Vendor Contract Review Checklist: Reading a Recurring Service Agreement Before the Board Signs It

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

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

A recurring service contract is the agreement your association lives with every week for the next three years. Most of the trouble in these contracts is not in the price. It is in the scope that says "as needed," the renewal that happens by itself, and the insurance certificate nobody read. Work down this checklist with the proposed contract in front of you before the board votes.

Each item is something a director or manager can check and tick. The citation under an item tells you where the requirement comes from. Your declaration, bylaws or articles may be stricter than the statute; they cannot be looser. Related reading: our guide to vendor contract review and the questions to ask before signing a contract.

Who you are actually contracting with

• Confirm the legal entity name on the signature block matches an active Florida registration, and that the person signing has authority to bind it.Proposal letterhead usually carries a trade name. A fictitious name is not a legal entity, and a contract signed in one can be hard to enforce against anyone.
• Confirm the vendor holds every license its work requires, that the license is active, and that it is held by the contracting entity rather than by an individual who may leave.Pool service, pest control, fire alarm and elevator work are separately licensed. A general business tax receipt is not a license.
• Confirm the agreement is in writing and signed, not a purchase order against a quote.All service contracts, and any contract not fully performed within one year, must be in writing — § 718.3026(1); § 719.3026(1)
• Add up the annual payment, including every scheduled extra, and compare it to the total annual budget including reserves to see whether the competitive bid threshold is crossed.Condominium and cooperative 5% of the total annual budget including reserves; HOA 10% of the total annual budget. § 718.3026(1); § 719.3026(1); § 720.3055(1)
• If the threshold is crossed, confirm the bids were obtained before the board voted and that the bid file is in the meeting packet.The statute requires bids. It does not require the board to accept the lowest one, and says so expressly.
• Check whether your association has opted out of competitive bidding, and whether the opt-out vote was actually taken.Condominiums of 10 or fewer units and cooperatives of fewer than 100 units may opt out on a two-thirds vote of the owners — § 718.3026; § 719.3026
• If this is a renewal of a contract originally awarded on bids, check your chapter before assuming you can skip rebidding.Cooperatives and HOAs may renew without rebidding if the contract lets the board cancel on 30 days' notice. Chapter 718 contains no renewal exception at all, so a condominium renewal above the threshold has to be bid again.§ 719.3026; § 720.3055. Compare § 718.3026, which has no equivalent provision.
• Confirm the service is not one the bidding statutes exempt, so you do not run a bid process you never needed.Employees of the association and contracts for attorney, accountant, architect, community association manager, engineering and landscape architect services are outside the section — § 718.3026(2)(a); § 720.3055(1)

Scope and frequency

• Read the scope against what the board believes it is buying, and strike or define every instance of "as needed" and "industry standard.""As needed" means as the vendor needs, not as you need.
• Confirm the contract states how often each service or category of service will be performed.Required on the face of a condominium maintenance or management contract — § 718.3025(1)(c)
• Confirm minimum staffing levels are stated where the vendor supplies on-site labor.§ 718.3025(1)(d)
• Confirm reimbursable costs are itemized rather than described as "costs incurred in the performance of the services."§ 718.3025(1)(b)
• Write into the contract anything the salesperson promised at the walk-through.For a condominium maintenance or management contract, services and obligations not stated on the face of the contract are unenforceable. Chapters 719 and 720 have no counterpart, so a cooperative or HOA falls back on ordinary contract law and the same promise is simply hard to prove.§ 718.3025(3)

Performance standards and remedies short of termination

• Attach a measurable standard to each service, so performance is a fact rather than an opinion."Mow weekly" is measurable. "Maintain an attractive appearance" is not.
• Add a written notice and cure procedure, with a specific number of days to cure.Without a cure clause the only lever the board has is termination, which boards avoid using, which is why poor performance runs for years.
• Add a fee credit or withholding right for a missed or incomplete service, tied to the schedule of unit prices.This is the remedy boards actually use. Termination is the one they threaten.

Price, escalators and extras

• Confirm the price covers a stated scope for a stated period, with a schedule of unit prices for work outside it.
• Find every escalator in the document: consumer price index, fuel surcharge, minimum wage pass-through, "market adjustment." Cap each one or strike it.Escalators are rarely in the price section. Look in the definitions, the exhibits and the terms on the back page.
• For a condominium or cooperative management contract, strike any escalation clause outright.Escalation clauses in management contracts for condominiums and cooperatives are void as against public policy — § 718.302(5); § 719.302(5). Chapter 720 has no equivalent, so an HOA escalation clause is enforceable.
• Require advance written approval from the board or the manager for any charge outside the scope above a dollar figure the board sets now.

Subcontracting, screening and conduct on site

• Require the association's written consent before the vendor subcontracts any part of the scope.
• Require every subcontractor to carry the same insurance and name the same additional insureds as the vendor.
• Require background screening for anyone who will hold a key, fob or code, or work unaccompanied inside units or amenities, and say who pays for it.Say what a failed screen means. A screening requirement with no consequence is a paragraph, not a control.
• Require the vendor's personnel to be identifiable on site by uniform, badge or marked vehicle.
• State that the vendor's personnel are the vendor's employees and not the association's, and require workers' compensation coverage or a valid exemption for each of them.An uninsured worker injured on your property is the fastest route from a service contract to a claim against the association.
• Require return of keys, fobs and codes at termination and removal of the vendor's remote access to association systems such as gate, camera or irrigation controls.

Insurance and indemnity

• Get the certificate of insurance before signature and check the policy period against the contract term.A certificate dated after the work started tells you the vendor was uninsured when it started.
• Require the association to be named as additional insured by policy endorsement, not merely by a box ticked on a certificate.The certificate is evidence of nothing and says so in its own fine print. The endorsement is the coverage.
• Match the limits to the exposure the work actually creates, and require notice to the association if the policy is cancelled or not renewed.
• Confirm workers' compensation coverage, or a current exemption, for every person who will be on the property.
• Read the indemnity clause in both directions. The vendor should indemnify the association; the association should not be indemnifying the vendor against the vendor's own negligence.
• If any part of the work is construction, confirm the indemnity carries a monetary limitation that bears a reasonable commercial relationship to the contract and is no less than $1 million per occurrence.This applies to private construction contracts, not only to public work. An indemnity clause that lacks the required monetary limitation is unenforceable, which usually leaves the association with nothing where it thought it had protection.§ 725.06(1)
• Confirm the insurance and indemnity obligations survive expiration or termination of the contract.

Term, auto-renewal and getting out

• Write the start date, the end date and the total term on the face of the contract, in plain words.
• Find the automatic renewal clause and read it twice, including how long the renewal term is.
• Count backward from expiration and put the non-renewal notice date on the association calendar today, with a reminder 30 days before it.Missing a 60 or 90 day non-renewal window is the single most common way a board ends up bound to a vendor it voted to replace.
• Confirm the association has a termination for convenience right on stated notice, and negotiate for 30 days.
• Confirm termination for cause is available on written notice and a cure period, and that it does not require an arbitration ruling first.
• Confirm what the association owes on termination: work performed to the date of termination, with no liquidated damages, early termination fee or unamortized equipment charge you did not price in.
• For an HOA, note that members may move to cancel a contract the board entered into at the next regular or special members' meeting.Chapters 718 and 719 give members no comparable cancellation right over a post-turnover board contract. The paragraph sits inside the bulk communications subsection, and how far outside that subject it reaches is argued; treat it as a real risk when a contract is unpopular.§ 720.309(2)(a)

Conflicts, approval and filing

• Ask each director on the record whether they or a relative have any interest in the vendor, and record the answers in the minutes.
• Where a director or a relative does have an interest, follow the disclosure and voting procedure and attach the contract and disclosure to the minutes.§ 718.3027; § 720.3033(2); § 617.0832
• If the manager or the management firm brought this vendor to the board, obtain the manager's conflict disclosure.Where a bid for goods or services that may involve a manager conflict exceeds $2,500, multiple bids from unrelated third-party providers are required. A violation makes the management contract voidable, and on termination the association owes only the reasonable value of services and no termination fee or liquidated damages.§ 468.4335
• Confirm the board approved the contract at a properly noticed meeting and that the minutes record each director's vote.
• File the executed contract, the certificates of insurance, the endorsements and the bid file in the official records.§ 718.111(12); § 719.104(2); § 720.303(4)

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes reviews vendor and service contracts for Southwest Florida condominium, cooperative and homeowners associations, negotiates the insurance, indemnity and termination terms, and helps boards calendar the renewal deadlines that matter. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Contract Management page.