Emergency Repairs: What a Florida Condominium Board Can Authorize Without the Usual Notice, Bids or Owner Consent

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

An emergency repair is the narrow case where a Florida condominium board may act first and follow procedure afterward. The authority comes from three places: the ordinary notice rules in § 718.112(2)(c), which carve out emergencies; the association's right of access to units in § 718.111(5)(a); and, during a declared state of emergency, the powers in § 718.1265. None of them excuses the board from writing down why the repair could not wait.

What counts as an emergency repair

Chapter 718 uses the word emergency repeatedly and never defines it for this purpose. Section 718.1265 borrows the civil defense definition in § 252.34(4), which covers an occurrence or threat of one that results or may result in substantial injury or harm to the population or substantial damage to or loss of property. That definition governs the emergency powers, not the everyday sense in which a board calls a repair an emergency.

The practical test is simpler. A repair is an emergency if waiting for ordinary process would create a real risk of injury, of substantial further property damage, or of losing insurance coverage. A riser spraying water into three stacked units at midnight is an emergency. A failed lift station is an emergency. A roof open to the sky with rain forecast Thursday is an emergency. A roof that has been leaking slowly since March is not, however much the board wishes it were. The question is never whether the work is necessary. It is whether it can wait forty-eight hours.

There is a real temptation after a storm to label everything an emergency, because everything feels urgent and the owners are furious. Each time the board uses the label it spends credibility it will need for the repair that actually is one. Write the answer down while it is true: what the condition was, who reported it, what waiting would cost, and what the board authorized. That paragraph is what a judge reads three years later.

Acting without the usual notice

Board meetings are normally noticed by posting on the condominium property at least 48 continuous hours before the meeting, and the notice must specifically identify all agenda items. Section 718.112(2)(c) makes the exception explicit: the requirement applies except in an emergency.

That leaves two questions. Whether the meeting itself can be held on short notice, and in a genuine emergency the answer is yes. And whether the board can act on something never placed on any agenda, which the statute also answers. An item not included on the notice may be taken up on an emergency basis by a vote of at least a majority plus one of the board members, and the emergency action must be noticed and ratified at the next regular board meeting. Note what that vote is: not a vote on the repair, but a vote that the item may be taken up at all. A five-member board needs four. Record the count.

During a declared state of emergency, § 718.1265(1)(a) allows board, committee, election and membership meetings to be held in whole or in part by telephone, real-time videoconferencing or similar real-time electronic or video communication, with flexible notice. And whether or not there is an emergency, § 718.112(2)(b)5. provides that a board member participating by telephone or real-time videoconference counts toward a quorum and may vote as if physically present. Between those provisions a board scattered across three states can lawfully convene in an hour. Our guide on meeting notices and agendas sets out the ordinary rules this departs from.

Bidding: what is suspended and what is not

This is the question managers ask most and the one most often misstated. Section 718.3026 requires an association to obtain competitive bids for a contract for the purchase, lease or renting of materials or equipment, or for the provision of services, where the contract requires payment exceeding 5 percent of the total annual budget of the association, including reserves.

An emergency does not repeal that section. What the section itself says is narrower and more useful: nothing contained in it is intended to limit the ability of an association to obtain needed products and services in an emergency. That is less a waiver than a safe harbor for acting when bidding is not practical, and the board still has to be able to explain why it was not practical.

Two carve-outs matter more after a storm than boards realize. Section 718.3026 does not apply to contracts with employees of the association, or to contracts for attorney, accountant, architect, community association manager, timeshare management firm, engineering, or landscape architect services. The engineer you need on site tomorrow morning and the manager's emergency contract sit outside the bidding rule entirely, emergency or no emergency.

The workable approach is tiered. For immediate work, authorize it and document why bids were impossible. For work that is urgent but can stand a day, take two or three telephone quotes and file them even if they are not formal bids. For anything reaching the restoration phase, run the ordinary process. Our guide on contractor agreements covers what belongs in the contract.

Entering units to stop water

Water moves down. The unit where the problem started is often not the unit where the damage shows, and its owner is often in Michigan with the phone off.

Section 718.111(5)(a) is the authority. The association has the irrevocable right of access to each unit during reasonable hours, when necessary for the maintenance, repair or replacement of any common elements or of any portion of a unit to be maintained by the association pursuant to the declaration, or as necessary to prevent damage to the common elements or to a unit. Read that last clause carefully. The right of access is not limited to work the association is obligated to perform. It extends to access necessary to prevent damage to the common elements or to a unit.

The statute says during reasonable hours, which is the phrase that worries boards at 3 a.m. In an emergency the reasonableness of the hour is measured by the emergency, and waiting until nine to shut off a line flooding four units is not a defensible reading. Give whatever notice the circumstances allow, use the least intrusive means, photograph on entry and exit, and send two people rather than one.

Keep a key and access log current. Boards that adopt a written access policy before hurricane season, tell owners about it, and follow it consistently are in a far better position than boards improvising at midnight. Where an owner has refused access or changed the locks, the analysis shifts, and our guide on what to do when an owner refuses access covers it.

Doing work inside units that is normally the owner's job

This is where emergency authority is broadest, and where boards most often act without knowing which provision they are relying on. Three provisions can apply, and they have different requirements.

1. Mitigation under § 718.1265(1)(j). During a declared emergency the board may contract for removal of debris and to prevent or mitigate the spread of fungus or contagion, including removing affected drywall, insulation, carpet, cabinetry and other fixtures and furnishings, even where the owner is obligated by the declaration or by law to insure or replace them. No owner consent is required. This is the tear-out authority.
2. Contracting on the owner's behalf under § 718.1265(1)(k). During a declared emergency the board may contract, on behalf of any unit owner or owners, for items or services for which the owners are otherwise individually responsible. Those owners are responsible for reimbursing the association for the actual costs, and the association may use its lien authority to enforce collection.
3. Reconstruction under § 718.111(11)(g). Outside the emergency window the ordinary allocation governs. All reconstruction work after a property loss must be undertaken by the association except as otherwise authorized in that section, and an owner may undertake reconstruction work on portions of the unit only with the prior written consent of the board.

The distinction that matters is between stopping damage and repairing it. Tearing out wet drywall while the owner is unreachable is mitigation. Installing that owner's new cabinets is not, and the emergency powers are not the authority for it. Boards that let the mitigation contractor roll straight into build-back inside units, on the association's contract, without a separate agreement with each owner, create months of billing disputes.

Charging it back

Section 718.1265(1)(k) is the cleanest chargeback authority the board has after a storm. The board contracts. The owner reimburses the actual costs. The association may use its lien authority to enforce collection. "Actual costs" is a limit: bill at cost, attach the invoice, and do not add an administrative markup the documents do not authorize.

Section 718.111(11)(g)2. runs in parallel for reconstruction. Unit owners are responsible for the cost of reconstructing the portions of the condominium property for which they must carry property insurance, and where the association performs that work it is chargeable to the owner and enforceable as an assessment. Those are the items listed in § 718.111(11)(f), including floor, wall and ceiling coverings, electrical fixtures, appliances, water heaters, water filters, built-in cabinets and countertops, and window treatments.

Three cautions. Bill promptly, because an owner who first learns of a $14,000 charge nine months later will dispute it and often should. Bill separately from regular assessments, so the ledger shows what the charge was for. And decide as a board, in advance, whether you are charging back at all, because charging one owner and not another for the same category of work is the beginning of a selective enforcement problem. The collection sequence is covered in our guide on the lien and foreclosure process.

Documenting necessity while it is happening

Every provision in this article turns on a fact the board will have to prove later: that this was an emergency, that entry was necessary, that bidding was impracticable, that the tear-out was mitigation. None of that is provable from an invoice.

Build the file as you go. For each emergency action it should hold the date and time the condition was reported and by whom, photographs before and after, what professional advice the board had and from whom, what the board authorized in dollars and scope, who voted and how, what notice went to affected owners and when, and the signed work authorization.

Minutes carry particular weight because of § 718.111(1)(b). A director present when action is taken is presumed to have assented unless he or she votes against it or abstains, and the vote or abstention of each member present must be recorded in the minutes. A director who thought the emergency declaration was a stretch, but whose disagreement is not in the minutes, is treated as having agreed. Minutes are also official records under § 718.111(12)(a)6., and the records in § 718.111(12)(a)1. through 6. must be permanently maintained from the inception of the association. Our guide on documenting emergency board decisions includes a worked example.

Ratifying the emergency action

Section 718.112(2)(c) requires that an item taken up on an emergency basis be noticed and ratified at the next regular board meeting. Do that literally. Put "Ratification of emergency actions taken October 9 through October 24" on the posted agenda. List the actions individually rather than as a block. Take a recorded vote. Attach the supporting memo to the minutes.

Ratification does two things. It cures a procedural defect in how the decision was made, which is what an owner challenge would otherwise attack. And it converts a decision made by three people on a phone call into a decision of the board, on the record, at a meeting owners could attend. It does not cure a substantive problem. If the board had no authority at all, ratifying it later does not supply the authority.

One more step belongs at that same meeting: decide expressly which emergency measures are ending. Section 718.1265(2) limits the emergency powers to the time reasonably necessary, and a board that formally steps back down to ordinary procedure on a stated date has a far better record than one that simply drifts. The broader framework is in our guide on post-hurricane board duties.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes advises condominium boards and managers in Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties on emergency repair authority, unit access, emergency contracting and chargebacks, usually while the water is still running. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Construction page.