Ending and Renewing Association Contracts: Auto-Renewals, Cancellation Rights, Cure Periods and Transition

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 25, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: Condominiums · HOAs · Cooperatives

Every association contract ends eventually, either the way the board chose or the way the contract chose for it. The difference is almost always a calendar entry. A board that knows its notice deadlines can renegotiate, rebid, or walk away on its own schedule. A board that discovers the deadline afterward is bound for another year at a price it did not agree to, negotiating from a position where the vendor has no reason to move.

Start with the calendar, not the contract

Pull every active contract and build one table: the vendor, the end date of the current term, the last day to give notice of non-renewal, and the meeting at which the board must decide. That last column does the work. If notice is due ninety days before a December 31 expiration, the decision happens at the September meeting, which means the agenda item is set in August and the performance review happens in July.

Back the dates out rather than forward. A contract that renews unless the association gives sixty days' notice needs the board vote at least seventy-five days out, because the notice must be prepared, signed by someone with authority, and delivered the way the contract specifies. Certified mail adds days. So does a board that cannot reach a quorum in August.

Review the calendar at the same meeting every year, alongside the annual budget. Vendor pricing and contract renewals are the same conversation, and a board that sets the budget without knowing which agreements auto-renew in January has not set the budget.

How an auto-renewal happens by default

Evergreen clauses come in three shapes. The first renews for successive terms of the same length unless either party gives notice. The second renews for a fixed number of additional years, so one missed deadline costs three years rather than one. The third renews automatically but allows cancellation at any time on thirty days' notice, which is harmless and is the shape to ask for.

Read three details and write them on the calendar entry. Who must give notice, and whether it must come from an officer rather than the manager. How it must be delivered: certified mail, courier, email to a named address, or by hand. And where it goes, because the address in a ten-year-old agreement is often an office that has moved twice.

Deliver it by the contract's method and by one other. If the contract says certified mail, send certified mail and email a copy the same day. Keep the green card, the tracking record and the sent email together. Those three pages are the whole case if the vendor later claims the notice never arrived.

Who may cancel what

Beyond what the contract allows, each chapter supplies cancellation rights of its own, and they do not line up.

The first row deserves a second look. It is the broadest cancellation right in the three chapters and most boards have never heard of it. Section 720.309(2)(a) is not limited to pre-turnover contracts, to long-term contracts, or to any subject matter: any contract the board entered into may be canceled by a majority of the voting interests present at the next regular or special meeting, and if no member moves to cancel, or the motion fails, the contract is deemed ratified for its stated term.

For an HOA board that means two things. A significant contract signed shortly before an annual meeting is exposed at that meeting. And the ratification cuts the other way: a contract that survives the meeting is harder for a later board to attack.

Section 468.4335(4) is the provision to remember when a management relationship has gone wrong in a particular way. If the manager violated the conflict of interest requirements, the management contract is voidable, and on cancellation the association owes the reasonable value of services to that point and nothing for termination fees, liquidated damages or other penalties. That is a better exit than most management agreements provide. Our guide to reviewing a management agreement covers the rest of that document.

Termination for cause and the cure period

For-cause termination depends entirely on what the contract calls a default. Most association agreements require written notice specifying the failure and give the vendor ten to thirty days to cure. A board that terminates without following that sequence has usually handed the vendor a breach claim of its own.

The work happens before the notice. A for-cause file needs dated, specific, contemporaneous records: the service reports never delivered, the photographs of the unmowed common area, the emails asking when the pump would be repaired, the minutes recording each time the board raised it. "Performance has been unsatisfactory" is not a default notice. "The contract requires weekly pool chemical testing; no test log has been provided for the weeks of March 2, March 9 or March 16" is.

Watch the serial cure. A vendor who fixes the problem on day nine of a ten-day cure period, every month, is technically compliant and practically useless. If the contract does not say that repeated cured defaults become non-curable, add that clause at the next renewal.

Condominium boards have one extra remedy. Under section 718.3025(2), where a party contracting to provide maintenance or management services fails to perform in accordance with the contract, the association may procure the services elsewhere and recover the cost. Section 718.3025(3) makes any service not stated on the face of the contract unenforceable, which cuts both ways.

Termination for convenience, and why you want the 30-day clause

A termination for convenience clause lets either party end the agreement on notice without proving anything. It is the most useful provision a board can add to a vendor contract, and most vendors will trade it for something small, usually a longer notice period or a modest fee on financed equipment.

Thirty days is the number to ask for, and not only because it is fair notice. In a cooperative or an HOA, a contract that lets the board cancel on thirty days' notice is what unlocks renewal of a competitively bid contract without going back out to bid. The clause you want operationally is the clause the statute rewards.

Be careful with mutual convenience clauses on services that cannot lapse. A thirty-day right running in the vendor's favor on elevator maintenance, fire alarm monitoring or trash collection means the association gets thirty days to find a replacement in a market that needs ninety. Ask for a longer notice period from the vendor than from the association.

Renewing without going back out to bid

All three chapters require competitive bids above a threshold, and two of the three let a renewal skip the process.

The consequence for a condominium board is worth stating plainly. If a renewal will require payment of more than 5 percent of the total annual budget including reserves, the safe course is to obtain competitive bids rather than to re-sign a satisfactory incumbent. The association need not accept the lowest bid. It needs to have solicited bids.

The manager exemption is also not an exemption from everything. Under section 468.4335(2), where the association receives and considers a bid exceeding $2,500 for a good or service that is or may reasonably be construed to be a conflict of interest, it must solicit multiple bids from other third-party providers. Our guide to conflicts of interest covers who must disclose what.

Plan the transition before you send the notice

Services lapse not because a board changed vendors but because nobody wrote down what the outgoing vendor held. Build the list while the relationship is still cordial:

• Keys, fobs, gate remotes, master keys to mechanical rooms, and the codes to every keypad on the property.
• Monitoring and service accounts held in the vendor's name rather than the association's: fire alarm, elevator phone lines, irrigation controllers, pool chemical delivery, pest treatment schedules.
• Subcontracts the vendor holds for the association, and whether they assign to a successor or die with the prime contract.
• Onsite employees, who employs them, and what happens to them on the transition date.
• Bank signatories, lockbox instructions, and where owners have been told to send assessment payments.
• Logins and administrative rights to the association's own accounts: the community website, the owner portal, the domain registration, the utility accounts, the DBPR online account.
• Warranty documents, permits, inspection reports and equipment manuals the vendor holds.

Build a thirty-sixty-ninety schedule around the effective date, with an overlap where the market allows one. Two weeks of paying both vendors is cheaper than one weekend with no pool service in July. Notify owners before the rumor does, using the communication channels the association already uses.

Final payment, releases, and what the vendor gives back

Final payment is the moment the association has the least left to trade. Do the punch list first, then the invoice review, then the release, then the check.

Read the release carefully. Vendors often present a mutual general release ending every claim either party has, including claims the association has not discovered. If a dispute is live or a warranty is running, limit it: payment of the stated sum releases claims for payment, not claims for defective work.

On construction and repair contracts, use the statutory forms. Section 713.20(4) gives the waiver and release upon progress payment and section 713.20(5) the waiver upon final payment, and section 713.20(6) prohibits requiring a lienor to furnish a different form. Florida has two statutory forms, not the four conditional and unconditional variants used elsewhere, and a lienor may condition the waiver on the check clearing under section 713.20(7).

The association's records belong to the association, wherever they sit and whoever created them. That is easy to state and hard to enforce at 5 p.m. on the last day of a management contract, which is why it belongs in the agreement rather than a demand letter. Contracts for work to be performed are official records under section 718.111(12)(a)11.e. and section 720.303(4), bids must be kept at least one year, and so must accounting records, invoices, bank statements and deposit slips. A company that returns a box of paper and keeps the accounting system has not returned the records.

Specify the format in the contract: accounting data in exportable form rather than PDF reports, the owner roster with the email addresses collected for electronic notice, the architectural files, and administrative credentials rather than user accounts. Set a deadline, because none of the three chapters sets a turnover deadline for an outgoing vendor the way they do for a recalled director.

If records are withheld, the remedies are real. Chapters 718 and 720 both carry criminal provisions for the knowing or intentional destruction of, or refusal to release, association records. Before the first letter, put a litigation hold in place so the association's own copies are preserved.

Disputes over work already done

When the association believes it was overbilled or the work was defective, the instinct is to stop paying everything. Resist it. Identify the disputed amount, pay what is owed, and put the dispute in writing with the invoice lines and the reasons.

On contracts to improve real property for which a construction lien is authorized under Part I of Chapter 713, section 715.12(6)(e) provides that unless the contract specifically says otherwise, a dispute does not permit withholding payment for labor, services or materials not subject to or affected by the dispute. Section 715.12(5)(a) adds interest at the rate in section 55.03 plus 12 percent per year from the fourteenth day after payment is due. Withholding a whole invoice over one disputed line can turn a $4,000 argument into a $40,000 one.

Watch the calendar on the vendor's side. A claim of lien must be recorded no later than 90 days after the final furnishing of labor, services or materials under section 713.08(5), and the lien becomes void one year after recording unless an action has been commenced. Those dates tell you how long the exposure lasts.

Most of these disputes settle, and they settle faster when the file is organized. If the amount is significant, or the contract has an attorney's fee provision, it is worth a call to counsel before the second letter rather than after the complaint.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes helps boards in Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties build contract calendars, draft non-renewal and default notices, negotiate exits from management and service agreements, and manage the transition to a new vendor without a gap in service. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Contract Management page.