Fining and Enforcement: The 2024 Rewrite of § 720.305 and What Every Other Session Did

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 · HOAs · Cooperatives

This page is current through the 2026 regular session and the amendments effective July 1, 2026. One session did nearly all the work here. HB 1203 in 2024 replaced the homeowners association fining procedure with a longer, more formal one and took two common violations off the table entirely. Chapters 718 and 719 did not follow, so an association that operates both a condominium and an HOA now runs two different procedures on the same calendar.

Where fining law stands after the 2026 session

All three chapters still start the same way. The board levies the fine or suspension. The owner gets at least 14 days' written notice and an opportunity for a hearing before a committee of at least three members appointed by the board who are not officers, directors or employees of the association. The committee's role is limited to confirming or rejecting what the board levied; if it does not approve by majority vote, the fine or suspension may not be imposed.

After that the chapters separate. In an HOA the notice must now say what the violation is and what the owner must do to cure it, the hearing has a deadline, the committee must write down its findings, and the owner gets a month to pay. In a condominium and a cooperative none of that is required, and the fine is due five days after notice of the approved fine or five days after the committee meeting.

A board running the condominium procedure inside an HOA will be reversed. A board running the HOA procedure inside a condominium is simply giving the owner more process than the statute requires, which is safe but slow. Our guides to fines, hearings and suspensions and to running the fining committee set out the mechanics.

2026 session: nothing changed in fining or enforcement

No bill amending the fining or enforcement provisions of Chapters 718, 719 or 720 passed the 2026 regular session. The history line on § 720.305 still ends at Chapter 2024-221.

HB 657, the community association omnibus, carried a community association court program and changes to presuit mediation, both of which would have affected how enforcement disputes are resolved. It passed the House 108 to 2 on March 5, 2026 and died in Senate Rules on March 13, 2026. CS/SB 1498, on records violations and electronic voting, died in Senate Appropriations the same day.

What did pass and touches these chapters is structural rather than procedural. Chapter 2026-168, from CS/CS/HB 797, rewrote Chapter 617, the Not For Profit Corporation Act, on the ABA model across roughly 189 sections, and made conforming amendments to §§ 718.111, 718.3027 and 720.3033. Because an association is a not-for-profit corporation, that rewrite reaches board procedure generally even though it says nothing about fines.

2025 session: HB 913 left all three fining statutes alone

CS/CS/HB 913, Chapter 2025-175, approved June 23, 2025 and effective July 1, 2025, was a long bill. It did not amend § 718.303, § 719.303 or § 720.305. Boards that heard 2025 described as the year everything changed should understand that the change was in reserves, meetings, records and the Division's authority, not in enforcement.

One 2025 change does reach an enforcement file indirectly. HB 913 confirmed that a board or committee member participating by telephone or real-time videoconference counts toward a quorum and may vote as if physically present, under § 718.112(2)(b)5. That matters for a fining committee that cannot get three disinterested owners in a room, though the committee is not the board and the safer course is to confirm the association's own documents permit remote committee participation.

2024 session: HB 1203 rewrites § 720.305(2)

This is the section to read twice. Chapter 2024-221, section 7, replaced the homeowners association fining and suspension procedure with a lettered sequence. Running in order:

1. (2)(b) Notice. At least 14 days' written notice to the parcel owner at the address on the association's records, containing a description of the alleged violation, the specific action required to cure the violation if applicable, and the date, location and access information for the hearing. The hearing must be held within 90 days after the notice is issued.
2. (2)(b) Committee. At least three members appointed by the board who are not officers, directors or employees of the association, or the spouse, parent, child, brother or sister of an officer, director or employee.
3. (2)(c) The vote. The committee confirms or rejects the fine or suspension by majority vote. It has no authority to substitute a different penalty.
4. (2)(d) Written findings within 7 days. After the hearing the committee must deliver written notice of its findings related to the violation, including any applicable fines or suspensions, and how the owner or the owner's occupant, licensee or invitee may cure the violation if a cure applies.
5. (2)(e) The cure bar. If the violation is cured before the hearing, or in the manner specified in the written notice, a fine or suspension may not be imposed.
6. (2)(f) At least 30 days to pay. The committee must set a payment date no earlier than 30 days after delivery of the written notice.
7. (2)(g) Fees start later. Attorney fees and costs may not begin to accrue until after the noticed payment date and after the time for an appeal has expired.

Compare the 2023 text. Before the rewrite, the notice had to describe the violation and give hearing details, the committee confirmed or rejected, and the fine was due five days after notice of the approved fine. There was no cure bar, no findings requirement, no hearing deadline, and no delay on attorney fees. Every one of those additions is a place where an old template now fails.

HB 1203 also amended § 720.3045 at section 6 and § 720.3085 at section 10, and HB 1021, Chapter 2024-244, amended § 718.303 at section 19. The condominium fining core did not move: the $100 and $1,000 caps, the 14-day notice, the independent committee and the rule that a fine may never become a lien read the same in the 2023 and 2026 editions.

2023 session: what came off the table before the fine was ever levied

Chapter 2023-228 amended § 720.305 at section 4, a year before the rewrite. The more consequential 2023 change for enforcement was elsewhere. HB 437, Chapter 2023-64, created § 720.3045, which bars an association from restricting an owner or tenant from installing, displaying or storing items on a parcel that are not visible from the parcel's frontage or an adjacent parcel, an adjacent common area or a community golf course, including but not limited to artificial turf, boats, flags, vegetable gardens, clotheslines and recreational vehicles.

That is an enforcement statute even though it sits among the architectural provisions. A violation letter about a boat behind a privacy fence is not a fining question at all after 2023; the covenant simply may not be enforced. The architectural review session history traces that provision and the 2024 amendment to it.

2022 session: no change

Nothing in the 2022 regular session or either special session amended the fining or suspension provisions of any of the three chapters. SB 4-D, Chapter 2022-269, was the post-Surfside milestone inspection and reserve study bill. The insurance special sessions that year changed claim practice, not covenant enforcement.

2021 session: the last time all three chapters moved together

CS/CS/SB 630, Chapter 2021-99, effective July 1, 2021, amended § 718.303 at section 11 and § 720.305 at section 21 in the same bill. That was the last session in which the condominium and HOA enforcement provisions were revised side by side. Since then the HOA provision has been amended twice more and the condominium provision once, and the cooperative provision not at all.

That divergence is the practical legacy of the last six sessions. It is why a management company form built for one chapter should never be used in another, and why a selective enforcement defense increasingly turns on whether the association followed its own chapter's procedure rather than on whether the covenant is reasonable.

The caps, the lien treatment, and the two exempt categories

The caps look identical across the chapters and are not. Sections 718.303(3) and 719.303(3) cap a fine at $100 per violation and $1,000 in the aggregate with no override, and provide flatly that a fine may not become a lien against a unit. Section 720.305(2) sets the same two numbers but adds "unless otherwise provided in the governing documents" to each, and provides that only a fine of less than $1,000 may not become a lien. Read the other way: an HOA fine of $1,000 or more can become a lien, and an HOA whose declaration authorizes higher fines may levy them.

Section 720.305(7), added in the 2024 rewrite, takes two categories out of fining entirely. An association may not fine or suspend for leaving garbage receptacles at the curb or the end of the driveway within 24 hours before or after the designated collection day or time. Nor for leaving holiday decorations or lights up longer than the governing documents allow, unless they are left up more than one week after the association gives written notice.

One more asymmetry worth knowing before a hearing: suspension for nonpayment runs on 90 days in all three chapters, but suspension of voting rights in a condominium requires the obligation to be both more than $1,000 and more than 90 days delinquent, while a cooperative and an HOA need only the 90 days.

What a board should do with this

1. Pull the association's violation notice template. For an HOA, confirm it states the specific action required to cure and the hearing date, location and access information, and that the hearing is calendared within 90 days.
2. Create a written findings form for the committee and use it every time. Seven days is short, and an undocumented hearing is the part of the file an owner's counsel will attack first.
3. Set the payment date on the findings notice, at least 30 days out, and do not let the ledger accrue attorney fees before that date passes.
4. Check the declaration before assuming the $100 and $1,000 caps apply. In an HOA they can be higher, and in a condominium or cooperative they cannot, whatever the documents say.
5. Stop writing violation letters for garbage cans inside the 24-hour window and for holiday decorations inside the first week after notice. Those are no longer enforceable by fine in an HOA.
6. Where the violation is one the owner can fix, say so in the notice and give the cure a deadline. A cured violation costs the association nothing and a fine imposed after a cure costs it the owner's attorney fees.

Boards that want a single reference for the process end to end should read our covenant enforcement guide alongside this page, and HOA directors specifically should look at how the fining committee operates under Chapter 720.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes advises condominium, cooperative and homeowners association boards in Southwest Florida on covenant enforcement, fining procedure and hearing practice, and rewrites enforcement policies to match the chapter the association is actually governed by. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Covenant Enforcement page.