Tennessee HOA Records Inspection

Key Findings

Tennessee doesn’t run a single HOA records law. It runs three. Post-2009 condominiums get a developed, statute-anchored inspection right under § 66-27-417 and the disclosure list in § 66-27-503. Pre-2009 condominiums get something narrower — the right to inspect the administrator’s financial book and vouchers under § 66-27-113. Planned communities get no condominium-style statute at all; their owners rely on recorded covenants and, where the association is incorporated as a nonprofit, on the Nonprofit Corporation Act.

The point practitioners most need to absorb: neither condominium statute sets a numeric response deadline, and neither caps copy fees. Only the corporate statute — the Nonprofit Corporation Act — supplies the full procedural machinery: a written-demand procedure, a proper-purpose condition for sensitive records, a fee cap, electronic-records rules, and a court-ordered inspection remedy with fee-shifting.

Section 1: Overview — How records inspection works in Tennessee

Tennessee governs condominium records through three separate tracks. The Tennessee Condominium Act of 2008 — Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-201 et seq., based on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act — covers condominiums created on or after January 1, 2009. Its records provision, § 66-27-417, directs that all financial and other records be made reasonably available for examination by unit owners, mortgagees, and their authorized agents.¹ Condominiums created before January 1, 2009 remain under the Tennessee Horizontal Property Act, § 66-27-101 et seq. That act’s records provision, § 66-27-113, takes a narrower approach: the administrator’s financial book and supporting vouchers must be available to co-owners at convenient hours on working days.² Planned-community owners have no condominium-style statute. Their inspection right comes from the recorded covenants and, where the association is incorporated as a nonprofit — most are — from the member-inspection provisions of the Nonprofit Corporation Act, § 48-66-101 et seq. That is corporate law, not an HOA statute.³

Tennessee uses a reasonableness or availability standard for the condominium statutes — not a fixed-day-count deadline. The Nonprofit Corporation Act sets a written-demand mechanism with a five-business-day notice period. That places Tennessee among reasonableness-standard and corporate-law-inspection states, in contrast to hard-clock states like Florida and California. The table and detailed sections below set out each mechanic by community type.

Section 2: Quick-Reference: Tennessee HOA Records Inspection

Section 3: The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

Which records a Tennessee owner may inspect depends on which of three regimes applies.

For condominiums created on or after January 1, 2009, the Tennessee Condominium Act of 2008 controls. Section 66-27-417 requires the association to keep financial records detailed enough to comply with the disclosure duties in §§ 66-27-502 and 66-27-503, and directs that all financial and other records be made reasonably available for examination.¹ The companion disclosure provision, § 66-27-503, sets out the specific information an association must furnish on request: the names and addresses of the declarant and association, the recorded declaration and bylaws with amendments, current rules, the most recent balance sheet and income statement, the approved or projected budget, reserve-study information, a description of pending suits other than assessment collections, and the total of assessments more than sixty days past due.⁶ Together, those provisions create a developed condominium records right anchored in statute.

For condominiums created before January 1, 2009, the older Horizontal Property Act governs, and its records provision is far narrower. Section 66-27-113 requires the administrator or board to keep a chronological book of receipts and expenditures — including maintenance and repair of common elements — and makes that book and its supporting vouchers available for examination by all co-owners.² The Horizontal Property Act reaches financial records, not the broader category of “other records” found in the 2008 Act. Certain provisions of the Condominium Act of 2008 do apply to pre-2009 condominiums for events occurring after January 1, 2009.⁴

Planned communities stand apart. Tennessee has enacted no comprehensive statute for non-condominium planned communities, so an owner’s inspection right comes from the recorded covenants and, where the association is incorporated as a nonprofit — most are — from the Nonprofit Corporation Act. Section 48-66-101 requires a nonprofit to keep permanent minutes, appropriate accounting records, and a member record, and to maintain at its principal office the charter, bylaws, board resolutions on member rights, minutes of member meetings for the past three years, member communications for the past three years, a director and officer roster, and the most recent annual report.⁷ Those categories — not an HOA statute — define what a planned-community member may inspect.

3B. The request-and-response sequence

Standing and procedure differ sharply by regime. Under the Condominium Act of 2008, any unit owner, the holder of a mortgage or deed of trust on a unit, and their authorized agents may examine the records, which must be made “reasonably available.”¹ The statute imposes no proper-purpose condition, prescribes no written-demand format, and sets no fixed number of days. The operative standard is reasonableness. Under the Horizontal Property Act, all co-owners may examine the administrator’s book and vouchers “at convenient hours on working days that shall be set and announced for general knowledge” — again an availability standard, not a clock.²

The Nonprofit Corporation Act supplies the only detailed written-demand mechanism. A member may inspect the records listed in § 48-66-101(e) — the charter, bylaws, and recent minutes, among others — during regular business hours at a reasonable location, on a written demand delivered at least five business days before the inspection date, with no stated purpose required.³ For a second tier of records — including accounting records and the membership list — the member must also show that the demand is made in good faith and for a proper purpose, describe the purpose and records with reasonable particularity, and establish that the records are directly connected to that purpose.³ This inspection right cannot be abolished or limited by the corporation’s charter or bylaws.³ A member’s agent or attorney holds the same rights as the member.⁵

On charges: the condominium statutes are silent. The Nonprofit Corporation Act allows the corporation to impose a reasonable charge covering labor and material — capped at the estimated cost of production, reproduction, or transmission — and permits delivery by electronic transmission if available and requested.⁵ Inspection of the records described in § 48-66-101(e) takes place at a reasonable location the corporation specifies, during regular business hours.³

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

Neither condominium statute lists categories an association may withhold or redact. Both the Condominium Act of 2008 and the Horizontal Property Act are silent on attorney-client privilege, pending litigation, personnel files, and individual-owner files, so any limits on those rest on the declaration, bylaws, or general law — not on the HOA statutes.¹ The proper-purpose and list-protection concepts in Tennessee live in the corporate statute. Under the Nonprofit Corporation Act, the unqualified records — the charter, bylaws, recent minutes, and the like — carry no purpose test, while accounting records and the membership list are available only on a good-faith, proper-purpose demand.³

The membership list gets its own protection. Section 48-66-105 provides that, without the board’s consent, a membership list or any part of it may not be obtained or used for any purpose unrelated to a member’s interest as a member — and specifically may not be used to solicit money or property, except to solicit votes in a corporation election.⁹ A related provision makes a members’ list available for inspection in connection with a membership meeting, subject to the same proper-purpose and list-use limits.¹¹ When a member is in litigation with the corporation, inspection proceeds to the same extent as for any other litigant, and the statute does not displace a court’s independent power to compel production of records.³

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

Remedies turn on the regime. For post-2009 condominiums, § 66-27-505 addresses failure to furnish required information on request and states that any fine or penalty is not the aggrieved party’s exclusive remedy — it is in addition to all other remedies available at law or in equity, including specific performance.¹⁰ The general examination right in § 66-27-417 carries no dedicated penalty, so an owner denied access pursues an ordinary civil action. The Horizontal Property Act provides no records-specific remedy, leaving a co-owner to general civil relief such as an action to compel compliance.²

The Nonprofit Corporation Act provides the clearest enforcement path. Section 48-66-104 allows a member who has followed the demand requirements to apply to a court of record having equity jurisdiction — the Chancery Court — in the county of the corporation’s principal office. For unqualified records, the court may summarily order inspection and copying at the corporation’s expense. For other records, the court orders inspection if the corporation failed to allow it within a reasonable time.⁸ If the court orders inspection, it must also 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.⁸

Because a suit to compel records is equitable, it belongs in Chancery Court. A claim seeking money damages goes to Circuit Court. Civil appeals from either go to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, with discretionary review available from the Tennessee Supreme Court. Tennessee has no agency complaint pathway for records disputes; the Tennessee Real Estate Commission licenses brokerage activity but is not an HOA records regulator.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted or advanced in the Tennessee General Assembly within the past twenty-four months amended or directly affected the records-inspection provisions of the Condominium Act of 2008, the Horizontal Property Act, or the Nonprofit Corporation Act. The recurring effort to create a statewide planned-community statute — the proposed “Tennessee Homeowners Association Act” — would have established information-on-request and records duties for non-condominium communities, but it has repeatedly failed to pass. Its most recent full vehicles predate the twenty-four-month window: the bill went in as SB 405 / HB 610 in the 109th General Assembly and again as HB 2209 in the 112th General Assembly, where it died in subcommittee.¹² Because no qualifying records-inspection bill exists in the current window, no operational-implication table is provided.

B. Recent rulings

No reported Tennessee appellate decision within the past thirty-six months interprets the condominium records provisions or the corporate-inspection right as applied to a community association. The leading interpretive authority predates that window and remains the controlling guidance.

C. Active legislative debates

The only recurring proposal that would alter the records framework is the long-pending Tennessee Homeowners Association Act, which would add information-on-request and financial-record duties for planned communities. It has not advanced. No current measure proposes a fixed condominium response deadline, a copy-fee cap, an electronic-records rule, or new penalties.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Tennessee is a split-condominium, covenant-primary state. Condominiums created on or after January 1, 2009 fall under the Tennessee Condominium Act of 2008 — based on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act — which uses a reasonableness standard for records access rather than the detailed disclosure machinery of later uniform acts. Condominiums created before that date remain under the older Horizontal Property Act, whose records provision covers only the administrator’s financial book and vouchers. Planned communities have no comprehensive HOA records statute at all and depend entirely on recorded covenants and the corporate-inspection right of the Nonprofit Corporation Act.

The result is a thinner, more document-driven framework than the hard-clock regimes found in Florida and California. Florida’s HOA statute requires official records to be made available within ten business days of a written request, caps copies at twenty-five cents per page, and creates a fifty-dollar-per-day statutory-damages presumption up to five hundred dollars.¹⁴ California’s Davis-Stirling Act requires access to current-fiscal-year records within ten business days and prior-year records within thirty calendar days.¹⁵ Tennessee’s bifurcated trial courts also shape enforcement: a suit to compel records is equitable and goes to Chancery Court, while a damages claim goes to Circuit Court. Legislative momentum toward a comprehensive planned-community statute has been recurring but unsuccessful, leaving corporate law and covenants as the governing sources for now.

Recommendations

1. For boards and managers handling a records request now: Default to producing the governing documents, recent minutes, and financial statements promptly. Reserve refusals for the narrow categories where the law actually allows conditioning access. For a nonprofit-incorporated planned community, treat any written demand that states a purpose and gives five business days’ notice as enforceable, and put any denial in writing with a specific, reasonable basis. The threshold that changes the response: if the requester seeks accounting records or the membership list, the association may require a good-faith, proper-purpose statement before producing them under § 48-66-102(c). For all other listed records, no purpose is required.
2. For condominium associations: Don’t assume a numeric deadline exists. The standard is “reasonably available” for post-2009 associations and “convenient hours on working days” for pre-2009 associations. Adopt an internal turnaround policy in the bylaws to create predictability — the statute supplies none. Confirm the community’s creation date relative to January 1, 2009 before deciding which act applies.
3. For owners and their counsel: If access is wrongfully denied, the strongest path runs through a Chancery Court application under § 48-66-104 for nonprofit-corporation associations. That can produce a summary order for the core records at the association’s expense, plus a counsel-fee award — unless the association proves a good-faith refusal. Pursue any damages claim separately at law in Circuit Court.
4. Monitoring trigger: Re-evaluate this framework if the Tennessee Homeowners Association Act — or a successor bill — is reintroduced and advances past subcommittee, or if the General Assembly amends § 66-27-417 to add a deadline, fee cap, or penalty. Either development would move Tennessee toward the hard-clock model and change the operational guidance above.

Caveats

• The condominium statutes — § 66-27-417 and § 66-27-113 — are largely uninterpreted by published Tennessee appellate caselaw on records inspection. The leading authority, City of Franklin v. Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Corp., construes the Nonprofit Corporation Act, not the condominium acts; its burden-of-proof holding directly applies to nonprofit-incorporated associations and is only persuasive elsewhere.
• “Not specified by statute” entries reflect genuine statutory silence, not an absence of any rule. An association’s declaration or bylaws may impose deadlines, fees, or confidentiality terms that the statute does not.
• The official Tennessee Code is hosted through the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts via a Lexis click-through portal. Statute footnotes link to that portal’s entry point, and the specific section text was cross-checked against the corresponding provisions. Verify the current text before relying on it for a filing.
• A precise S.W.3d reporter citation for City of Franklin could not be independently confirmed. The docket number M2007-01060-COA-R3-CV and the tncourts.gov opinion are the reliable identifiers.

Footnotes

1. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-417 (Tennessee Condominium Act of 2008, Association records), official Tennessee Code, Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts ↩
2. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-113 (Administrator’s books — Examination by co-owners), official Tennessee Code ↩
3. Tenn. Code Ann. § 48-66-102 (Inspection of records by members), official Tennessee Code ↩
4. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-202 (Applicability), official Tennessee Code ↩
5. Tenn. Code Ann. § 48-66-103 (Scope of inspection rights), official Tennessee Code ↩
6. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-503 (Information to be provided — General), official Tennessee Code ↩
7. Tenn. Code Ann. § 48-66-101 (Corporate records), official Tennessee Code ↩
8. Tenn. Code Ann. § 48-66-104 (Court-ordered inspection), official Tennessee Code ↩
9. Tenn. Code Ann. § 48-66-105 (Limitations on use of membership list), official Tennessee Code ↩
10. Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-27-505 (Remedies for noncompliance), official Tennessee Code ↩
11. Tenn. Code Ann. § 48-57-201 (Members’ list for meeting), official Tennessee Code ↩
12. SB 405 / HB 610, 109th General Assembly (Tennessee Homeowners Association Act); see also HB 2209, 112th General Assembly, Tennessee General Assembly ↩
13. City of Franklin v. Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Corp., No. M2007-01060-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App.), published opinion on tncourts.gov ↩
14. Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5) (HOA official records; inspection within 10 business days; copy charges; statutory damages), Florida Legislature ↩
15. Cal. Civ. Code § 5210 (Davis-Stirling Act; time periods for production of association records), California Legislative Information ↩