Property Insurance and Disaster Legislation: What Reached Associations, Session by Session

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 laws effective through July 1, 2026. Property insurance legislation is not written with community associations in mind, and that is exactly why it catches boards out. The deadlines that govern an association master policy claim sit in the insurance code, not in Chapter 718 or 720, and the most consequential of them was cut in half in a special session that lasted four days.

Where the law stands after the 2026 session

Four rules govern the front end of an association property claim. Notice of an initial or reopened claim must reach the insurer within one year after the date of loss. Notice of a supplemental claim must reach it within eighteen months. For a hurricane, the date of loss is the date the hurricane made landfall, and for other weather events it is the date verified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the association cannot hand any of that to a contractor by assignment.

Two rules govern the back end. The insurer no longer pays the policyholder's attorney fees as a matter of course, and a public adjuster's compensation is capped, at ten percent of claim payments or settlements during the year after a declaration of emergency and twenty percent otherwise.

Our guides to documenting an insurance claim and a board's duties after a hurricane cover the operational side.

2026 session: Citizens and public adjusters

CS/CS/SB 1028, Chapter 2026-150, was approved June 16, 2026 and amended §§ 627.351 and 627.3518. It bars Citizens Property Insurance Corporation from issuing new policies for commercial residential and commercial nonresidential risks in specified circumstances, and requires a personal lines clearinghouse under which applicants and insureds may elect to accept coverage with an authorized insurer or to accept or continue coverage with Citizens. It passed the Senate 33 to 1 and the House 88 to 19.

The distinction matters for a board. An association master policy is commercial residential. The clearinghouse mechanism in the bill is a personal lines mechanism; the association-facing provision is the restriction on new commercial residential business. An association currently insured by Citizens should ask its agent, before renewal, what the restriction means for this policy in this county.

The second 2026 item is easy to miss. Chapter 2026-174, from CS/CS/CS/SB 1452, an act relating to the Department of Financial Services, amended § 626.854 to require a public adjuster, apprentice or public adjusting firm to respond with specific information to a written or electronic claim status request from a claimant or insured or a designated representative within fourteen days, and to document the response in the file. It did not change the compensation caps. For a board that has engaged a public adjuster after a storm, this is a usable tool: put the status request in writing and the fourteen days start running.

Nothing in the 2026 session amended the community association chapters on insurance as a governance matter. Chapter 2026-168, the Chapter 617 rewrite, made a conforming amendment to § 718.111, which is the section that carries the condominium insurance requirements at subsection (11).

2025 session: emergency powers diverge

CS/CS/HB 913, Chapter 2025-175, made a small change to § 718.1265 with a large operational consequence. In the 2024 edition, paragraph (1)(h) let a condominium association require evacuation of the condominium property "in the event of a mandatory evacuation order in the locale." In the 2026 edition it reads "in the event of an evacuation order in the locale in which the condominium is located." The word mandatory is gone.

Chapter 720 did not follow. Section 720.316's history line reads Chapter 2014-133, Chapter 2021-99 and Chapter 2026-168, so no 2025 amendment reached it, and its list of emergency powers runs (a) through (k) without any evacuation power at all. The condominium list runs (a) through (m), with evacuation at (1)(h), special assessment without an owner vote at (1)(l) and borrowing at (1)(m). In an HOA, special assessment without an owner vote is (1)(j) and borrowing is (1)(k).

HB 913 also amended § 718.113 at section 9, which carries the condominium hurricane protection provisions, and Chapter 2025-173 amended § 215.55871, the My Safe Florida Condominium Pilot Program. That program offers mitigation inspections and grants for opening protection and roof improvements on a match of one dollar from the association for two from the state, capped at $175,000 per association.

Our page on condominium emergency powers sets out how and when a board may use the list.

2024 session: refinements, not reversals

Chapter 2024-139 amended both § 627.70132, the claim deadline section, at section 8, and § 489.147, the roofing contractor section, at section 2. Neither amendment restored anything the 2022 special sessions took away. The one-year and eighteen-month deadlines survived 2024 intact, and they survived 2025 and 2026 as well.

The two community association omnibus bills that year, HB 1021 and HB 1203, were governance bills. Their insurance content is indirect: for condominiums, the structural reserve obligations that determine whether the association can absorb a deductible at all. The reserves and SIRS session history traces that line.

2023 session: tort reform reaches the coverage fight

HB 837, Chapter 2023-15, is remembered as tort reform. For an association it did three things. It cut the negligence limitation period to two years. It adopted modified comparative negligence in § 768.81. And at section 2 it created § 86.121, which awards reasonable attorney fees to a named insured, omnibus insured or named beneficiary who prevails in a declaratory action on coverage after the insurer has made a total coverage denial.

Read the last sentence of that section before relying on it. Section 86.121 provides that it does not apply to any action arising under a residential or commercial property insurance policy, and that the right may not be transferred or assigned. An association's master policy is a commercial residential property policy. The fee provision that replaced the repealed one-way statute does not reach the association's own coverage dispute.

SB 360, Chapter 2023-22, shortened the construction statute of repose and changed how it is measured, which matters to any association weighing a construction defect claim against a storm claim on the same building. Chapter 2023-172 also amended § 627.70132 at section 22.

2022 sessions: the year the rules changed

Three bills in three sittings, and together they rewrote association claim practice.

• SB 2-D, Chapter 2022-268, from the May special session, amended § 489.147 at section 5 and § 627.7152 at section 18. It is the bill most associated with roofing contractor solicitation practices.
• SB 4-D, Chapter 2022-269, from the same session, created milestone inspections in § 553.899 and the Structural Integrity Reserve Study in § 718.112(2)(g). It is a safety and reserve bill, not an insurance bill, but it is the reason underwriters began asking for inspection reports.
• SB 2-A, Chapter 2022-271, from the December special session, effective December 16, 2022. This is the one that changed the claim calendar.

SB 2-A cut the notice deadline in § 627.70132 to one year for an initial or reopened claim and eighteen months for a supplemental claim, at section 16. At section 21 it amended § 627.7152 to add subsection (13), under which a policyholder may not assign, in whole or in part, any post-loss insurance benefit under any residential property insurance policy or any commercial property insurance policy issued on or after January 1, 2023. And it repealed the one-way attorney fee provision: § 627.428 no longer appears in the 2026 edition of the Florida Statutes.

For a board, the assignment ban is the provision that shows up in the field. A restoration company arriving the morning after a storm with a form that assigns the association's claim rights is presenting a document that cannot do what it says for any policy issued on or after January 1, 2023. Sign a work authorization if the work is needed. Do not sign away the claim.

2021 session: where the tightening started

SB 76, Chapter 2021-77, created § 489.147 at section 1 and amended § 627.70132 at section 10. The claim notice deadline had been three years; SB 76 cut it to two, and SB 2-A cut it again to one the following year. An association working from a memo written in 2021 is working from a deadline that has since been halved.

Section 489.147 is worth a board's attention in its own right. It bars a prohibited advertisement, meaning a communication encouraging a consumer to contact a contractor or public adjuster to make a roof damage claim without the required disclosures. It bars offering a rebate, gift, gift card, cash, coupon or waiver of an insurance deductible in exchange for a roof inspection or claim. And it gives an owner ten days to cancel a roof repair or replacement contract connected to a declared emergency, with the cancellation right in bold fourteen-point type.

CS/CS/SB 630, Chapter 2021-99, the community association bill that year, amended § 627.714, which governs condominium unit owner policies and subrogation, along with § 718.1265 and § 720.316. It was the last session in which the two emergency powers sections were amended together.

The current rules in one table

One point that is not in the table because it is not in the insurance code: no chapter requires an association to ratify an emergency action in the emergency powers section itself. The majority-plus-one emergency agenda and ratification mechanism is in § 718.112(2)(c)1. and § 719.106(1)(c), and Chapter 720 has no equivalent. A board that levies an emergency special assessment and then never ratifies it at a regular meeting is exposed on the process, not on the power. See our guide to post-storm special assessments.

What a board should do with this

1. The week after a storm, calendar three dates: landfall, one year from landfall, and eighteen months from landfall. Give notice of any suspected loss well before the first of those dates.
2. Refuse assignment agreements. Sign a scope of work and a price; do not sign a transfer of claim rights on a policy issued on or after January 1, 2023.
3. Before engaging a public adjuster, confirm the fee against § 626.854(11)(b) and the date of the emergency declaration, because the cap is ten percent rather than twenty for a year after it.
4. Read any roof contract signed in a declared emergency within the ten-day cancellation window, and look for the bold fourteen-point notice the statute requires.
5. Check whether the association's emergency powers come from § 718.1265, § 719.128 or § 720.316, because the lists are not the same length and the HOA list has no evacuation power.
6. If the association is insured by Citizens, ask the agent before renewal what Chapter 2026-150 means for a commercial residential policy in this county.
7. Budget for the coverage fight. With § 627.428 repealed and § 86.121 inapplicable to property policies, the association pays its own counsel in a coverage dispute unless the policy says otherwise.

Cooperative boards should read this alongside our page on hurricane recovery in a cooperative, because Chapter 719 tracks the condominium emergency powers more closely than Chapter 720 does.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes represents condominium, cooperative and homeowners association boards in Southwest Florida on property insurance coverage, post-storm claims and emergency powers, and reviews contractor and public adjuster agreements before a board signs them. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Insurance page.