HOA document management software for California boards

CC&Rs, bylaws, meeting minutes, financial reports, insurance policies, vendor contracts — everything your HOA produces and needs lives in Propty. Organized by category, searchable, and always up to date.

Board members see board documents. Residents see community documents. Property managers see everything they need. You decide who sees what — and Propty enforces it automatically.

California law requires HOAs to provide certain documents to members upon request. Propty helps you organize required disclosures and make them available through the resident portal — reducing requests and keeping you compliant.

California Civil Code §§5200–5240 sets out what your association has to keep and for how long — and the answer is more than most boards realize. The minimum inventory: governing documents (CC&Rs, bylaws, articles of incorporation, current operating rules) kept permanently; board and committee meeting minutes kept permanently; current and prior-year financial statements, budgets, and audit results kept for at least five years; election ballots and Inspector records kept for one year (§5125); contracts and vendor agreements kept for the contract term plus four years; member assessment ledgers kept while the unit is owned by the current member and for at least three years after transfer; and insurance certificates kept for the policy period plus two years. Propty stores every document type with its retention schedule attached, so when a record reaches its retention deadline you get a prompt — not a surprise during the next records audit.

When a member submits a §5205 written request, the board has 10 business days to respond (§5210) — and the response has to be either the records, a §5215 redaction with the specific basis, or notice that no responsive record exists. Boards that miss the window or refuse without §5215 grounds typically lose the resulting §5235 enforcement action and pay the member's attorney fees. Propty's records-request workflow time-stamps each request on receipt, surfaces it with the 10-business-day deadline on the board's queue, lets the board attach approved documents or mark redactions with the basis (attorney-client, executive-session, litigation strategy, personnel), and logs the full response for the §5125 retention period. The narrower category of 'enhanced association records' (individual ledgers, check images) runs through the same workflow with the §5200(b) access rules enforced.

Three audiences need access to different slices of the same document inventory. Board members and committee members see everything, including executive-session minutes and pending-litigation materials. Current residents see governing documents, current operating rules, annual disclosures, current-year and prior-year financials, and approved meeting minutes — the §5200 default set. Prospective buyers, on receipt of a §§4525–4535 disclosure request from the selling member, see the assembled disclosure package: governing documents, the last twelve months of minutes, the current budget, the reserve study summary, and any pending-litigation statement. Propty's permission model is configured once per document category and applied automatically — no manual permission-setting per file, no risk of accidentally exposing executive-session materials to the resident portal.

Most self-managed boards start with a shared Drive or Dropbox folder. It works for a few years, then it stops working — usually when the board changes, the member who set it up moves out, or a §5200 request arrives and the new board can't figure out what's where. Generic file storage is missing four things California HOAs specifically need: retention schedules tied to document types (so you don't accidentally delete minutes or hold ballots past the §5125 destruction date), permission models that map to board / resident / prospective-buyer roles without manual per-file configuration, the §5210 records-request response workflow with deadline tracking, and the §§4525–4535 seller-disclosure package assembly. Propty handles each of these by default. Migration from an existing Drive or Dropbox is a one-time import.

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