Virginia HOA Records Inspection

Section 1: Overview

Virginia runs two separate statutory tracks for community association records — both recodified into Title 55.1 of the Code of Virginia on October 1, 2019. Planned communities fall under the Property Owners' Association Act, with the records provision at § 55.1-1815.¹ Condominiums fall under the Virginia Condominium Act, with the records provision at § 55.1-1945.² The two provisions run closely parallel, but they are distinct sections that apply to different community types and diverge on several material details — never cross-apply them. Because of the 2019 recodification, every pre-October 2019 Title 55 citation — such as the former § 55-510 or § 55-79.74:1 — is obsolete. Only Title 55.1 citations are current.¹

Both statutes give a member or unit owner in good standing, acting for a proper purpose related to membership, the right to examine and copy association books and records.^{1, 2} Neither section sets a fixed production deadline. Instead, the owner must give advance written notice — five business days for a professionally managed association, ten business days for a self-managed one — and inspection occurs during reasonable business hours or at a mutually convenient time and location.^{1, 2} Virginia also maintains a distinctive oversight structure: the Common Interest Community Board within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR) registers associations and licenses managers, and the Office of the Common Interest Community Ombudsman reviews certain complaints.³ Civil appeals now run through the Court of Appeals of Virginia, which gained appeal-of-right civil jurisdiction on January 1, 2022.⁴ Virginia is a prescriptive, notice-and-reasonableness state — not a fixed-day-count state like Florida, which requires production within ten business days and imposes $50-per-day statutory damages up to $500 for willful noncompliance.⁵ The table and detailed sections below set out the mechanics under each statute.

Section 2: Quick-Reference: Virginia HOA Records Inspection

Section 3: The records-inspection framework in detail

3A. Records subject to inspection

Both statutes establish an affirmative duty to keep records and a correlative inspection right, but they list the records separately. Under the Property Owners' Association Act, § 55.1-1815, the association must keep detailed records of receipts and expenditures in accordance with generally accepted accounting practices, maintain individual assessment account records, and maintain a record of any recorded lien at least as long as the lien remains effective.¹ Subject to the withholding rules, all books and records are available for examination and copying by a member in good standing — including the membership list and addresses and, distinctively, the actual salary of the six highest compensated employees of the association earning over $75,000, plus aggregate salary information for all other employees.¹ Individual salary information is not available during the declarant control period.

The Virginia Condominium Act, § 55.1-1945, imposes a parallel duty on the declarant, managing agent, or unit owners' association to keep detailed records of receipts and expenditures and of maintenance and repair expenses of the common elements.² All books and records — including the membership list, addresses, and aggregate salary information of association employees — are available to a unit owner in good standing.² The condominium section uses an aggregate-salary formulation and does not contain the six-highest-compensated, $75,000 threshold found in the POAA section.

Where an association is incorporated, the Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act provides a corporate backstop. Sections 13.1-932 through 13.1-935 give members a right to inspect corporate records such as minutes, the membership record, and accounting records.⁶ This is corporate law, not an HOA statute, and it applies only because most Virginia associations are organized as nonstock corporations. On the condominium side, the leading judicial authority remains Grillo v. Montebello Condominium Unit Owners Association, 243 Va. 475, 416 S.E.2d 444 (1992), in which the Supreme Court of Virginia held that records documenting specific employee compensation relate to the operation and administration of the condominium and are therefore open to unit-owner inspection.¹⁵

3B. The request-and-response sequence

Standing belongs to a member or unit owner in good standing, or that person's authorized agent. Both statutes condition access on a proper purpose related to membership in the association, and both restrict use of the membership list for pecuniary gain or commercial solicitation.^{1, 2} Good standing generally turns on whether the owner is current on assessments and free of unresolved violations — a status that associations may define in their governing documents.

The request must be in writing. Both sections require notice that reasonably identifies the purpose of the request and the specific books and records sought, which means a general or open-ended demand may be deficient.^{1, 2} The owner must give advance written notice of five business days for an association managed by a common interest community manager, or ten business days for a self-managed association.^{1, 2} This notice period is the owner's lead time — not a production clock imposed on the association. Neither § 55.1-1815 nor § 55.1-1945 sets a fixed deadline by which the association must produce records. Instead, the right of examination runs during reasonable business hours or at a mutually convenient time and location. Multi-state operators accustomed to a hard statutory deadline should note this difference: Florida requires production within ten business days and triggers a rebuttable presumption of willful noncompliance with $50-per-day statutory damages if records are not produced in time, whereas Virginia uses a notice-plus-reasonableness model.⁵

On charges, both statutes permit the association to impose and collect a fee before providing copies, limited to the reasonable costs of materials and labor; the POAA section adds that the charge may not exceed the actual costs of those materials and labor.^{1, 2} Charges are valid only under a cost schedule adopted by the board (or executive board) that specifies the charges, applies equally to all members in good standing, and is provided to the requesting member at the time of the request. There is no per-page cap in the statute. Under subsection D of each section, the requesting member is also responsible for reasonable costs the association incurs in reviewing records for redaction. Because the 2019 recodification renumbered these provisions, current citations are § 55.1-1815 and § 55.1-1945 — not the former § 55-510 or § 55-79.74:1.

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

Each statute lists nine categories of records that may be withheld, and the lists are substantively identical. They cover personnel matters relating to identified persons or medical records; contracts and commercial transactions currently in or under negotiation; pending or probable litigation (defined as a specific threat of litigation); state or local administrative or enforcement proceedings; communications with legal counsel protected by the attorney-client privilege or work-product doctrine; disclosures that would violate law; executive-session minutes; board or management reports compiled for executive-session consideration; and individual owner files other than those of the requesting owner.^{1, 2} The condominium section, § 55.1-1945(C), adds one category the POAA section does not: drafts not yet incorporated into the books and records.²

Both sections cabin the withholding power. Under subsection D of each, records may be withheld in their entirety only when an exclusion applies to the entire content; otherwise the association must redact the protected portions and release the remainder.^{1, 2} This redact-and-produce default means a blanket refusal citing privilege or pending litigation is rarely defensible for an entire file. The attorney-client and pending-litigation exclusions are the categories most often invoked, and each is limited to the specific protected communication or matter — not to all records that happen to touch a disputed subject.

The membership or owner list is expressly inspectable under both statutes but carries a use restriction: it may not be used for pecuniary gain or commercial solicitation.^{1, 2} Neither section provides a member opt-out from the list. For incorporated associations, § 13.1-934 permits the corporation to satisfy a demand for the member record by providing a compiled list.⁸

3D. Remedies and enforcement for noncompliance

Neither records section contains its own damages provision, per-day penalty, or fee-shifting clause. An owner enforces the inspection right through the general compliance provisions: § 55.1-1828 for planned communities and § 55.1-1915 for condominiums.^{10, 11} Each makes noncompliance with the chapter grounds for an action to recover sums due, for damages, or for injunctive relief, and each entitles the prevailing party to recover reasonable attorney fees, costs, and interest. For an incorporated association, the Nonstock Corporation Act offers an additional route: under § 13.1-935, a member may apply to the circuit court for an order compelling inspection, and the court may order the corporation to pay the member's costs, including reasonable counsel fees, if it refused without a reasonable basis.¹²

These actions are filed in the circuit court of the county or city where the association or condominium is located. The appellate path depends on the decision date. For matters decided on or after January 1, 2022, a litigant has an appeal of right to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, with discretionary review available in the Supreme Court of Virginia; older civil appeals — including Grillo in 1992 — went directly to the Supreme Court of Virginia.⁴

Virginia also offers an administrative pathway. Associations must adopt a complaint procedure, and an owner who receives a final adverse decision may file a notice with the Common Interest Community Ombudsman under § 54.1-2354.4.¹⁴ Because a records dispute alleges a violation of the Property Owners' Association Act or the Condominium Act, it falls within the matters the Ombudsman may review. The Ombudsman determines only whether a decision conflicts with common interest community law and does not adjudicate damages or order production.¹⁴ The Common Interest Community Board may separately assess a monetary penalty against an association and issue cease-and-desist orders.¹³

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

Recent Legislation

The General Assembly amends both the Property Owners' Association Act and the Condominium Act regularly. The two most recent enactments to touch these statutes address foreclosure remedies and the books-and-records handoff when a management relationship ends — neither altered the inspection right itself.

Recent Court Rulings

No Virginia appellate decision in the past 36 months squarely interprets the records-inspection right under § 55.1-1815 or § 55.1-1945. The leading authority remains Grillo v. Montebello Condominium Unit Owners Association — decided in 1992 under the predecessor condominium statute, and still controlling appellate law today.

Active Legislative Debates

The General Assembly amends the Property Owners' Association Act and the Condominium Act frequently — HB 880 alone reenacted eight Code sections in 2024.¹⁶ No pending proposal would add a fixed production deadline, a copy-fee cap, an electronic-records delivery mandate, or statutory damages to the records-inspection provisions. Recent activity has touched records custody and foreclosure remedies rather than the inspection right itself.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Virginia sits among the more developed and administratively supervised states for community association records. It maintains two comprehensive statutes recodified into Title 55.1, each with a detailed records provision, and layers on a state regulator — the Common Interest Community Board — and an Ombudsman, a structure most covenant-primary states lack. Yet the regime is prescriptive about process more than about clocks: it specifies who may inspect, for what purpose, on what notice, and with what permissible withholding, but it sets no fixed production deadline and no per-page fee cap. Enforcement of the inspection right remains substantially judicial through §§ 55.1-1828 and 55.1-1915. For multi-state operators, the practical takeaway is to use current Title 55.1 citations, apply § 55.1-1815 to planned communities and § 55.1-1945 to condominiums without cross-application, account for the Common Interest Community Board and the Ombudsman, and recognize that the civil appellate path changed on January 1, 2022. Recent legislative activity reenacted both § 55.1-1815 and § 55.1-1945 through HB 880 in 2024 but did not alter the inspection mechanics. Federal frameworks — 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 — also apply to Virginia associations regardless of the state framework.

1. Va. Code Ann. § 55.1-1815, Access to association records; association meetings; notice (Property Owners' Association Act) ↩
2. Va. Code Ann. § 55.1-1945, Books, minutes, and records; inspection (Virginia Condominium Act) ↩
3. Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, Common Interest Community Board ↩
4. Sands Anderson P.C., Expanded Civil Jurisdiction of the Virginia Court of Appeals (effective Jan. 1, 2022; S.B. 1261), citing Va. Code Ann. § 17.1-405 ↩
5. Fla. Stat. § 720.303(5) (official records; production within 10 business days; rebuttable presumption of willful noncompliance; $50-per-day statutory damages up to $500), cited for national contrast only ↩
6. Va. Code Ann. § 13.1-933, Inspection of records by members (Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act) ↩
7. Va. Code Ann. § 55.1-1801, Applicability (Property Owners' Association Act; declarations recorded after January 1, 1959) ↩
8. Va. Code Ann. § 13.1-934, Scope of inspection right (electronic copies; member-record list) (Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act) ↩
9. 2024 Acts of Assembly, ch. 55 (H.B. 880), amending Va. Code Ann. §§ 55.1-1833 and 55.1-1966 (foreclosure accounting kept for at least 12 months) ↩
10. Va. Code Ann. § 55.1-1828, Compliance with declaration (action for damages or injunctive relief; prevailing-party attorney fees, costs, and interest) ↩
11. Va. Code Ann. § 55.1-1915, Compliance with condominium instruments (action for damages or injunctive relief; prevailing-party attorney fees, costs, and interest) ↩
12. Va. Code Ann. § 13.1-935, Court-ordered inspection (circuit-court order; costs and counsel fees) (Virginia Nonstock Corporation Act) ↩
13. Va. Code Ann. § 54.1-2351(H) (Common Interest Community Board monetary penalty of not more than $1,000 per violation); Va. Code Ann. § 54.1-2352 (cease-and-desist orders) ↩
14. Va. Code Ann. § 54.1-2354.4, Association complaint procedures; final adverse decisions (notice to the Common Interest Community Ombudsman) ↩
15. Grillo v. Montebello Condo. Unit Owners Ass'n, 243 Va. 475, 416 S.E.2d 444 (1992) (Record No. 910871), Supreme Court of Virginia (decided under former Va. Code § 55-79.74:1, now § 55.1-1945) ↩
16. 2024 Acts of Assembly, ch. 55 (H.B. 880), amending and reenacting Va. Code Ann. §§ 8.01-463, 55.1-1815, 55.1-1833, 55.1-1945, 55.1-1966, 55.1-2148, 55.1-2151, and 55.1-2305 ↩
17. 2024 Acts of Assembly, ch. 55 (H.B. 880), amending Va. Code Ann. § 55.1-1833 (nonjudicial foreclosure where sums secured exceed $5,000, exclusive of attorney fees and costs; lien-enforcement window changed from 36 to 120 months) ↩
18. 2025 Acts of Assembly, ch. 105 (H.B. 2750), amending Va. Code Ann. §§ 54.1-2353, 54.1-2354.5, 55.1-1837, and 55.1-1940.1 (termination of management contracts; transfer of association books and records) ↩