Georgia HOA Records Inspection

Section 1 — Overview: How records inspection works in Georgia

Georgia handles records inspection through three separate laws, and which one applies depends on what kind of community you live in. Condominium records fall under the Georgia Condominium Act (O.C.G.A. § 44-3-70 et seq.). Planned-community records depend on whether the community opted into the Georgia Property Owners' Association Act, or POAA; communities that did not opt in fall back on their recorded covenants and the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code. Three provisions do most of the work: the record-keeping duty for condominium associations at O.C.G.A. § 44-3-106(d),¹ the matching POAA record-keeping duty at O.C.G.A. § 44-3-231(d),² and the member-inspection right in the Nonprofit Corporation Code at O.C.G.A. §§ 14-3-1601 through 14-3-1605.³ The POAA governs a planned community only when the recorded declaration expressly elected to be governed by it under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-222.⁴ Neither the Condominium Act nor the POAA sets a fixed deadline for producing records; each one simply requires the association to keep records. So for most Georgia associations, the inspection right you can actually enforce runs through the Nonprofit Corporation Code, which reaches them because they incorporated as nonprofits. Georgia, in other words, uses a standard of reasonableness and availability instead of a hard clock: a member must give written notice at least five business days before inspecting, and the association must open the records at a reasonable time and place.⁵ That puts Georgia between the hard-clock states and the corporate-law states. Florida, for example, requires official records within 10 business days of a written request (Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5)(a)),⁶ and California sets tiers of 10 business days and 30 calendar days (Cal. Civ. Code § 5210(b)).⁷ The table and the sections that follow lay out how each of the three regimes works.

Section 2 — Quick-Reference: Georgia HOA Records Inspection

Section 3 — The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

Georgia keeps the duty to hold records separate from the right to inspect them, and the two duties sit in different statutes. For condominiums, O.C.G.A. § 44-3-106(d) tells the association to keep detailed minutes of every meeting of the members and the board, detailed and accurate financial records — including itemized records of all receipts and expenditures — and any books and records it needs to reflect the association's affairs accurately.¹ The POAA places the same duty on opted-in planned communities at O.C.G.A. § 44-3-231(d), and separately requires the association to keep true and correct copies of its articles of incorporation and bylaws and to furnish copies to any lot owner on request at O.C.G.A. § 44-3-227(c).⁸ Neither section, by itself, gives a member a general right to inspect financial records or sets the terms for doing so.

The enforceable inspection right comes from corporate law. Because most Georgia condominium and homeowner associations incorporate as nonprofits, the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code supplies the inspection mechanism. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1601 lists the records every nonprofit must keep permanently, including minutes and a membership record.³ O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602 then splits inspectable records into two groups: an always-available group a member may inspect on notice without stating a purpose, and a second group — accounting records, detailed meeting minutes, and the membership list — a member may inspect only for a proper purpose.⁵ So the community-type split works like this: condominium associations and opted-in planned communities carry the record-keeping duties of the Condominium Act or POAA, but the inspection rights for every incorporated association, including planned communities that never opted in, rest on the Nonprofit Corporation Code plus the recorded covenants. The inspection right itself has no before-and-after effective-date split; the recent change that matters is the modernized copying language discussed below.

3B. The request-and-response sequence

Standing to inspect belongs to members — unit owners in a condominium, lot owners in a planned community — and to a member's agent or attorney, who under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1603(a) holds the same inspection and copying rights as the member.⁹ The process starts with a written notice or written demand. Under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602(b), a member who wants to inspect always-available records must give the corporation written notice at least five business days before the date the member wants to inspect and copy. For the proper-purpose group under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602(c) and (d), the member must also make the demand in good faith and for a proper purpose reasonably tied to a legitimate interest, describe with reasonable particularity both the purpose and the records sought, and use the records only for the stated purpose.⁵

No fixed production deadline applies. The association must allow inspection at a reasonable time and place that it specifies, which works as an availability standard rather than a hard clock. That stands apart from Florida's 10-business-day deadline under Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5)(a), which on breach triggers a rebuttable presumption of willful noncompliance and damages of $50 per calendar day up to $500,⁶ and from California's 10-business-day and 30-calendar-day tiers under Cal. Civ. Code § 5210(b).⁷ Georgia's five business days is the minimum notice the member gives, not a countdown the board must beat. Inspection includes copying, and the right to copy reaches copies made by photographic, electronic, or other means under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1603(b).⁹ On charges, O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1603(c) lets the corporation impose a reasonable fee for labor and material that may not exceed the estimated cost of production, and O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1603(d) requires it to convert any non-written record into written form at no charge on request. For the opt-in mechanism, a planned community follows the POAA only where its declaration expressly elected to be governed by the Act under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-222;⁴ if it did not, the sequence still runs through the Nonprofit Corporation Code demand mechanism as long as the association is incorporated, with the recorded covenants adding any further access rights. The POAA copy right for articles and bylaws under O.C.G.A. § 44-3-227(c) works on request and on payment of a reasonable charge.⁸

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

Neither the Condominium Act nor the POAA lists categories of records an association may withhold, so under those statutes the answer is that no exempt categories are specified. The Nonprofit Corporation Code lists none either, but it builds in two protections. First, the proper-purpose condition in O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602(d) screens demands for accounting records, detailed minutes, and the membership list, letting an association resist a demand that is not made in good faith or not reasonably tied to the member's interest. Second, O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602(e) lets the corporation place reasonable restrictions on the confidentiality, use, or distribution of the proper-purpose records.⁵

The membership or owner list gets the most specific treatment. A member may inspect it for a proper purpose on at least five business days' written notice under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602(c), but O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1605 limits what anyone may do with it: without the board's consent, no one may obtain or use a membership list for any purpose unrelated to a member's interest as a member, use it to solicit money or property (except to solicit member votes in a corporate election), use it for any commercial purpose, or sell it to or buy it from anyone.¹⁰ As for attorney-client privilege and pending litigation, the statute leaves those to general law; O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602 expressly preserves separate litigation-discovery rights and a court's independent power to compel production, which signals that a records demand and civil discovery run on separate tracks.⁵

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

The records remedy, like the inspection right, comes from the Nonprofit Corporation Code, not the Condominium Act or the POAA — neither of which provides a records-specific remedy or fee-shifting. Under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1604(a), if an association refuses inspection of always-available records, the superior court may summarily order inspection and copying at the association's expense. Under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1604(b), for the proper-purpose records, a member who has met the demand requirements may apply to the superior court, and the court must handle the application on an expedited basis. The fee-shifting provision is the main lever: O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1604(c) requires the court, when it orders inspection, to order the association to pay the member's costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees, unless the association proves it refused in good faith because it had a reasonable basis to doubt the member's right to inspect. The court may also place reasonable restrictions on the member's use or distribution of the records under O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1604(d).¹³ The enforcement forum is the superior court of the county where the community sits. Georgia has no dedicated HOA regulator and no agency records-complaint pathway under current law, so enforcement stays judicial until SB 406 sets up an administrative complaint process.¹¹

Section 4 — Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Georgia's 2025–2026 session produced one law that reshapes records inspection, and it arrives in phases.

A second measure, SB 148 (2023 Ga. Laws 260), amended O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602 and modernized the copying language of O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1603 to cover electronic copies. It took effect July 1, 2023, so it falls outside the past-24-month window, but it supplies the current text the sections above rely on.¹²

B. Recent rulings

No published decision of the Court of Appeals of Georgia or the Supreme Court of Georgia in the past 36 months squarely interprets the records-inspection provisions discussed here. The controlling appellate authority is an older case, included here because no newer decision has displaced it.

C. Active legislative debates

The main active development is the phased rollout of SB 406. Its registration, records-retention, and owner-inspection provisions take effect January 1, 2027, and for the first time they add an administrative complaint pathway and explicit statutory inspection rights to Georgia's framework.¹¹

Section 5 — National positioning and related coverage

Georgia is a mixed-structure state. Condominiums fall under a comprehensive condominium statute that relies on a record-keeping duty and an availability standard for inspection rather than a fixed clock. Planned communities fall under the opt-in POAA only where the recorded declaration submitted to it, and planned communities that never opted in rely on their recorded covenants plus the corporate inspection right in the Georgia Nonprofit Corporation Code. That structure contrasts with hard-clock states such as Florida and California, which impose fixed production deadlines and copy-fee rules, and with states that apply one uniform framework to every common-interest community. For a multi-state operator, the practical takeaway is that in Georgia you must first determine, for each planned community, whether the declaration opted into the POAA, because the governing records framework turns sharply on that election. Current momentum points toward broader coverage: SB 406 extends new records-retention and inspection obligations across Georgia associations once it takes effect, and it raises the assessment-foreclosure threshold from $2,000 to $4,000.¹¹

Federal frameworks also apply to Georgia associations no matter which state regime governs, 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.

Footnotes

1. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-106(d) (Ga. Condominium Act, association record-keeping duty) ↩
2. O.C.G.A. §§ 44-3-231(d), 44-3-234 (Ga. Property Owners' Association Act, record-keeping duty; Act inapplicable to associations created under the Condominium Act) ↩
3. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1601 (Ga. Nonprofit Corporation Code, required corporate records) ↩
4. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-222 (Ga. Property Owners' Association Act, affirmative election to be governed by the article) ↩
5. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1602 (Ga. Nonprofit Corporation Code, members' right to inspect and copy records), amended by 2023 Ga. Laws 260 ↩
6. Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5) (Florida homeowners' association official records; inspection within 10 business days; rebuttable presumption of willful noncompliance and $50-per-day damages up to $500) ↩
7. Cal. Civ. Code § 5210(b) (California common-interest development records; 10-business-day and 30-calendar-day production tiers) ↩
8. O.C.G.A. § 44-3-227(c) (Ga. Property Owners' Association Act; copies of articles and bylaws furnished to any lot owner on request upon payment of a reasonable charge) ↩
9. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1603 (Ga. Nonprofit Corporation Code, scope of inspection and copying right) ↩
10. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1605 (Ga. Nonprofit Corporation Code, restrictions on use of the membership list) ↩
11. S.B. 406, "Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act," 2025–2026 Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2026) (Act 715, signed May 12, 2026; ten-year records-retention, owner-inspection, and complaint-board provisions effective Jan. 1, 2027; attorney-fee provisions effective July 1, 2026; foreclosure threshold raised to $4,000) ↩
12. S.B. 148, 2023 Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2023) (2023 Ga. Laws 260; amending O.C.G.A. §§ 14-3-1602, 14-3-1603 to modernize the copying language for electronic copies; effective July 1, 2023) ↩
13. O.C.G.A. § 14-3-1604 (Ga. Nonprofit Corporation Code, court-ordered inspection; fee-shifting) ↩
14. O.C.G.A. §§ 44-3-221, 44-3-71 (Ga. Property Owners' Association Act and Ga. Condominium Act definitions; "court" means the superior court of the county where the community is located) ↩
15. Freddy Stroud & Zach Harris, Georgia Community Associations Face Major Regulatory Changes Under SB 406, HunterMaclean (May 2026) ↩
16. Westbury Square Townhouses Ass'n, Inc. v. Bryan, 223 Ga. App. 885, 479 S.E.2d 190 (Ga. Ct. App. 1996) ↩