The Division and Your Association: What Recent Sessions Changed About State Oversight

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

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

This page is current through the 2026 regular session, which adjourned on March 13, 2026 without amending the Division's authority over community associations. The controlling change is still CS/CS/HB 913 from the 2025 session, Chapter 2025-175, which widened what the Division may investigate after turnover and required every condominium and cooperative association to open an online account by October 1, 2025. What follows runs newest first, and says plainly where nothing moved.

What the Division regulates, and what it does not

The Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes sits inside the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. It regulates condominium associations under § 718.501, cooperative associations under § 719.501, and mobile home parks under Chapter 723. Those chapters carry investigative authority, subpoena power and civil penalties.

Homeowners associations sit almost entirely outside that structure, and the difference is deliberate. Section 720.302(2) records the Legislature's determination that it is not in the best interest of homeowners associations or their members to create a bureau or other agency of state government to regulate their affairs. The department's Chapter 720 role is narrow: election and recall disputes, and presuit mediation of covenant enforcement disputes under § 720.311.

Even for condominiums the jurisdiction is not general after turnover. Section 718.501(1)(a) lists the subjects the Division may investigate, and a complaint outside the list is closed rather than pursued.

The 2026 session: no change to Division authority

No bill amending Chapters 718, 719, 720 or 723 as a governance matter passed in the 2026 regular session. The Division's powers today are the powers it had on July 1, 2025.

Two 2026 chapter laws will appear in the statute history lines and should not be misread. SB 104, Chapter 2026-14, effective May 12, 2026, was a reviser's bill; it touched § 718.501 among other sections, so that section's history line now ends with a 2026 citation although nothing substantive changed. Separately, CS/CS/HB 797, Chapter 2026-168, rewrote Chapter 617, the Not For Profit Corporation Act, and made conforming amendments to §§ 718.111, 718.3027 and 720.3033. That rewrite reaches your association as a corporation, not through the Division.

The community association omnibus, CS/CS/CS/CS/HB 657, passed the House 108 to 2 on March 5, 2026 and died in Senate Rules on March 13, 2026. Nothing in it is in effect, including the community association court program it proposed.

2025: what HB 913 widened

Chapter 2025-175 expanded the subjects the Division may investigate after turnover. Under § 718.501(1)(a) the Division may now look into complaints about:

• financial and procedural matters, including annual reporting and reserve fund allocation
• elections and voting procedures
• maintenance of official records and owner access to them
• procedural requirements for board and owner meetings
• conflict of interest disclosures
• removal of a director or officer from office
• structural integrity reserve studies and milestone inspections
• insurance and fidelity bonding requirements
• board member education compliance

The last three are the additions that matter. Before 2025, an owner complaining that the association had never completed its reserve study, never bonded the people who handle its money, or never certified its directors had no route to the Division. Now that owner has one, and the complaint arrives with a documentary record the association itself filed.

The online account, due October 1, 2025

Section 718.501(3) requires that on or before October 1, 2025, all condominium associations create and maintain an online account with the Division and provide the information the Division requests in the electronic format it determines. Section 719.501(3) imposes the same duty on cooperative associations, with the same date. Both came from HB 913.

The account holds contact information for the association, its board and its manager; building data including the number of stories, units and the age of each building; assessment amounts and purposes and the institutions holding association funds; and structural reserve study information. A copy of a completed study must be supplied to the Division within five business days of a request.

Two traps recur. The account belongs to the association, not the management company, so a change of managers does not move the login and an association locked out of its own account is not excused. And there is no Chapter 720 or Chapter 723 counterpart. An HOA told by a vendor that it needs a Division account was told wrong.

Complaints, civil penalties, and arbitration before the Division

The Division may impose civil penalties against a developer, an association, or an officer or board member. Under § 718.501(1)(e) the maximum is $5,000 per offense, and while a penalty may be computed on a daily basis for a continuing violation, the aggregate for a single offense is capped. Section 719.501(1)(d) gives parallel authority over cooperatives at the same figure.

A penalty against an individual officer or director is available only after the Division has notified the person of the violation and the person has declined to comply within the opportunity the statute allows. Most matters resolve at the warning letter or corrective action stage. The penalty authority works mainly as pressure toward compliance rather than as the ordinary outcome. The Division also has subpoena power and may petition the circuit court to enforce a subpoena.

Route Division correspondence to counsel before the association answers it. A response filed without review becomes the association's position in the file.

Section 718.1255 defines a covered dispute narrowly and routes it away from the courthouse first. Disputes over the board's authority to require an owner to take action or to alter the common elements, and over failures in elections, notice, meetings or records inspection, fall inside the definition. Title disputes, warranty questions, assessment collection, evictions, breach of fiduciary duty claims and damage claims fall outside it.

Covered disputes go either to nonbinding arbitration before the Division on a $50 filing fee, or to presuit mediation. The arbitrator decides within 30 days, and a dissatisfied party has 30 days to file for a trial de novo. Election and recall disputes are not eligible for mediation and must be arbitrated or filed in court. Our guide to condominium arbitration and mediation walks through which track a dispute takes.

One change is already on the books and has not taken effect. SB 154 in 2023, Chapter 2023-203, added a paragraph to § 718.1255(1) effective July 1, 2027. It brings disputes about a failure to obtain a milestone inspection or a structural integrity reserve study, to fund reserves, or to perform recommended maintenance into the definition, and excludes them from arbitration so that they go to presuit mediation instead. Calendar it now.

Director education and approved course providers

The Division approves the providers who deliver mandatory director education, which is why the requirement belongs on this page and not only on a governance page. The three chapters do not say the same thing, and a manager who runs one curriculum across a mixed book of clients will get one of them wrong.

HB 1021 in 2024, Chapter 2024-244, inserted a new subparagraph into § 718.112(2)(d) and pushed condominium director education down from (2)(d)4.b. to (2)(d)5.b. The rule did not change; the address did. Forms and articles written before 2025 still cite the old number. Our page on director certification covers the mechanics.

Because HB 913 added board education compliance to the Division's investigable list, a missing certificate is now something an owner can complain about to the state.

Managers: licensing under Chapter 468, Part VIII

Community association manager licensing is in Chapter 468, Part VIII. So are the manager conflict rules, at § 468.4335, which is why searching Chapter 718 for them produces nothing. Section 468.4335 was created by HB 1021 in 2024 and has been amended twice since, by Chapter 2025-142 and by Chapter 2025-175.

• (1) Disclosure. A manager or management firm must disclose to the board any activity that may reasonably be construed as a conflict of interest. A rebuttable presumption of conflict arises where the manager proposes a contract for non-management services, or receives compensation from a vendor doing business with the association.
• (2) Multiple bids. Where a conflict is involved and the bid exceeds $2,500 for a good or service, the association must obtain multiple competing bids from other providers.
• (3) Board approval. The proposed transaction must appear on the meeting agenda with full documentation, and approval requires an affirmative vote of two-thirds of all directors present.
• (4) Consequence. A violation makes the management contract voidable. The association may cancel by written notice and owes only the reasonable value of management services rendered to the date of cancellation, with no termination fee or penalty.
• (5) Relatives. The definition of relative reaches the third degree of consanguinity.

Read paragraph (2) carefully. The multiple-bid duty is triggered by the conflict, and the statute places it on the association, not on the manager. If your management agreement assigns that task to the manager, decide in writing which one the board will follow.

Section 468.4334(4) is the provision boards need most at the end of a relationship. A manager or management firm must return all association official records in its possession within 20 business days after the contract ends, or upon written request, whichever comes first. Failure creates a presumption of willful noncompliance and exposes the licensee to a civil penalty of $1,000 per day for up to 10 business days, beginning on the twenty-first business day, plus license discipline. Put the termination date in writing and count the 20 business days.

The HOA ombudsman bills that keep failing

Condominium owners have had an Office of the Condominium Ombudsman since 2004, created by § 718.5011 and housed for administrative purposes within the Division. Homeowners associations have no counterpart, and the Legislature has repeatedly declined to create one.

In 2025, HB 137 and its Senate companion SB 120 would have created an ombudsman office for homeowners associations inside the same Division, funded it, directed the Governor to appoint an ombudsman and given it election monitoring duties. Both died in committee. In 2026, SB 906 proposed the same office and died in Senate Regulated Industries on March 13, 2026.

A related 2026 bill is often described as a second ombudsman bill and is not one. SB 908 would have required homeowners associations operating more than two parcels to pay an annual fee to the Division, with penalties for nonpayment. It also died in Senate Regulated Industries on March 13, 2026.

For a board the practical consequence is unchanged. An owner unhappy with a homeowners association has the courts, department-administered election and recall arbitration, and presuit mediation. There is no state office that will look into the association informally. Our Chapter 720 legislative summary tracks each session.

What a board should do with this

1. Confirm the association, not the management company, controls the login to its Division online account, and confirm the data in it is current.
2. Confirm that a completed structural integrity reserve study, where one is required, has been reported to the Division and can be produced within five business days.
3. Pull the director certification file and check each sitting director against the standard for your chapter, using the current subsection number.
4. Read the management agreement against § 468.4335 and decide, in writing, who obtains bids when a conflict is disclosed.
5. Put § 468.4334(4) in the file now, so that if the management relationship ends the 20 business day clock is counted from the right date.
6. Calendar July 1, 2027 for the change in how milestone, reserve study and reserve funding disputes are routed.

None of this calls for a new policy. It calls for someone to open the file and check. Boards get into trouble on these provisions by assuming the manager handled it, and managers get into trouble by assuming the board reviewed it.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes represents condominium, cooperative and mobile home community boards across Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties in Division inquiries, complaint responses and arbitration, and audits online account data, director certification files and management agreements against the current statute. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Regulatory Compliance page.