Condo archives: what to keep, for how long, and where

The day you need the minutes from 2009, they will be in a box — or nowhere.

A building produces around a hundred documents a year: notices, minutes, accounts, contracts, quotes, invoices, inspection reports, letters. Over thirty years that is a considerable memory — and exactly what is missing the day something has to be proved.

Archiving falls to the manager, but practical memory often rests with the board, the only body whose composition changes more slowly than the contractor.

Documents to keep indefinitely

• The building rules and the schedule of division, with every amendment.
• General meeting minutes, year by year, without exception.
• Building plans and construction records.
• Records of structural works: completion, guarantees, site insurance.
• Easements, agreements with third parties and deeds of division.

These have no useful retention period: they found the association’s very existence. The first is covered in the building rules, the second in meeting minutes.

Documents with a limited life

For the rest, periods vary with the nature of the document and how long an action remains possible. The broad families:

• Annual accounts, budgets and supporting documents: several years after approval.
• Service contracts: for their whole term, then a few years after they end.
• Works invoices: at least as long as the guarantees attached to the project.
• Mandatory surveys: until renewal, keeping the previous one for comparison.
• Letters and formal demands: while the dispute is open, and beyond.

Exact periods vary and change: ask the manager rather than discarding on a hunch. In doubt, a kept document costs nothing; a destroyed one is never recovered.

The real problem is access, not retention

In practice the documents nearly always exist somewhere. The problem is that they sit with the manager, on paper, and a board member must make an appointment to consult them.

The result: nobody checks anything. That is what blocks account reviews, works preparation and the annual report. See which documents the board can obtain.

What the board can put in place

• Digitise as you go rather than tackling thirty years at once.
• Name files with the date first, for automatic chronological sorting.
• Separate what is permanent from what belongs to a given year.
• Keep a copy outside one board member’s laptop.
• Plan the handover to the next term, with the access credentials.

That last point fails most often: see a successful board handover.

Archives and personal data

Not everything is kept forever. Documents containing personal data — arrears correspondence, named exchanges, former occupants’ contact details — should not be kept beyond what is necessary.

That is the storage-limitation principle, detailed in GDPR for the condo board. It does not oppose archiving: it structures it.

A building does not lose its archives: it loses access to them, which comes to exactly the same thing.

Centralise your documents with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony keeps rules, minutes, contracts, surveys and invoices in one space, available to the whole board and transferable to the next term. Create your free space.