Indiana HOA Records Inspection

Section 1 — Overview: How records inspection works in Indiana

Indiana hands owners a records-inspection right, and it does so through three different laws rather than one. Two property statutes carry most of the weight, and a corporate law sits behind them as a backstop. What you will not find is a fixed clock — Indiana measures access by reasonableness and availability, not by a counted number of days.

Planned communities answer to the Indiana Homeowners Associations Act, Ind. Code § 32-25.5. Its records provision, at § 32-25.5-3-3(g) through (m), tells an association to make financial records and board meeting minutes available to members who ask in writing.¹ Condominiums run on a separate track. The Indiana Condominium Act, Ind. Code § 32-25, governs them, and its records provision at § 32-25-8-8 requires the association to open its records and payment vouchers to co-owners at convenient weekday hours, with board minutes available on request under § 32-25-8-2.5.² And because most Indiana associations incorporate as nonprofits, a third law often applies: the Indiana Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1991, Ind. Code § 23-17, which gives members an inspection right at § 23-17-27-2 and a court-ordered remedy at § 23-17-27-4.³

Here is what sets Indiana apart. Some states leave planned communities entirely to corporate law; Indiana does not. It gives planned-community members a dedicated statutory records right under the HOA Act, while condominiums draw theirs from the Condominium Act. The condominium standard ties access to convenient weekday hours rather than a deadline, and the HOA Act sets no fixed day-count either.¹ That places Indiana in the middle of the national spectrum — between hard-clock states such as Florida and California and the states that rely on corporate law alone. The quick-reference table and the detail below walk through each provision, and they flag where each statute simply says nothing.

Section 2 — Quick-Reference: Indiana HOA Records Inspection

Quick-Reference: Indiana HOA Records Inspection

Section 3 — The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

The records you can inspect depend on the community type, because each type rests on a different statute. For planned communities, the HOA Act at Ind. Code § 32-25.5-3-3(g) opens two categories to every member who asks in writing: the financial records — which the statute defines to include all contracts, invoices, bills, receipts, and bank records — and the minutes of association board meetings, the annual meeting included.¹ Those records subsections, (g) through (m), reach every planned-community homeowners association in Indiana, whether it formed before or after the HOA Act took effect in 2009. Section 32-25.5-1-1 carries the inspection provisions across that 2009 line, even though other parts of the Act apply only to associations formed after June 30, 2009.⁴ The Indiana Court of Appeals confirmed that reach in passing in 2025, noting in a footnote that the records-inspection subsections apply regardless of formation date.¹¹

Condominiums work differently. The Condominium Act at Ind. Code § 32-25-8-8 directs the manager or board to keep detailed, accurate records, in chronological order, of the receipts and expenditures affecting the common areas and facilities — itemizing maintenance, repair, and other expenses — and to open those records, along with the vouchers authorizing payment, to the co-owners.² Board meeting minutes get their own provision at § 32-25-8-2.5, which makes the minutes of board meetings, including the annual meeting, available to a co-owner on request.² For associations incorporated as nonprofits, the corporate baseline at Ind. Code § 23-17-27-1 lists what the corporation must keep: articles and bylaws, board and member meeting minutes, accounting records, a membership record, recent member communications, and a current list of directors and officers.⁶ Where neither the HOA Act nor the Condominium Act reaches a particular record, the right to inspect falls back on this corporate baseline or on the association’s own declaration and bylaws.

3B. The request-and-response sequence

Who may inspect tracks who is a member. Under the HOA Act, each member of the association may inspect; under the Condominium Act, co-owners may examine; and under the Nonprofit Act, a member — or the member’s agent or attorney authorized in writing — may inspect.¹ On proper purpose, the statutes part ways. The HOA Act flatly forbids conditioning access on a stated purpose: a member’s ability to inspect “shall not be unreasonably denied or conditioned upon provision of an appropriate purpose for the request.”¹ The Condominium Act states no proper-purpose requirement at all. The Nonprofit Act splits the difference across its own records: baseline records are inspectable on notice, but accounting records, meeting minutes, and the membership list under § 23-17-27-2(b) require a demand made in good faith and for a proper purpose, described with reasonable particularity and connected directly to that purpose.³

The form of the request varies too. The HOA Act wants a written request that identifies the information “with reasonable particularity,” and it lets members submit minutes requests in person, in writing, or by email.¹ The Nonprofit Act wants written notice or a written demand at least five business days before the member intends to inspect.³ That five-business-day figure is a notice period running ahead of the inspection — not a deadline by which the association must respond.

On timing, here is the point that matters most for multi-state operators: Indiana imposes no fixed response or production deadline for HOA or condominium records. The HOA Act uses an availability standard — financial records “must be available for inspection by each member of the homeowners association upon written request” — and the Condominium Act ties examination to “convenient hours of weekdays.”^1,2 Neither counts days. The Nonprofit Act frames inspection as happening “at a reasonable time and location specified by the corporation.”³ On charges, the Condominium Act permits a reasonable copying fee for written copies of minutes.² The HOA Act, as it reads on the date of this page, permits a reasonable copying fee plus a search fee — free for the first hour, no more than $35 per hour after that, and $200 total at most.¹ That structure changes on July 1, 2026, when 2026 legislation removes the association’s authority to charge homeowners for producing or copying records.⁵ The Nonprofit Act allows a reasonable charge that does not exceed the estimated cost of production.³

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

The HOA Act is the most detailed of the three on what an association may withhold. Under § 32-25.5-3-3(k), an association need not produce unexecuted contracts, contract-negotiation records, information about an individual member’s account requested by someone who is not a named party on it, information barred from release by state or federal law, records created more than two years before the request, and certain member-supplied information about suspected criminal activity involving another member.¹ Subsection (j) protects communications between the association and its legal counsel, plus attorney work product prepared in anticipation of litigation — lining the statute up with attorney-client privilege and pending-litigation confidentiality.¹ The Condominium Act names no withholdable categories for records, so confidentiality there runs through the declaration, the bylaws, and general law.

On the membership or owner list, the HOA Act requires the association to keep a current roster of members with mailing addresses and legal descriptions, but it sets no commercial-use limit and no opt-out for that roster.⁴ The stronger protection comes from the corporate backstop: Ind. Code § 23-17-27-5 bars using all or part of a membership list, without board consent, for any purpose unrelated to a member’s interest as a member, for a commercial purpose, or for sale to or purchase by anyone.⁷ For associations incorporated as nonprofits, that provision is the operative limit on misuse of the owner list.

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

When an association refuses a proper request, the remedy again depends on which statute governs. The HOA Act carries no records-specific damages, per-day penalty, or fee-shifting, so a planned-community member falls back on general civil remedies — an action to compel production or for injunctive relief. The Attorney General’s authority under Ind. Code § 32-25.5-4 reaches misappropriation, fraud, proxy violations, and budgeting violations, not records requests, so it is no records-complaint pathway.⁸ The Condominium Act, at § 32-25-9-1, makes noncompliance with the articles, bylaws, rules, or declaration grounds for an action — to recover sums due, for damages, for injunctive relief, or for other legal or equitable relief — that an aggrieved co-owner may bring.⁹ The strongest statutory remedy sits in the corporate backstop: Ind. Code § 23-17-27-4 lets a member ask the Circuit or Superior Court for an order compelling inspection, directs the court to decide the application on an expedited basis, and requires the court to make the corporation pay the member’s costs, including reasonable attorney’s fees, unless the corporation proves it refused in good faith on a reasonable basis.¹⁰ All of these disputes move through the Indiana Circuit and Superior Courts, with appeal to the Indiana Court of Appeals and discretionary transfer to the Indiana Supreme Court.

Section 4 — Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Indiana’s 2026 session reached the records provision itself, and it did so chiefly by taking away the association’s power to charge for records. Two enrolled bills amended the same HOA-records section, and both take effect on July 1, 2026.

B. Recent rulings

On the judicial side, Indiana’s appellate courts have not yet taken up the records-inspection right head-on. The closest recent decision settles a governance question and, in a footnote, confirms how far the records provisions reach.

C. Active legislative debates

The live question now is how HB1152 and HB1115 fit together. Both were signed in 2026 and both take effect July 1, 2026, and between them they end the association’s authority to charge homeowners for producing requested records. Beyond that, no pending Indiana proposal would add a fixed response deadline, an electronic-records delivery mandate, or a per-day penalty to the records-inspection framework.

Section 5 — National positioning and related coverage

Indiana sits in the middle of the national spectrum on records inspection. It gives both condominiums and planned communities a statutory records right through dedicated statutes, which puts it ahead of covenant-primary states such as Iowa or Arkansas that leave planned-community records largely to corporate law. But it leans on availability and reasonable-time standards rather than the hard clocks of Florida and California. For a multi-state operator, the takeaway is direct: an Indiana planned community owes a statutory records duty under the HOA Act, so a manager cannot treat Indiana as a covenants-only state for records and must answer written member requests under § 32-25.5-3-3. Recent activity has reshaped that provision — 2026 legislation removes the association’s authority to charge production and copying fees effective July 1, 2026 — while leaving the no-fixed-deadline structure in place.

HOA Weekly refreshes its Indiana records-inspection coverage each quarter, as the legislature and the Indiana 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 — apply to Indiana associations no matter what the state framework says.

Footnotes

1. Ind. Code § 32-25.5-3-3(g)–(m) (Indiana Homeowners Associations Act), statutory text reproduced in Engrossed House Bill 1152 (2026), Indiana General Assembly ↩
2. Ind. Code § 32-25-8-8 (Records) & § 32-25-8-2.5 (board meeting minutes available on request; reasonable copying fee), Indiana Condominium Act, Title 32, Art. 25, Indiana General Assembly ↩
3. Ind. Code § 23-17-27-2 (member inspection right; five business days’ written notice; good faith and proper purpose for certain records) & § 23-17-27-3 (reasonable copy charge not exceeding estimated cost of production), Indiana Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1991, Title 23, Art. 17, Indiana General Assembly ↩
4. Ind. Code § 32-25.5-1-1 (applicability to pre- and post-2009 associations) & § 32-25.5-3-1 (association must maintain a current member roster), Indiana General Assembly ↩
5. Engrossed House Bill 1152 (2026), adding Ind. Code § 32-25.5-3-3(n) (barring a homeowners association from charging a homeowner a fee associated with any service the association provides, other than dues or fines in the governing documents), effective July 1, 2026, Indiana General Assembly ↩
6. Ind. Code § 23-17-27-1 (required records; retention of minutes, member communications, and ballots; written-or-convertible form), 2024 Indiana Code (Justia) ↩
7. Ind. Code § 23-17-27-5 (membership-list use; bar on commercial use, sale, and purposes unrelated to membership absent board consent), Indiana Code (Justia) ↩
8. Ind. Code § 32-25.5-4 (Attorney General actions for misappropriation or fraud, proxy violations, and budgeting violations), 2025 Indiana Code (Justia) ↩
9. Ind. Code § 32-25-9-1 (compliance with articles, bylaws, and covenants; action by an aggrieved co-owner for sums due, damages, injunctive, or other relief), 2024 Indiana Code (Justia) ↩
10. Ind. Code § 23-17-27-4 (court-ordered inspection in Circuit or Superior Court; expedited disposition; mandatory cost and reasonable-attorney-fee shifting absent a good-faith refusal on a reasonable basis), Indiana Code (Justia) ↩
11. Sandoval v. Willow Lake Estates Home Owners Ass’n, Inc., No. 24A-MF-309 (Ind. Ct. App. Mar. 12, 2025), Indiana Courts decisions database ↩
12. House Bill 1115 (2026) summary (removal of fees for production of documents; $50 cap on resale/payoff statements), Kovitz Shifrin Nesbit, 2026 Legislative Updates for Indiana Community Associations ↩
13. Indiana HB1115 (2026), “Homeowners association governance,” signed by the Governor Mar. 12, 2026, LegiScan ↩
14. Indiana HB1152 (2026), “Homeowners association matters,” signed by the Governor Mar. 3, 2026, LegiScan ↩