South Carolina HOA Records Inspection

Section 1 — Overview: How records inspection works in South Carolina

South Carolina splits the job of records inspection between two state laws, and which one governs depends on where you live. Condominiums answer to the South Carolina Horizontal Property Act, S.C. Code § 27-31-10 et seq. Planned communities answer to the South Carolina Homeowners Association Act, S.C. Code § 27-30-110 et seq., which lawmakers enacted in 2018. That 2018 Act is narrower than it sounds: it makes associations record their governing documents, routes certain money disputes to magistrate court, and otherwise leaves governance alone — it is not a comprehensive code.¹ For condominiums, the records provision that matters is § 27-31-180. It directs the administrator to keep a running, chronological book of receipts and expenditures and to open that book, and the vouchers behind it, to every co-owner.² The 2018 Act, by contrast, turns on three mechanics: recording governing documents with the county register of deeds (and unrecorded provisions lose their force), disclosure, and concurrent magistrate-court jurisdiction over certain monetary disputes. It is not a UCIOA-style governance code.³ So for planned-community owners, the inspection right with real teeth is a corporate one. Most associations incorporate as nonprofits, which pulls them under the South Carolina Nonprofit Corporation Act, S.C. Code § 33-31-101 et seq., and that Act, together with the recorded covenants, supplies the substantive right; condominiums, meanwhile, stay under the Horizontal Property Act.⁴ Step back, and South Carolina sits apart from the hard-clock states. Florida makes associations produce official records within 10 business days of a written request, and California sets a 10-business-day window for current-year records and 30 calendar days for the prior two fiscal years. South Carolina instead leans on standards of reasonableness and availability, drawn mostly from corporate law.⁵ The table and the sections that follow lay out each provision, the request sequence, and the remedies that apply.

Section 2 — Quick-Reference: South Carolina HOA Records Inspection

Section 3 — The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

What an owner can inspect in South Carolina depends on the community type and on whether the association incorporated. For condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act supplies the only statutory category. Section 27-31-180 tells the administrator or board to keep a detailed, chronological book of receipts and expenditures touching the property and its administration, and it makes both that book and the vouchers behind its entries available for examination by every co-owner.² The Act stops there. It does not list minutes, contracts, or other categories, so access to those condominium records rides on the master deed and bylaws, not the statute.

For planned communities, the 2018 Homeowners Association Act reads as a disclosure law, not a records code. Recording is its engine. Under § 27-30-130, an association must record its governing documents — in the clerk of court's office, the Register of Mesne Conveyance, or the register of deeds for the county where the property sits — or those documents are not enforceable, and rules and regulations must be recorded to stay enforceable.¹ Because recorded instruments are public, that works as disclosure rather than as an inspection right. The Act's one direct access provision, § 27-30-150, borrows the Nonprofit Corporation Act's access provisions (§§ 33-31-1602 through 33-31-1605) for associations not otherwise covered by that Act — and only to inspect and copy the annual budget and membership lists.⁸

The inspection right with more reach is corporate, not HOA-specific. Most South Carolina associations are nonprofit corporations, and § 33-31-1601 makes them keep, at the principal office, the articles and bylaws with amendments, board resolutions affecting members, minutes of member meetings and actions for the past three years, written communications to members for the past three years (financial statements included), a roster of current directors and officers, and recent Secretary of State filings.⁷ Under § 33-31-1602, members may inspect those principal-office records on notice, and may reach accounting records, the membership list, and certain excerpts on a proper purpose.⁴ Each category traces to its own source: the financial book to the Horizontal Property Act for condominiums, the recorded documents to the Homeowners Association Act, and the broader corporate categories to the Nonprofit Corporation Act and the covenants.

3B. The request-and-response sequence

For the incorporated majority, the request mechanics come mainly from the Nonprofit Corporation Act. A member — or that member's agent or attorney, who holds the same rights — may inspect.⁶ The request goes in writing: § 33-31-1602 calls for written notice or a written demand at least five business days before the day the member wants to inspect and copy.⁴ A proper purpose attaches to only part of the record set. The principal-office records under § 33-31-1601(e) open on notice alone, while accounting records, the membership list, and excerpts of certain other records require a demand made in good faith and for a proper purpose, a description of the purpose and records with reasonable particularity, and a direct connection between the records and that purpose.⁴

South Carolina fixes no production deadline. The Nonprofit Corporation Act calls for inspection at a reasonable time and place the corporation specifies, and where a court has to step in it handles the application on an expedited basis — but the statute names no day-count.¹⁰ The condominium standard is availability, not a clock: § 27-31-180 keeps the financial book and vouchers available for examination at convenient hours on working days that the association sets and announces.² On cost, § 33-31-1603 allows a reasonable charge for labor and material that may not exceed the estimated cost of production or reproduction, and the right to copy takes in photographic or comparable means.⁶ For associations that are not nonprofit corporations, the Homeowners Association Act applies the same §§ 33-31-1602 to 1605 mechanics, but only to the annual budget and membership lists, and § 27-30-130 requires rules and regulations to be available free online and at actual cost on paper.⁸ None of this imports UCIOA-style records machinery; the Homeowners Association Act handles recording and disclosure, and the Nonprofit Corporation Act handles the written-demand inspection.

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

The clearest confidentiality protection limits how anyone uses the membership list. Under § 33-31-1605, without the board's consent no one may obtain or use a membership list, or any part of it, for a purpose unrelated to a member's interest as a member, and no one may use it to solicit money or property unless that money or property will go solely toward soliciting member votes in a corporate election.⁹ A member's right to the list also carries the good-faith, proper-purpose, and direct-connection conditions that govern accounting records.⁴ The Nonprofit Corporation Act lets the articles or bylaws of a religious corporation limit or abolish inspection rights too — a carve-out unlikely to touch a typical residential association.⁴

Past the membership list, the statutes name few exemptions. The Nonprofit Corporation Act does not spell out a broad attorney-client privilege or a pending-litigation exemption. Instead, § 33-31-1602(d) preserves a member's separate right to inspect records as a litigant, to the same extent as any other litigant, and preserves a court's independent power to compel production — leaving privilege questions to general law and the governing documents rather than to the inspection statute.⁴ The Horizontal Property Act addresses neither the membership list nor confidentiality, so for condominiums those questions turn on the master deed and bylaws.

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

The main judicial remedy is corporate. Under § 33-31-1604, if an association turns away a compliant member who wants the mandatory principal-office records, the circuit court for the county of the corporation's principal office may summarily order inspection and copying at the corporation's expense; for other records, the member may apply for an order that the court handles on an expedited basis.¹⁰ The same section shifts fees: the court must order the corporation to pay the member's costs, including reasonable counsel fees, unless the corporation proves it refused in good faith because it had a reasonable basis to doubt the member's right to inspect.¹⁰ For condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act offers a general remedy — § 27-31-170 makes a failure to comply grounds for a civil action to recover damages, to obtain injunctive relief, or both, which an aggrieved co-owner may bring in a proper case.¹¹

These actions run through the Circuit Court (the Court of Common Pleas), with appeal to the South Carolina Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the South Carolina Supreme Court. The Homeowners Association Act adds, under § 27-30-160, concurrent magistrate-court jurisdiction over monetary disputes that fit within the magistrate court's limits.³ The Department of Consumer Affairs does not enforce: under § 27-30-340 it collects and records HOA complaint data and publishes an annual report, and the Act bars it from regulating association governance or arbitrating disputes.¹²

Section 4 — Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Two bills in the 2025–2026 session would widen what South Carolina owners can see, and both are still sitting in committee.

B. Recent rulings

No published South Carolina appellate decision in the past 36 months interprets the records-inspection provisions of the Horizontal Property Act, the Homeowners Association Act, or the Nonprofit Corporation Act on the merits. The closest decision is unpublished, and it turned on procedure.

C. Active legislative debates

Proposals in the 2025–2026 session have tried to push the Homeowners Association Act past its disclosure focus — comprehensive oversight bills that would let the Department of Consumer Affairs license and penalize associations and would require reserve studies, along with dispute-resolution measures. None had become law as of June 25, 2026.¹⁴

Section 5 — National positioning and related coverage

South Carolina belongs with the disclosure-focused states, not the comprehensive ones. It pairs a traditional condominium statute — the Horizontal Property Act — with a 2018 Homeowners Association Act built around recording governing documents, disclosure, and sending certain monetary disputes to magistrate court, and it stops short of UCIOA-style governance.¹ So the planned-community records right with real substance comes from corporate law — the Nonprofit Corporation Act — rather than from the HOA statute itself.⁴ That sets South Carolina apart from hard-clock states like Florida, which makes associations produce official records within 10 business days of a written request, carries a rebuttable presumption of willful noncompliance, and adds statutory damages of $50 per calendar day up to 10 days, and California, which sets a 10-business-day window for current-year records and 30 calendar days for the prior two fiscal years.¹⁶ For a multi-state operator, the practical lesson is plain: don't assume the Homeowners Association Act supplies UCIOA-style records machinery; confirm the governing documents are recorded so they stay enforceable; and look to the Nonprofit Corporation Act and the covenants for the operative inspection right in planned communities. Recent legislative activity has proposed, but not passed, any move beyond that disclosure focus.¹⁴

Federal frameworks also apply to South Carolina 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. S.C. Code Ann. § 27-30-130 (S.C. Homeowners Association Act; recording and enforceability of governing documents) ↩
2. S.C. Code Ann. § 27-31-180 (S.C. Horizontal Property Act; records of receipts and expenditures) ↩
3. S.C. Code Ann. § 27-30-160 (S.C. Homeowners Association Act; jurisdiction of the magistrates court) ↩
4. S.C. Code Ann. § 33-31-1602 (S.C. Nonprofit Corporation Act; inspection of records by members) ↩
5. Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5)(a) (Florida homeowners' association official records; production within 10 business days) ↩
6. S.C. Code Ann. § 33-31-1603 (S.C. Nonprofit Corporation Act; scope of inspection rights) ↩
7. S.C. Code Ann. § 33-31-1601 (S.C. Nonprofit Corporation Act; corporate records) ↩
8. S.C. Code Ann. § 27-30-150 (S.C. Homeowners Association Act; application of access-to-documents provisions) ↩
9. S.C. Code Ann. § 33-31-1605 (S.C. Nonprofit Corporation Act; limitations on use of the membership list) ↩
10. S.C. Code Ann. § 33-31-1604 (S.C. Nonprofit Corporation Act; court-ordered inspection) ↩
11. S.C. Code Ann. § 27-31-170 (S.C. Horizontal Property Act; remedy for noncompliance) ↩
12. S.C. Code Ann. § 27-30-340 (S.C. Homeowners Association Act; complaints from homeowners or homeowners associations) ↩
13. S. 366, 2025–2026 Reg. Sess. (S.C. 2025) (HOA fees; amending S.C. Code Ann. § 27-30-150) ↩
14. H. 3350, 2025–2026 Reg. Sess. (S.C. 2025) (internal dispute resolution; amending S.C. Code Ann. §§ 27-30-150, 27-30-160) ↩
15. Advocaat v. Community Services Associates, Inc., Op. No. 2024-UP-082 (S.C. Ct. App. Mar. 20, 2024) (unpublished) ↩
16. Cal. Civ. Code § 5210(b) (California common-interest development records; 10-business-day and 30-calendar-day production tiers) ↩