list. Anything past the receipts-and-expenditures book and its vouchers depends on the master deed and bylaws.

For a planned community, there is no comprehensive Arkansas common-interest statute and no HOA-specific records law. The inspectable records are the ones the declaration and bylaws choose to open. The Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, which runs the corporate affairs of most nonprofit associations, supplies no fallback: unlike the Revised Model Nonprofit Corporation Act, and unlike states such as South Carolina, Arkansas never enacted the model act’s records-and-inspection subchapter — and the slot that would carry those sections in the Arkansas Code is taken up by an unrelated public-water-authority conversion provision.² So a planned community defines its records categories by contract, not by a statutory list. The one narrow exception runs the other way: an association incorporated under the Arkansas Business Corporation Act of 1987 rather than as a nonprofit must keep minutes, accounting records, and a record of shareholders under § 4-27-1601, and must make them inspectable.³ That setup is uncommon for residential associations, which usually incorporate as nonprofits.

3B. The request-and-response sequence

The condominium sequence is the simpler one, and it turns on availability, not a clock. Section 18-13-110 asks for no written demand, imposes no proper-purpose test, and sets no day count for production. Instead, the book and vouchers have to be “available for examination by all the co-owners at convenient hours on working days that shall be set and announced for general knowledge.”¹ A manager who follows the statute simply posts the hours when the financial book can be examined and makes it available then. There is no statutory clock to blow, and no statutory copy fee or labor charge.

The planned-community sequence runs entirely through the governing documents. Because the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 carries no member records-inspection section, standing to inspect, the form of any demand, the response time, the place of inspection, and any copy charges are whatever the CC&Rs and bylaws say.² Where the documents go quiet, an owner’s real recourse is the general civil and equitable power of the Circuit Court, not a statutory inspection tool. The model act’s familiar machinery — a written demand at least five business days out, a good-faith proper purpose, records described with reasonable particularity — is not Arkansas nonprofit law. Those exact mechanics do show up in Arkansas’s Business Corporation Act at § 4-27-1602, which conditions inspection of certain records on a demand “made in good faith and for a proper purpose” delivered with “at least five (5) business days” written notice — but only for an association that happens to be incorporated as a business corporation.³ Property managers working across state lines should not assume an Arkansas nonprofit HOA carries the five-day, proper-purpose framework. Most of the time, it does not.

3C. Withholding, confidentiality, and the membership or owner list

Because the Horizontal Property Act reaches only the financial book and its vouchers, it lists no withholdable categories, no membership-list protections, and no commercial-use or opt-out rules.¹ It says nothing about attorney-client material, pending-litigation files, personnel records, or individual-owner files. Whatever protection those enjoy comes from general Arkansas law, not from the condominium statute — and privilege and work-product doctrines meet a records demand here the same way they would in any civil case.

For planned communities, the analysis again sits on the governing documents and general law. The Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 grants no membership-list inspection right, so it carries no commercial-use restriction or opt-out tied to one.² A proper-purpose condition exists in Arkansas corporate law only under the Business Corporation Act, § 4-27-1602(c), and only for associations incorporated under that chapter.³ One more thing owners and boards should keep in mind: the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act generally does not reach a private homeowners association’s internal records, so an owner cannot turn a private records dispute into a public-records demand without some unusual government entanglement.⁷

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

Neither the Horizontal Property Act nor the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 hands an owner a statutory records remedy, statutory damages, a per-day penalty, or fee-shifting — in a planned community or a condominium.^{1, 2} An owner shut out of the financial book under § 18-13-110, or denied records the CC&Rs promised, enforces the right through an ordinary civil action in Arkansas Circuit Court — usually asking for an injunction or a writ of mandamus to force production, or, in a planned community, suing for breach of the recorded covenants. Cost and counsel-fee recovery shows up as a statutory matter in only one place: where the Business Corporation Act applies. Section 4-27-1604 tells a court that orders inspection to “order the corporation to pay the shareholder’s costs (including reasonable counsel fees) incurred to obtain the order,” unless the corporation refused in good faith on a reasonable doubt about the right to inspect.⁵ Trial-level disputes run in Circuit Court, with appeal to the Arkansas Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the Arkansas Supreme Court.⁶ Arkansas has no dedicated HOA regulator and no agency records-complaint process — enforcement is judicial.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Arkansas’s recent action here is light — one signed bill, and it deliberately left the records rule untouched.

B. Recent rulings

Here the shelf is bare, and that is the finding. No Arkansas appellate decision in the past 36 months has interpreted the records-examination right under Horizontal Property Act § 18-13-110, or member records access in a planned community. The silence fits the structure: when neither the Horizontal Property Act nor the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 supplies a detailed inspection mechanism, there is little statutory text for a court to construe, and records fights get settled on the governing documents in the trial courts — without throwing off published appellate law. Editors who want to confirm the current docket can check the Arkansas Judiciary opinions portal.⁶

C. Active legislative debates

No pending Arkansas proposal would add a fixed records-response deadline, a copy-fee cap, an electronic-records rule, or records penalties — for condominiums or planned communities. And the 2025 session’s condominium work, Act 516, did not push in that direction.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Step back, and Arkansas reads as a CC&R-primary, split-regime state. Condominium records sit under a thin, 1960s-era Horizontal Property Act that runs on an availability standard at § 18-13-110 and reaches only the financial book and its vouchers, while planned-community records rest on the recorded CC&Rs and bylaws.¹ The state has no comprehensive planned-community statute, has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, and its Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 drops the member records-inspection subchapter that the model act — and states like South Carolina — rely on. So for most associations there isn’t even a corporate-law backstop.² That sets Arkansas at the far end of the spectrum from hard-clock states like Florida (Chapters 718 and 720) and California (Davis-Stirling). For a multi-state operator the takeaway is blunt: the fixed statutory production clock you are used to does not exist here. You work from the recorded CC&Rs and bylaws, with only the condominium financial-book rule layered on top. And momentum toward a comprehensive Arkansas planned-community statute, or a fixed records deadline, is still nowhere in sight.

HOA Weekly refreshes its Arkansas records-inspection coverage each quarter, as the General Assembly and the Arkansas courts act. Federal frameworks — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC’s OTARD rule — also apply to Arkansas associations, whatever the state framework says.

Footnotes

1. Ark. Code § 18-13-110 (Book of receipts and expenditures — examination), Arkansas Horizontal Property Act (Code of Arkansas Public Access, Title 18, Ch. 13) ↩
2. Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq. (Subchapter 16 of Chapter 33, “Conversion to a Public Water Authority,” contains no member records-inspection section comparable to the Revised Model Nonprofit Corporation Act) (Code of Arkansas Public Access, Title 4, Ch. 33) ↩
3. Ark. Code §§ 4-27-1601 (corporate records) & 4-27-1602 (inspection of records by shareholders), Arkansas Business Corporation Act of 1987 (Code of Arkansas Public Access, Title 4, Ch. 27) ↩
4. Act 516 of 2025 (S.B. 323), 95th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., “An Act to Amend the Horizontal Property Act; and for Other Purposes” (approved Apr. 10, 2025; applicable to regimes organized on and after Sept. 1, 2025; amends Ark. Code §§ 18-13-102, -103, -104, -112, -116; does not amend § 18-13-110) ↩
5. Ark. Code § 4-27-1604 (Court-ordered inspection; cost and reasonable counsel-fee shifting), Arkansas Business Corporation Act of 1987 (Code of Arkansas Public Access, Title 4, Ch. 27) ↩
6. Arkansas Judiciary, published opinions portal (Circuit Court trial level; Arkansas Court of Appeals; Arkansas Supreme Court) ↩
7. Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, Ark. Code § 25-19-101 et seq. (generally inapplicable to private associations absent public-funding or governmental-function entanglement) (Code of Arkansas Public Access, Title 25, Ch. 19) ↩