Community Archives Charge: Fees, State Caps, and Disputes

A Community Archives charge on your credit card or bank statement, often appearing as “CA-ORDER* COMMUNITY AR,” almost always comes from HOA-related documents ordered during a home sale, refinance, or other property transfer. Community Archives is a Texas-based processor that assembles resale certificates, estoppel letters, refinance letters, and lender questionnaires on behalf of homeowners’ association management companies.¹

Why the Charge Landed on Your Account

When a home in an HOA-managed community changes hands or is refinanced, the lender or closing agent needs paperwork from the association: what the seller owes, what assessments apply, what rules govern the property. Rather than handle these requests in-house, many management companies route them through Community Archives. Community Association Management Services (CMA), for example, uses Community Archives as its exclusive processor and prohibits its own staff from taking these orders directly.²

The charge usually posts during the closing process. You may not have placed the order yourself. A real estate agent, title company, or lender may have initiated it on your transaction and passed the cost through to you at settlement.

What Community Archives Typically Charges

Fees vary by state, document type, and how quickly you need the paperwork. Consumer complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau describe document packages ranging from $260 to $370, with add-on line items that push the total higher. Reported extras include a $150 “mandatory covenants compliance inspection” fee, rush or expedite fees of $90 to $200, and a $20.80 credit card convenience fee.³ In Georgia, where CMA partners with Community Archives, a basic Statement of Account for associations under the Georgia Condominium or Property Owners Acts costs $10.²

Bundling is a recurring frustration. Some consumers report receiving zip files with well over a hundred pages of documents when they needed only a single status letter, and being charged for the entire package regardless.³

State Caps That May Make the Charge Disputable

Several states cap what an HOA or its designated agent can charge for resale and closing documents. If the total on your statement exceeds the limit for the state where the property is located, that is the strongest ground for a refund request.

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Texas: Property Code Section 207.003 caps the resale certificate fee at $375 and the update fee at $75. If the association does not deliver within ten business days of a written request, it cannot collect the fee at all. Senate Bill 1588, passed in 2021, formalized these caps.⁴⁵

Florida: The statutory base cap for an estoppel certificate is $250 when no money is owed, plus $150 for delinquent accounts and $100 for delivery within three business days. After a 2022 inflation adjustment by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the operative caps are $299 standard, $179 delinquency, and $119 expedited. Failure to deliver within ten business days forfeits the right to charge any fee.⁶

Arizona: Under A.R.S. 33-1806, total fees for resale disclosure documents, estoppel letters, and transfer-related services cannot exceed $400, with a rush fee of up to $100 permitted for 72-hour production. Associations that exceed the cap face a civil penalty of up to $1,200.⁷

Maryland: The preparation fee is capped at $250, with optional rush fees of $50 for 14-day delivery and $100 for 7-day delivery. Inspection fees are limited to $100 for condominiums and $50 for HOAs.⁸

Virginia: Fee ceilings are set by the Common Interest Community Board rather than fixed in statute and must be “commercially reasonable and consistent with the effort required,” with adjustments at least every five years tied to the Consumer Price Index.⁹

Most states have no such cap. If your property is not in one of these jurisdictions, the fee amount alone is unlikely to be a legal violation, though it may still be worth disputing on service grounds.

How to Dispute the Charge

Start with Community Archives directly. The general customer service line is (833) 544-7031, with email at customerservice@communityarchives.com. For orders routed through CMA, a separate buyer and seller support team handles issues at shoppersupport@communityarchives.com or (833) 462-3627.¹² If your complaint is that the fee exceeds a state cap, cite the specific statute in your first written contact. In resolved BBB cases, refunds have typically been processed within seven to ten business days.³

If the company does not resolve the issue, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Community Archives is not BBB-accredited but does respond to complaints filed there, and past filings have prompted refunds.³ In its responses to state-cap complaints, the company has maintained that its charges comply with Texas law and has characterized refunds as goodwill gestures rather than corrections.

For credit card charges, the Fair Credit Billing Act gives you a formal dispute channel. Send written notice of an unauthorized charge or billing error to your card issuer’s billing inquiry address within 60 days of the statement date. The issuer must acknowledge the dispute within 30 days and resolve it within 90. You may withhold payment on the disputed amount during the investigation without being reported delinquent.¹⁰ If your complaint is about the quality or nature of the service rather than a straightforward billing error, a separate “claims and defenses” process may apply, but it requires that you first make a good-faith effort to resolve the issue with the merchant.¹¹

Complaint Patterns Worth Knowing

Over a recent three-year period, the BBB recorded six complaints against Community Archives, three resolved and three answered.¹² The recurring themes give you a sense of what claims tend to get traction:

Fees alleged to exceed the Texas $375 resale certificate cap, with the company characterizing subsequent refunds as goodwill rather than compliance.
Rush fees paid but documents delivered late or not at all, in at least one case contributing to a failed closing.
Duplicate billing, where both a seller and a real estate agent were charged for the same order.
Difficulty reaching a person, with consumers describing email addresses as no-reply and reporting no response to written inquiries.

If any of these matches your situation, document it in writing when you contact the company. Resolved cases have sometimes involved an operations manager being assigned to the complaint and promises of additional agent training alongside the refund.³

1
Brex. Community Archives Charge
2
CMA Communities. Buyer Seller Services
3
Better Business Bureau. Community Archives Complaints
4
Justia. Texas Property Code Section 207.003
5
Texas National Title. A Realtors Guide to 2021 Legislative Changes
6
Florida Legislature. Florida Statute 720.30851
7
Arizona Legislature. ARS 33-1806
8
FirstService Residential. HOA Resale Packages
9
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Resale Disclosure Act
10
FTC. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
11
California Department of Justice. Credit Cards Dispute Charge
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Better Business Bureau. Community Archives BBB Profile