Section 718.111(5)(a) gives your association an irrevocable right of access to every unit during reasonable hours when access is necessary for maintenance, repair or replacement of the common elements or of any part of a unit the association maintains, or to prevent damage to the common elements or to a unit. Irrevocable means the owner cannot take it back. It is not permission the owner grants. It is a statutory right that exists whether or not the declaration repeats it.
What the statute actually gives you
The operative language is short. Under section 718.111(5)(a), 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.
Three elements do the work. The right is irrevocable, so an owner's objection does not extinguish it. It is limited to reasonable hours, which is why the association does not send a plumber at 9 p.m. because that is when the vendor was free. And it exists only when access is necessary for one of the listed purposes, which is the element boards overlook.
The right runs to the association, not to anyone who says the association sent them. The people entering should be identifiable: the manager, a named employee, or a named contractor working under a current association contract.
What it does not cover
The purposes in the statute are a closed list. Access for something outside them is not supported by section 718.111(5)(a) even if the board thinks it is sensible.
- A general inspection of unit interiors for rule compliance.
- Entry to look for an unapproved pet, an unregistered occupant or a short term rental guest.
- Entry because a vendor is on site and it would be efficient to look at everything while the lift is up.
- Entry to maintain something the declaration assigns to the owner, unless access is necessary to prevent damage to the common elements or to another unit.
That last item is where the analysis usually lands, which is why a board must know which components the association maintains before it sends a notice. Our guide on condominium maintenance responsibilities works through the allocation. The notice should state the component, the source of the association's obligation for it, and the purpose of the entry.
Section 718.111(5)(b) is a different and narrower authority for abandoned units. The board may enter an abandoned unit to inspect it and the adjoining common elements, make repairs, address mold or deterioration, turn on utilities and otherwise preserve the unit. A unit is abandoned when it is the subject of a foreclosure action and no tenant appears to have occupied it for at least four continuous weeks without prior written notice to the association, or when no tenant appears to have occupied it for two consecutive months without prior written notice and the association cannot determine the owner's whereabouts after reasonable inquiry. That paragraph also permits the association to petition for a receiver to lease the unit.
Scheduled access and emergency entry are different problems
Almost every access dispute is a scheduling dispute that was handled badly. Treat the two situations separately.
Scheduled access covers concrete restoration, riser replacement, window and railing work, plumbing stacks, termite treatment, milestone inspections and the annual sprinkler test. These are known weeks or months ahead. Give written notice, offer a date and a reasonable window, offer one alternative date, allow the owner or a representative to be present, and confirm in writing what was agreed. Most refusals dissolve at that stage, because what the owner actually objected to was a text message the day before.
Emergency entry is what the phrase "as necessary to prevent damage" in section 718.111(5)(a) supports: water coming through a ceiling, a running supply line, a gas odor, a failed water heater above an occupied unit. There the association does not need an appointment, and waiting for one may itself be the breach. The next section sets out how far we think that reaches and what a board should do on the night. Our guide on emergency repairs covers the follow up.
Do not confuse any of this with the association's emergency powers under section 718.1265. Those powers open only in response to damage or injury caused by or anticipated in connection with an emergency as defined in section 252.34(4), for which a state of emergency has been declared under section 252.36 in the locale in which the condominium is located. The cooperative and homeowners' association versions, sections 719.128 and 720.316, are built on the same trigger. No declared state of emergency, no emergency powers. A leaking riser on a Tuesday is not a declared state of emergency, and a board that invokes the emergency powers statute for a routine casualty has handed the owner an argument. The authority for getting into the unit on that Tuesday is section 718.111(5)(a).
Immediate entry when waiting makes it worse
Three calls come in more than any others, and each arrives the same way. The owner is unreachable, the door is locked, and something inside the unit is getting worse while somebody stands in the corridor deciding what to do. Water running behind a wall. A burning smell on the landing. An odor from a unit nobody has come out of in a week.
An active leak. This is the plainest of the three and it needs no argument. Water moving through a building reaches the slab, the framing, the drywall and every unit below the one it started in, and it keeps doing that while the board decides what to do. Section 718.111(5)(a) authorizes access as necessary to prevent damage to the common elements or to a unit, in those words. A supply line running behind a locked door is the situation that clause was written for. Shut the water down at the riser if you can reach it, then get in and stop the source.
A burning smell. Call 911 first, every time, before anyone from the association touches the door. The fire service has its own authority to enter and the equipment to handle what it finds, and it will arrive before a locksmith will. Where the association still has to act, the reasoning is the statute's own. A fire inside one unit threatens the structure, the corridors, the risers and every other unit, and preventing that is preventing damage to the common elements and to a unit. What the statute does not spell out is acting on a smell rather than on damage you can already see. That step is ours rather than the Legislature's.
An odor of decomposition. Call law enforcement and let them make the entry. A welfare check is theirs to perform, they hold authority the association does not, and if the odor is what it smells like, the unit is a scene the association has no business walking into. The property case is real enough on its own. Decomposition reaches the slab and the unit below, the biohazard becomes a common element problem, and the vermin that follow become an association problem for months. The stronger reason has nothing to do with property. Someone may still be alive behind that door. In our view an association in a position to help a member, a guest or an occupant carries a neighborly obligation to do it.
Immediate entry is the riskiest thing a board does without a lawyer on the phone. These are the guardrails, and most of them cost nothing.
- Decide who decides, before the call comes. Adopt a standing resolution naming who may authorize an immediate entry: the president, one named alternate officer, and the manager when neither can be reached. The association owns the consequences of an entry made on a maintenance employee's own judgment at midnight, so choose that person in advance and tell them where the limits are.
- Write the reason down while you are standing there. Not that evening, and not from memory the following week. What was seen, heard or smelled, by whom, at what time, what was done to reach the owner and any tenant, and why waiting was not an option. A note made in the corridor at 11:40 p.m. is evidence. The same account reconstructed later for a lawyer is argument.
- Take a witness, and photograph the door before you open it. Two people go in. Never one. A second person ends the argument about what the unit looked like on entry and what was touched. Photograph the closed door, the condition on arrival, and the source of the problem once you find it.
- Go no further than the emergency requires. Enter for the leak, find the leak, stop the leak, leave. Do not open closets, do not count pets, and do not look at anything the association would have had no right to see if the owner had opened the door. An entry that was lawful when it started becomes indefensible the moment it turns into an inspection, and the owner's lawyer will ask what else you looked at.
- Notify the owner in writing the same day. Section 718.111(5)(a) requires no notice before an ordinary access and none after one, so this is our practice rather than a rule. Send it anyway: the date and time, who entered, why, what was done, the condition the unit was left in, and who to call. Attach the photographs. An owner who hears from a neighbor that strangers were in the unit becomes a plaintiff.
- Expect to pay for the door. The cost recovery sentence at section 718.111(5)(b)3. sits in the abandoned unit paragraph and does not reach an ordinary emergency entry. Unless your declaration puts the cost of a forced entry on the owner, budget to repair the door and frame at association expense and to re-key the unit the same day. Where the owner's own refusal or neglect caused the emergency, section 718.111(11)(j) may put the cost of the resulting damage on the owner, but that is a claim to make afterward.
One caution for boards reading this page who do not run a condominium. A cooperative association has a comparable right under section 719.104(1), but the wording is narrower: it reaches structural components of the building and mechanical, electrical or plumbing elements necessary to prevent damage to the building or to another unit. Chapter 720 has no analogue at all. A homeowners' association has no statutory right of entry into a parcel or a home, and section 720.303 does not supply one. An HOA board acting on this article without an easement or an access provision in its own governing documents is trespassing.
Notice: what the statute requires, and what you should do anyway
Section 718.111(5)(a) contains no notice requirement at all. That is worth stating plainly, because boards assume one exists and then rely on the wrong provision. The two day notice requirement, by mail or hand delivery except in an emergency, is in section 718.111(5)(b)2. and applies to entry into an abandoned unit.
The absence of a statutory requirement is not permission to appear unannounced. A board that gives good notice almost never litigates access. A sound internal standard:
- Written notice to the owner's address of record and to any e-mail address designated for association communications, at least 48 hours ahead for routine work and further ahead for anything invasive.
- State the date, a time window, the specific purpose, the statutory and documentary basis, and who will enter.
- Offer one alternative date and a contact to arrange it.
- Where the unit is leased, notice both the owner and the tenant. Section 718.106(4) preserves the owner's Chapter 83 landlord access rights, so two sets of access rights are running at once, and the tenant is the person who will be at the door.
- Keep proof of delivery. A sent e-mail and a certificate of mailing cost almost nothing and settle the question.
For reference, a residential landlord entering to repair under section 83.53(2) must give reasonable notice, defined as at least 24 hours, and must enter between 7:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. An association is not a landlord and that statute does not bind it, but a board that adopts those parameters as its floor will not be criticized for them.
Keys, locks and the pass key question
Chapter 718 does not require an owner to give the association a key, and section 718.111(5) says nothing about a pass key. Where the association has a pass key right, it comes from the declaration or a properly adopted rule, and many Southwest Florida declarations do contain one, often in the same article as the access provision.
If your documents contain a pass key provision, an owner who changes the locks and does not deliver a new key is in violation of the documents, and that violation is enforceable in the ordinary way. Say so in the notice. It converts an abstract argument about access into a concrete, provable breach.
If your documents are silent, the association still holds the irrevocable right of access. What it lacks is a self help method of exercising it. Do not drill a cylinder or send a locksmith on the strength of section 718.111(5) alone without counsel, absent a genuine emergency where the association is acting to prevent damage and can document why waiting was not an option. The statute grants a right of access; it does not spell out a right of forced entry.
An association that holds keys takes on responsibility for them. Keep a key log, restrict custody to named people, record every issuance and return, and re-key when a manager or maintenance employee leaves. Then confirm that the association's crime, fidelity and liability coverage responds to a loss involving association held keys. Our guide on condominium insurance responsibilities covers where those lines fall.
When the owner still says no
Escalate in order, and document each step as you go.
- Second written demand. Restate the statutory basis, the purpose, the dates already offered and what happens next. Give a firm deadline and send it by a method that produces proof.
- Fines and suspension. Under section 718.303(3) the association may fine up to $100 per violation and $1,000 in the aggregate, and may levy for each day of a continuing violation on a single notice and opportunity for hearing. At least 14 days' written notice is required, and the fine or suspension must be confirmed by a committee of at least three members appointed by the board who are not officers, directors or employees, or the spouse, parent, child, brother or sister of one. A condominium fine may not become a lien against the unit, so this is pressure, not collection. Our guide on fines, hearings and suspensions sets out the mechanics.
- Injunctive relief. Section 718.303(1) authorizes an action for damages or injunctive relief, with reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party. A mandatory injunction compelling access is the remedy that produces an open door.
- Check the forum first. Section 718.1255 requires mandatory binding arbitration or presuit mediation for certain disputes before a court action. Have counsel confirm which track an access dispute takes before anything is filed.
- Emergency relief where damage is imminent. Where the refusal is allowing active damage to continue, counsel can seek immediate injunctive relief.
Document the refusal while it is happening
The association's position in any later proceeding is only as good as the file it built at the time. Capture the following as the matter unfolds, not afterward from memory.
- Every notice sent, the method of delivery, and the proof of delivery.
- Every missed or refused appointment: date, scheduled window, who appeared, what was said, what happened.
- The vendor's trip charge invoice or written confirmation of the wasted mobilization. A dollar figure makes the refusal concrete.
- Photographs and readings taken from the accessible side: the stained ceiling below, the moisture meter reading, the exposed rebar on the adjoining balcony.
- Every communication from the owner, including voicemails and text messages, preserved in original form.
- Board minutes recording the decision to escalate and the reason, so it is documented as a board decision rather than a manager's improvisation.
Record the schedule the refusal is holding up. Phase two repairs following a milestone inspection must commence within 365 days after the report is submitted under section 553.899, and an owner who blocks access to a stack, a balcony or a slab edge can put the association outside a deadline it does not control. Say so in the notice and keep the engineer's schedule in the file. Our guide on milestone inspection requirements covers those deadlines.
Once litigation is reasonably anticipated, stop routine deletion. Preserve e-mail, text messages, work orders, photographs and the manager's notes, and send a written preservation instruction to everyone who holds them, including the management company. Our guide on litigation holds and record preservation covers what that instruction should say.
What the delay costs the owner
Owners who refuse access often assume the worst case is that the work does not get done. It is considerably worse than that.
Section 718.111(11)(j) makes a unit owner responsible for the costs of repair or replacement of any portion of the condominium property not paid by insurance proceeds where the damage is caused by intentional conduct, negligence, or failure to comply with the terms of the declaration or the rules of the association by the owner, the owner's family, unit occupants, tenants, guests or invitees, without compromising the insurer's subrogation rights. An owner who refuses access while a supply line runs into the unit below has a serious problem with that provision, and the association's contemporaneous file is what proves the causation.
There is a second consequence. An owner who refuses access and later claims the association failed to maintain the common elements has to explain the refusal. A documented record of offered dates, refused entries and wasted mobilizations disposes of that argument quickly.
Finally, consider the board's own exposure. Directors owe a fiduciary duty to the association, and quietly giving up on an access the association needed is not a neutral choice. Where the refusal is holding up structural work, an insurance repair or a deadline the association cannot move, escalate rather than wait, and put the decision and the reasoning in the minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions About Association Access to Condominium Units
Do we have to give notice before entering a unit?
Section 718.111(5)(a) does not require notice, but give it anyway. The two day notice rule in section 718.111(5)(b)2. applies to abandoned units, not to ordinary access. As a practical standard, send written notice at least 48 hours ahead stating the date, a time window, the purpose and who will enter, and keep proof of delivery.
Can we enter a unit to check for rule violations?
No. Section 718.111(5)(a) authorizes access only when necessary for maintenance, repair or replacement of common elements or association maintained portions of a unit, or to prevent damage to the common elements or to a unit. Looking for an unapproved pet, an unregistered occupant or a short term rental is outside the statute, and entry on that basis is not defensible.
Can we require owners to give the association a key?
Only if your declaration or a properly adopted rule says so. Chapter 718 does not require it and section 718.111(5) does not mention pass keys. Many Southwest Florida declarations do contain a pass key provision, and where one exists an owner who changes the locks without providing a new key is in violation of the documents.
What if we need to get in right now because water is coming through the ceiling?
That is precisely what the words "as necessary to prevent damage to the common elements or to a unit" in section 718.111(5)(a) support. Enter, stop the loss, photograph everything, and document who entered, when, and why waiting was not an option. Do not rely on the emergency powers statute, section 718.1265, which is tied to a declared state of emergency.
Can we go in on a burning smell, or on an odor that suggests someone has died?
Call 911 or law enforcement first and let them make the entry. Where the association still has to act, our view is that section 718.111(5)(a) supports it, because a fire or a decomposition event inside a unit is a present threat to the common elements and to other units, and preventing that damage is what the statute authorizes access for. Be clear that this is our reading. The statute names neither situation and we are aware of no Florida decision holding that it covers them. Take a witness, go no further than the emergency requires, and notify the owner in writing the same day.
Can we charge the owner for the costs of getting in?
Be careful here. The cost recovery language at section 718.111(5)(b)3., enforceable as an assessment under section 718.116, sits in the abandoned unit paragraph. For an ordinary access the ability to charge costs back depends on your declaration or on a separate liability theory. Confirm the authority before posting the charge, because an unauthorized lien is expensive to undo.
Can we fine an owner who refuses access?
Yes, with the statutory procedure. Section 718.303(3) permits a fine up to $100 per violation and $1,000 in the aggregate, levied per day of a continuing violation on a single notice and hearing, after at least 14 days' written notice and confirmation by an independent committee of at least three members. A condominium fine cannot become a lien, so treat it as pressure rather than as a collection tool.
Contact Hamilton Mikes
Hamilton Mikes helps condominium boards in Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties secure access for structural, plumbing and restoration work, including the demand letters and injunction filings that follow a refusal. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Covenant Enforcement page.
Statutes and authorities referenced
- § 718.111(1)(a), Fla. Stat. (operation of the condominium by the association; officers and directors have a fiduciary relationship to the unit owners)
- § 718.111(5)(a), Fla. Stat. (irrevocable right of access during reasonable hours for maintenance, repair or replacement, or to prevent damage)
- § 718.111(5)(b), Fla. Stat. (entry into abandoned units; definition of abandonment; two day notice at (5)(b)2.; expenses chargeable as an assessment at (5)(b)3.; receivership)
- § 718.111(11)(j), Fla. Stat. (owner responsible for repair costs not paid by insurance where damage caused by intentional conduct, negligence or failure to comply with the declaration or rules)
- § 718.113(1), Fla. Stat. (maintenance of the common elements is the responsibility of the association)
- § 718.106(4), Fla. Stat. (tenant's use rights during a lease; owner's Chapter 83 landlord access preserved)
- § 718.116, Fla. Stat. (assessments and the association's lien)
- § 718.1255, Fla. Stat. (mandatory arbitration and presuit mediation)
- § 718.1265, Fla. Stat. (emergency powers, tied to a declared state of emergency)
- § 718.303(1), Fla. Stat. (damages and injunctive relief; prevailing party attorney fees)
- § 718.303(3), Fla. Stat. (fines and suspensions; $100 per violation, $1,000 aggregate; 14 days' notice; independent committee; no lien for a condominium fine)
- § 719.104(1), Fla. Stat. (cooperative; irrevocable right of access to each unit during reasonable hours, limited to structural components and to mechanical, electrical or plumbing elements necessary to prevent damage to the building or to another unit)
- § 719.128, Fla. Stat. (cooperative emergency powers, tied to a declared state of emergency)
- § 720.303, Fla. Stat. (homeowners' association powers and duties; contains no right of access or entry into a parcel or home)
- § 720.316, Fla. Stat. (homeowners' association emergency powers, tied to a declared state of emergency)
- § 252.34(4) and § 252.36, Fla. Stat. (definition of an emergency; declaration of a state of emergency, the trigger for every association emergency powers statute)
- § 83.53(2), Fla. Stat. (landlord access; reasonable notice defined as at least 24 hours; 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.)
- § 553.899, Fla. Stat. (milestone inspections; phase two repairs must commence within 365 days of the report)