Can my HOA give out my personal information or share the owner list?
Reviewed by the OurHOA team · Updated July 2026
Most states let owners inspect the roster, but phone numbers, emails, and payment history are usually off limits, and selling the list is another matter.
Two very different questions get asked as one
When somebody asks whether the HOA can give out their information, they are usually asking one of two things and do not realize they are different. The first is whether another owner in the community can get their name and address off the association's roster, which in most states is yes, subject to some conditions. The second is whether the board can hand the roster to a landscaping company that wants to sell driveway sealing, or to a board candidate's campaign, or to a management company that also runs a real estate brokerage. That one is a much harder no in most places. Sort out which question you are asking before you go looking for an answer, because the law treats an owner exercising membership rights and a vendor building a mailing list as completely different animals.
The membership list is generally a record owners can inspect
Associations are nonprofit corporations, and nonprofit corporation law in nearly every state gives members a right to inspect corporate records, with the membership list explicitly among them. That right exists for a reason. If you want to run for the board, circulate a petition to force a special meeting, gather signatures to recall a director, or ask your neighbors whether they also got a surprise assessment notice, you need a way to reach them, and an association that could withhold the list could quietly shut down every one of those. Most states attach a purpose requirement rather than a flat prohibition. California is the clearest example: under Civil Code section 5225 the requesting member has to state a purpose reasonably related to their interest as a member, and under section 5230 the board may deny the request if it reasonably believes the list will be used for something else. Arizona takes a similar approach, allowing an association to refuse when the request has a commercial purpose. So the answer to a neighbor asking for the roster is usually yes, but not unconditionally.
The contact details are where the carve-outs live
Here is the part that surprises both owners and boards: the right to inspect the list is not a right to everything the association knows about you. Texas draws the line about as plainly as any state. Property Code section 209.005 requires an association to make its books and records available to owners, then specifically excludes an owner's contact information other than their address, an owner's personal financial information including payment and nonpayment records, an individual owner's violation history, and employee personnel files. Florida is similar in effect: both the homeowners' association records provision at section 720.303(5) and the condominium counterpart at section 718.111(12) keep owner telephone numbers and email addresses out of what other members may inspect unless the owner has consented in writing. Nevada goes further and bars an association from disclosing owner information to third parties at all, and extends that restriction to management companies absent a court order. The practical upshot is that a neighbor can usually learn who owns 412 Maple and where to mail them something. Learning your cell number, your email, or that you are four months behind is a different request, and in a lot of states the association is not allowed to answer it.
Opting out, where your state offers it
A handful of states let an individual owner take themselves off the list that gets shared, and California has the most developed version. Under Civil Code section 5220, a member may notify the association in writing that they are opting out of sharing their name, property address, email address, and mailing address, and that opt-out stays in effect until the member changes it. It does not make the person unreachable, which is the point. Instead the requesting member gets routed to the alternative process in Corporations Code section 8330, where the association mails the requester's material to the opted-out owners on the requester's dime rather than handing over the addresses. A candidate can still campaign, a petition can still circulate, and the owner who wanted privacy still gets the mail. If you live somewhere without a statutory opt-out, ask anyway. Nothing stops a board from adopting a policy that offers one, and it costs the association almost nothing to honor.
Selling the list, or giving it to a vendor, is its own problem
Every so often a board gets approached by a company that wants to buy the owner list, or a management company assumes it may share owner contacts with its preferred vendors because that is convenient for everybody. Several states foreclose this directly. North Carolina's nonprofit corporation act bars using a membership list for any purpose unrelated to a member's interest as a member and bars selling or purchasing it outright. Beyond the specific statutes, a board that monetizes owner data is on very shaky fiduciary ground: the roster is not the board's asset to sell, and directors who turn member information into revenue or into a favor for a vendor they hire are handing a plaintiff a clean story. There is also a quieter version of this problem that boards rarely think about. A management company that also does brokerage, insurance, or maintenance sales sits on the roster for every community it manages, and unless your contract says what it may do with that data, nobody has actually answered the question. Look at the data provision in your management agreement. Many older ones do not have one.
What a careful board actually does
Write down the policy before anyone asks, because the request that triggers a scramble is always the contested one, from the owner organizing a recall or the neighbor in the middle of a dispute. Decide in advance what the association will produce, what it will redact, whether requesters must state a purpose in writing, what the copying charge is, and how many days the association has to respond. Then apply it identically to the owner you like and the owner suing you, since selective denial is what turns a records request into a lawsuit. Separate the roster from everything else in your files, so that producing names and addresses does not accidentally produce the delinquency report sitting in the same spreadsheet, and never let a directory of phone numbers and emails compiled for a social committee become the thing that gets handed over on a records request. Keep it in a system with real access controls rather than a shared inbox or a spreadsheet on the treasurer's laptop, which is the situation OurHOA is built to replace for self-managed boards. Records rights, contact-information carve-outs, and opt-out procedures vary a great deal by state and by your governing documents, so confirm what applies to your community with association counsel before you produce a list or refuse one.
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These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.