Nebraska HOA Records Inspection

Section 1: Overview — How records inspection works in Nebraska

Nebraska does not hand every homeowner the same records right. Where you stand depends on what kind of community you live in and, for condominiums, on when it was built. The state runs condominiums under the Nebraska Condominium Act (Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-825 et seq.), a statute Nebraska modeled on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act. Condominiums created before 1984 stay under the older Condominium Property Act (§ 76-801 et seq.). And Nebraska writes no comprehensive HOA statute at all for non-condominium planned communities, so those owners fall back on the Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act and their recorded covenants.¹

For condominiums created on or after January 1, 1984, the records provision is § 76-876 (“Association records”), which tells the association to make all financial and other records reasonably available for examination by any unit owner.² For condominiums created before that date, the predecessor provision is § 76-816, which makes the financial book and the vouchers behind it available at convenient hours — though § 76-826(a) reaches § 76-876 back to pre-1984 condominiums for anything that happens after January 1, 1984.³ A non-condominium planned-community owner inspects under a corporate right, not an HOA-specific one: the Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act (§ 21-19,165 to § 21-19,169) plus whatever the recorded covenants and bylaws spell out.⁴ And here is the contrast that matters for operators. Unlike hard-clock states such as Florida and California, the Condominium Act sets no fixed response deadline — it runs on an availability-or-reasonableness standard. The Nonprofit Corporation Act works differently still, on a written-demand mechanism with a defined notice period.² The sections below lay out the governing provisions, the request-and-response mechanics, what an association may withhold, and the remedies, with a quick-reference table first.

Section 2: Quick-Reference Table

Quick-Reference: Nebraska HOA Records Inspection

Section 3: The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

What a Nebraska owner can inspect comes down to community type and, for condominiums, creation date. Take condominiums created on or after January 1, 1984. The Condominium Act, at § 76-876, says it plainly: “[t]he association shall keep financial records sufficiently detailed to enable the association to comply with section 76-884. All financial and other records of the association shall be made reasonably available for examination by any unit owner and his or her authorized agents.”² That one sentence is the whole records catalog for a modern Nebraska condominium. Because the Act draws on the leaner 1980 Uniform Condominium Act rather than the 2008 Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, it never stops to list categories such as contracts, insurance policies, or reserve studies.¹³ But “all financial and other records” is broad language, and the Nebraska Court of Appeals took it at face value in Dunbar v. Twin Towers Condo. Assn., holding that an association resolution narrowing an owner’s access ran headlong into § 76-876.⁷

Condominiums created before January 1, 1984 answer to the Condominium Property Act at § 76-816. It tells the board to keep “a book with a detailed account, in chronological order, of the receipts and expenditures” and says “[b]oth the book and the vouchers accrediting the entries made thereupon shall be available for examination.”³ That is a thinner, money-focused right. But it does not stand alone: § 76-826(a) layers § 76-876 onto pre-1984 condominiums for events and circumstances after January 1, 1984, so even older regimes pick up the broader “all financial and other records” standard for their current activity.¹⁴

Non-condominium planned communities get no HOA records statute at all. Since most of these associations incorporate as Nebraska nonprofits, the inspectable records are the ones the Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act names at § 21-19,165(e): the articles and bylaws, board resolutions affecting member rights, minutes of member meetings and records of member actions for the past three years, written communications to members and financial statements for the past three years, a roster of current directors and officers, and the most recent biennial report.⁸ Accounting records and the membership list come with extra strings attached under § 21-19,166.⁶ And beyond the corporate statute, a planned-community owner’s access rests on the recorded declaration and bylaws.

3B. The request-and-response sequence

Standing and mechanics shift with the regime, so do not mix them. Under the Condominium Act, any unit owner and his or her authorized agents may examine records under § 76-876; the statute attaches no proper-purpose condition and demands no particular written form.² Under the Condominium Property Act, any co-owner may examine the financial book and vouchers under § 76-816, and a prospective purchaser may do the same once a co-owner designates that purchaser in writing.³ Under the Nonprofit Corporation Act, a member — or the member’s agent or attorney, who carries the same rights under § 21-19,167(a) — may inspect.⁵

The response standard is the single most important operational variable, and Nebraska splits three ways. For post-1984 condominiums, § 76-876 sets an availability-or-reasonableness standard: records must be made “reasonably available for examination.” No day-count.² For pre-1984 condominiums, § 76-816 likewise runs on availability, directing that records be available “at convenient hours on working days that shall be set and announced for general knowledge.”³ For planned communities, the Nonprofit Corporation Act starts a written-demand clock instead: under § 21-19,166 a member may inspect and copy “if the member gives the corporation written notice or a written demand at least five business days before the date on which the member wishes to inspect and copy,” at a reasonable time and place the corporation specifies.⁶ Read that five-business-day figure correctly: it is the member’s advance-notice duty, not a deadline the association has to hit.

Location and copying diverge too. The Condominium Act gives a right to examine records but, as Dunbar construed it, not a right to copy all of them — and it says nothing about copy charges.⁷ The Nonprofit Corporation Act goes further, granting a right to “inspect and copy” and letting the corporation charge “a reasonable charge, covering the costs of labor and material,” which “may not exceed the estimated cost of production or reproduction of the records” (§ 21-19,167(c)). That right to copy includes copies “made by photographic, xerographic, or other means” where reasonable (§ 21-19,167(b)).⁵

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

Neither condominium statute carries an exemption list. Section 76-876 and § 76-816 state the examination right without naming a single category an association may hold back, so any confidentiality limit on condominium records comes from general law — attorney-client privilege, work-product protection for litigation materials — rather than from a carve-out in the records statute.² In Dunbar, the association tried to deny access on confidentiality and “proper purpose” grounds borrowed from the nonprofit statute, but the court held that § 76-876, the specific statute, controls a condominium owner’s examination right over the general Nonprofit Corporation Act.⁷

The proper-purpose and membership-list protections live mostly on the planned-community side. Under § 21-19,166(c), a member may inspect accounting records, certain other records, and the membership list only when the demand is made in good faith and for a proper purpose, the member describes that purpose and the records with reasonable particularity, and the records connect directly to the purpose.⁶ The records listed in § 21-19,165(e) — bylaws, board minutes, financial statements — carry no such condition.⁸ The membership list gets its own guardrails at § 21-19,169: without board consent, no one may use it for any purpose unrelated to membership, use it to solicit money or property (except to solicit member votes in a corporate election), use it for any commercial purpose, or sell or buy it.⁹ A religious corporation may even limit or abolish the inspection right through its articles or bylaws (§ 21-19,166(e)) — a wrinkle that rarely touches a residential association.⁶

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

The remedy, again, depends on the regime. Neither the Condominium Act nor the Condominium Property Act offers a records-specific remedy — no statutory damages, no per-day penalty, no fee-shifting for a denied examination. An aggrieved unit owner’s recourse is a civil action to compel examination, and § 76-832 supplies that “the principles of law and equity,” including the law of corporations and unincorporated associations, supplement the Condominium Act.¹⁰ That is the road the owner in Dunbar traveled: ordinary civil litigation, not a records-penalty statute, won appellate relief, and the court held the owner was entitled to examine all financial and other records while confirming there is no right to copy all of them.⁷

The Nonprofit Corporation Act, by contrast, writes an express judicial remedy into the statute. Under § 21-19,168, if a corporation refuses a compliant inspection demand, the district court “may summarily order inspection and copying of the records demanded at the corporation’s expense,” and once it orders inspection it “shall also order the corporation to pay the member’s costs (including reasonable counsel fees) ... unless the corporation proves that it refused inspection in good faith because it had a reasonable basis for doubt about the right of the member to inspect the records demanded.” The court may also place reasonable restrictions on how the member uses the records.¹¹ Across every regime, the enforcement forum is the District Court — smaller matters may go through County Court — with appeal to the Nebraska Court of Appeals and possible further review by the Nebraska Supreme Court. Nebraska offers no administrative or agency records-complaint pathway; the Nebraska Real Estate Commission regulates licensees and has no jurisdiction over association governance disputes.¹²

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill in the 2024, 2025, or 2026 Nebraska legislative sessions touched the association records-inspection provisions. The records sections of the Condominium Act (§ 76-876) and the Condominium Property Act (§ 76-816) still carry their original or longstanding enactment sources, and the Nonprofit Corporation Act inspection provisions (§ 21-19,165 to § 21-19,169) trace to the 1996 adoption of that Act. The § 76-876 source line reads simply “Laws 1983, LB 433, § 52” — proof that the modern condominium records provision has not changed since 1983.²

One 2025 bill did touch association land records, though not records inspection: LB21, which adopts the Uniform Unlawful Restrictions in Land Records Act.

A separate effort to build a comprehensive Homeowner Association Act — LB973 (106th Legislature, 2nd Session), introduced by Sen. Rick Kolowski in the 2020 session — was indefinitely postponed and never became law. No equivalent omnibus HOA statute with records-inspection rules has passed since.¹⁶

B. Recent rulings

No Nebraska Court of Appeals or Nebraska Supreme Court decision from the past 36 months turned up interpreting an association member’s or unit owner’s right to inspect or copy records. The controlling appellate authority is still Dunbar v. Twin Towers Condo. Assn., decided in 2018 — the only Nebraska decision annotated under § 76-876.⁷

C. Active legislative debates

No active proposal in the 2026 session would bolt a fixed records-response deadline, a copy-fee cap, an electronic-records rule, or a records penalty onto the condominium or planned-community framework. Nebraska keeps operating without a comprehensive planned-community statute.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Nebraska is a split-condominium, covenant-primary state. Condominiums created on or after January 1, 1984 fall under a statute built on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act; condominiums created before that date stay under the older Condominium Property Act; and non-condominium planned communities run on recorded covenants plus the Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act. Unlike the 2008 Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act states such as Connecticut and Delaware, Nebraska’s condominium records provision descends from the leaner 1980 act and amounts to a single examination sentence — and planned communities get no HOA-statute records right at all. That stands in sharp contrast to hard-clock comprehensive states such as Florida and California, which impose fixed production deadlines and copy-fee caps. For a multi-state operator, the takeaway is twofold: pin down a condominium’s creation date to learn which act applies, and treat every non-condominium planned community as a covenants-plus-corporate-law problem rather than an HOA-statute one. Momentum toward a comprehensive Nebraska planned-community statute has been thin, the last notable attempt failing in 2020.

HOA Weekly refreshes its Nebraska records-inspection coverage each quarter, as the Nebraska Legislature and the Nebraska appellate courts act on association records law. 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 Nebraska associations no matter what the state framework says.

Footnotes

1. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-826 (Sections, applicability) — Nebraska Condominium Act applies to condominiums created after January 1, 1984; Condominium Property Act (§§ 76-801 to 76-824) governs earlier regimes ↩
2. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-876 (Association records); Source: Laws 1983, LB 433, § 52 ↩
3. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-816 (Board of administrators; records; examination; condominium statement) ↩
4. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-19,165 (Corporate records), Nebraska Nonprofit Corporation Act ↩
5. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-19,167 (Scope of inspection rights), including reasonable copy charge not exceeding estimated cost of production ↩
6. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-19,166 (Inspection of records by members), including five-business-day written-notice requirement and proper-purpose conditions ↩
7. Dunbar v. Twin Towers Condo. Assn., 26 Neb. App. 354, 920 N.W.2d 1 (2018) (certified opinion, Neb. Ct. App., filed September 25, 2018) ↩
8. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-19,165(e) (records kept at principal office) and § 21-19,165(a)-(d) (permanent and three-year retention) ↩
9. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-19,169 (Limitations on use of membership list) ↩
10. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-832 (Supplemental, general provisions of law applicable to the Nebraska Condominium Act) ↩
11. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 21-19,168 (Court-ordered inspection), district court remedy and fee-shifting ↩
12. Nebraska Real Estate Commission, Complaint Procedures (Commission has jurisdiction over licensees, not over transactions or association governance disputes) ↩
13. Community Associations Institute, Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act overview (identifying 2008-UCIOA states Connecticut, Delaware, Vermont, Washington; UCA / 1980 Uniform Condominium Act as predecessor framework) ↩
14. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 76-826(a) (applying § 76-876 to pre-1984 condominiums for events occurring after January 1, 1984) ↩
15. LB21 (2025), Uniform Unlawful Restrictions in Land Records Act (slip law; introduced by Cavanaugh, J., read first time January 9, 2025; approved by the Governor March 11, 2025) ↩
16. LB973 (2020), Homeowner Association Act (introduced version; indefinitely postponed, did not become law) ↩