Delaware HOA Records Inspection

Section 1: Overview

Start with the statute that does the work. In Delaware, a homeowner's right to inspect association records flows from the Delaware Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act — DUCIOA — at Del. Code tit. 25, § 81-318, titled "Association records." It is a detailed provision. It spells out the records an association has to keep, the procedure an owner follows to inspect them, the fees an association may charge, and the categories it may hold back.¹ Section 81-318 governs the common interest communities — condominiums, cooperatives, and planned communities — created on or after September 30, 2009.² Condominiums built before that date still answer to the older Delaware Unit Property Act, Del. Code tit. 25, ch. 22, and its records provision is a thinner one. Even so, DUCIOA's transition section reaches back and applies § 81-318 to those pre-2009 communities for events that occur after the effective date.^3,4

Delaware does not set a hard production deadline. A unit owner gives five days' written notice that names the purpose and the specific records sought, and the inspection then takes place during reasonable business hours, or at a time and place both sides find convenient. That is a reasonableness standard — not a statutory clock.¹

Delaware also splits its trial courts. An action to compel inspection asks for equitable relief, so it belongs in the Court of Chancery; a claim for money damages belongs in the Superior Court. There is no intermediate appellate court in Delaware, so appeals run straight to the Delaware Supreme Court.⁵ A Common Interest Community Ombudsperson sits within the Department of Justice and offers education and dispute resolution, but it is not a records-enforcement agency.⁶

Nationally, Delaware lands between the hard-clock states, such as Florida and California, and the bare-reasonableness states. Its list of inspectable records is detailed, even though production itself runs on a reasonableness standard. The table and the sections that follow lay out the mechanics.

Section 2: Quick-Reference: Delaware HOA Records Inspection

Section 3: The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

Section 81-318(a) directs every DUCIOA association to keep a defined set of records, in written form or in another form it can convert into written form within a reasonable time.¹ Those records include detailed receipts and expenditures (and other accounting records, including those for the repair and replacement reserve, kept under generally accepted accounting practices); minutes of every meeting of the members and the executive board, plus records of actions taken without a meeting; and a record of members detailed enough to produce an alphabetical list of names and addresses, with each member's voting strength and class.¹

The statute also tells the association to keep, at its principal office, its certificate of incorporation and bylaws with current amendments; the minutes of members' meetings and records of member actions for the past three years; financial statements and tax returns for the past three years with the auditors' report; a list of the names and business addresses of current directors and officers; the most recent annual report delivered to the Secretary of State; for a condominium or cooperative, the most recent reserve study; and records detailed enough to support a resale certificate under § 81-409.¹ Section 81-318(b) then opens all records the association keeps — including the membership list and address and aggregate employee-salary information — to examination and copying.¹

For post-2009 communities, this right is statutory and runs the same way across condominiums, cooperatives, and planned communities. For pre-2009 condominiums, the older Unit Property Act grants a narrower right: the treasurer keeps detailed records of receipts and expenditures, and unit owners may examine them during regular business hours.⁴ But DUCIOA's applicability section (§ 81-119) extends § 81-318 to pre-2009 communities for events and circumstances that occur after September 30, 2009, without invalidating the non-conflicting provisions of the existing governing documents.³ So a pre-2009 condominium owner can generally lean on the fuller § 81-318 right for current records, while pre-2009 planned communities also look to their recorded CC&Rs and, where the association is incorporated, to Delaware corporate-law records rights.⁹

3B. The request-and-response sequence

Standing runs to a unit owner or the unit owner's authorized agent, and § 81-318(b) attaches a proper-purpose requirement: the owner must make the request in good faith and for a proper purpose tied to membership in the association.¹ That screens out requests aimed at harassment or at unrelated commercial ends.

The statute prescribes the form of the request. The owner must give five days' written notice that reasonably identifies both the purpose of the request and the specific records sought.¹ The statute does not demand a particular delivery method or a notarized demand; it demands specificity. So a blanket call for "all records" carries less weight than a targeted list.

On timing, Delaware uses a reasonableness standard, not a fixed production clock. No statute sets the number of days within which the association must produce records. Instead, after the five-day notice, the owner may examine the records only during reasonable business hours or at a mutually convenient time and location.¹ Managers and boards should not read the five-day notice as a five-day production deadline; it is the minimum advance notice the owner must give. The practical move is to schedule the inspection promptly and document the scheduling.

The inspection happens at the association's premises during business hours, or at an agreed time and place, and the right to copy includes copies by xerographic or other means, including electronic transmission where available and requested.¹ On charges, § 81-318(e) lets the association require a fee in advance for converting records to written form, permitting inspection, and providing copies, capped at the actual cost of materials and labor.¹ The association need not compile or synthesize information that does not already exist in its records.¹

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

Section 81-318(c) lists the categories an association may withhold from inspection and copying: personnel matters relating to specific persons and medical records; contracts, leases, and other commercial transactions currently in or under negotiation; pending or threatened litigation, arbitration, mediation, or other administrative proceedings; matters involving government enforcement proceedings over the declaration, bylaws, or rules; communications protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine; disclosures that would violate law; executive-session minutes and other confidential executive-session records; and individual unit-owner files other than those of the requesting owner.¹ Section 81-318(d) adds that an attorney's files and records relating to the association are not association records at all, and are not subject to owner inspection.¹

These categories are statutory, not discretionary inventions, and they track familiar privilege and privacy lines. A records demand does not pierce the attorney-client privilege or force the disclosure of litigation strategy, and a board may redact or withhold the listed categories while it produces the rest.

The membership list gets its own treatment. It is expressly available for examination and copying, but § 81-318(h) bars the use of information obtained under the section for commercial purposes.¹ That commercial-use restriction is the statute's main guardrail against harvesting owner contact data for solicitation. The statute gives an individual owner no opt-out from the list, so an owner who objects to disclosing contact information has no statutory mechanism to be excluded.

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

DUCIOA carries no records-specific penalty. Enforcement runs through the general remedies provision, § 81-417 ("Effect of violations on rights of action; attorneys' fees"), under which any person adversely affected by a failure to comply with the chapter or the governing documents has a claim for appropriate relief, and the court, in an appropriate case, may award court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees.⁷ There is no statutory per-day penalty and no fixed statutory damages figure for a records denial; fee recovery is discretionary, not automatic. Section 81-417 reaches pre-2009 communities through § 81-119.³

Because compelling inspection is equitable relief — a mandatory order to produce — the proper forum is the Court of Chancery, Delaware's court of equity. A claim that seeks money damages proceeds in the Superior Court. Delaware runs no intermediate appellate court, so appeals from either trial court go directly to the Delaware Supreme Court.⁵

Before litigation, owners may turn to the Common Interest Community Ombudsperson in the Department of Justice. House Bill 308 created the office, and Governor Jack Markell signed it on August 12, 2014. The office provides education and alternative dispute resolution and reviews complaints about potential violations of the law or the governing documents, but only after the complainant completes the association's internal dispute-resolution process.⁸ The Ombudsperson cannot give legal advice, does not act as an owner's attorney, and refers meritorious violations to the Attorney General. It is a dispute-resolution and education office, not a records-enforcement agency.⁶

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted or introduced in the past 24 months amends Del. Code tit. 25, § 81-318 or otherwise changes how DUCIOA handles records inspection. The last substantive amendment to the records section was House Bill 112 (151st General Assembly), which Governor John Carney signed on September 20, 2021, effective October 20, 2021. It amended § 81-318(e) to make clear that the association may charge its conversion, inspection, and copying fee in advance. That amendment predates the lookback window.¹⁰

One active common-interest-community measure has any bearing on records disputes: House Bill 469.

B. Recent rulings

No Delaware Supreme Court or Court of Chancery decision in the past 36 months interprets or applies § 81-318 records inspection. The closest common-interest-community decision in the window does not concern records.

C. Active legislative debates

The only pending common-interest-community proposal is HB 469, which would expand the Ombudsperson office. No bill before the General Assembly would alter Delaware's § 81-318 records-inspection framework.¹¹

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Delaware is a Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act state, and its records provision is a detailed one. Section 81-318 enumerates the records an association must keep, sets a request procedure, caps copy fees at actual cost, and lists the categories an association may withhold. That places Delaware closer to detailed-mechanics UCIOA enactments, such as Connecticut's, than to bare "reasonably available for examination" states, such as Alaska. The lesson for multi-state operators is that "UCIOA state" is not a single records regime; the degree of detail varies by enactment, and Delaware's sits on the detailed end even though production runs on a reasonableness standard rather than a day-count. Delaware's distinctive features include the Common Interest Community Ombudsperson at the Department of Justice and its bifurcated trial courts, with the Court of Chancery as the forum for compelling inspection and no intermediate appellate court between the trial courts and the Delaware Supreme Court. An operator coming from a bare-standard state should expect a more detailed records right in Delaware, and should bring a records-compulsion action in the proper forum — typically the Court of Chancery, for injunctive relief.

HOA Weekly's Delaware Records Inspection coverage updates quarterly as the General Assembly and the Delaware courts act. Federal frameworks — including the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the OTARD rule — also apply to Delaware associations, regardless of the state framework.

1. Del. Code Ann. tit. 25, § 81-318 (Association records), Delaware Code Online ↩
2. Del. Code Ann. tit. 25, § 81-116 (Applicability to new common interest communities; effective date), Delaware Code Online ↩
3. Del. Code Ann. tit. 25, § 81-119 (Applicability to preexisting common interest communities), Delaware Code Online ↩
4. Del. Code Ann. tit. 25, § 2218 (Unit Property Act; books of receipts and expenditures, availability for examination), Delaware Code Online ↩
5. Court of Chancery (jurisdiction over equitable matters), Delaware Courts ↩
6. Office of the Ombudsperson for the Common Interest Community, Delaware Department of Justice ↩
7. Del. Code Ann. tit. 25, § 81-417 (Effect of violations on rights of action; attorneys' fees), Delaware Code Online ↩
8. Del. Code Ann. tit. 29, § 2544 (Common Interest Community Ombudsperson; powers and duties), Delaware Code Online ↩
9. Del. Code Ann. tit. 25, § 81-326 (Delaware corporations; application of Title 8), Delaware Code Online ↩
10. House Bill 112, 151st General Assembly (amending § 81-318(e)), Delaware General Assembly ↩
11. House Bill 469, 153rd General Assembly (Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsperson), Delaware General Assembly ↩
12. Smernoff v. King's Grant Condominium Ass'n, Inc., C.A. No. 2020-0798-BWD (Del. Ch. July 12, 2024), Delaware Courts ↩