Enforcing the Proprietary Lease: Nuisance, Unauthorized Occupants, Pets and Alterations

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: Cooperatives

Non-monetary defaults are where cooperative enforcement gets interesting, because the association holds two hats at once. Against the member as an owner, Chapter 719 supplies fines, suspensions and a statutory right to sue. Against the same person as a lessee, the proprietary lease supplies notice, cure and termination. The statutory track is well defined and capped. The lease track is powerful and almost entirely undefined by statute. Knowing which one you are on, and proving it later, is most of the work.

Two enforcement systems, running at the same time

Section 719.303(1) requires each unit owner, each tenant and other invitee, and the association itself to comply with Chapter 719, the cooperative documents and the association's rules. It then allows actions for damages or injunctive relief, or both, brought by the association or by a unit owner, against the association, a unit owner, a director who willfully and knowingly fails to comply, or a tenant or invitee. The prevailing party is entitled to recover reasonable attorney fees.

That is the statutory track, and it is the same architecture a condominium board works with under § 718.303. The second track has no statutory description at all. The member holds the unit under a lease the association granted, and that lease almost always contains its own list of prohibited conduct and its own default and termination machinery. Section 719.108(7) preserves it by providing that the remedies in the collection statute do not exclude other remedies in the cooperative documents.

The practical difference is that the statutory track is capped and the lease track is not. A fine tops out at $1,000 and cannot be liened. A lease termination ends the member's right to occupy. Boards get into trouble by treating the second as a bigger version of the first, when it runs on different paper and carries different risk. Our guide on terminating a proprietary lease for nonpayment covers that risk in detail.

What the lease usually prohibits

Chapter 719 does not tell a cooperative what conduct to prohibit. Nearly all of the substance comes from the proprietary lease and bylaws, and in an older Southwest Florida cooperative the clauses have often gone untouched since the 1970s or 1980s. The recurring categories:

• Objectionable conduct and nuisance. Usually worded as conduct that is a nuisance, that is objectionable to other residents, or that interferes with quiet enjoyment. These clauses are broad by design, which makes them useful and makes them vulnerable.
• Occupancy limits and unauthorized occupants. Who may live in the unit, for how long, and whether guests beyond a stated period require approval.
• Subletting and leasing, almost always conditioned on written consent. Chapter 719 has no leasing article, so the lease and bylaws are the entire law on the subject.
• Pets. Weight limits, numbers, breed restrictions and registration, none of which come from the statute.
• Alterations without consent. Structural or system work inside a unit, flooring changes, window and door replacement, and anything touching the building envelope.
• Rules adopted by the board under the authority the bylaws confer, which bind the member through the lease's covenant to comply.

Two cautions on this list. An objectionable conduct clause is only as good as the record behind it, because a judge asked to end someone's tenancy on that phrase will want facts, not adjectives. And a pet restriction must yield to a properly supported reasonable accommodation request under the federal and Florida fair housing acts; an assistance animal is not a pet, and enforcing against one is how a small dispute becomes a federal one. Leasing and subletting consent conditions are treated separately in our guide to leasing and subletting in a cooperative.

Fines and suspensions under § 719.303, and how they compare to § 718.303

This is the part of cooperative enforcement that is genuinely statutory, and it tracks the condominium provision closely. The differences are small but real.

Three points a board should take from that table. First, the fine ceiling is low. One thousand dollars is not a deterrent against a member renovating a unit without consent, and treating fines as the primary tool for a serious violation wastes months. Second, the hearing committee is not advisory: if it does not approve the fine by majority vote, the fine cannot be imposed at all. Third, the board levies and the committee confirms, so a committee that also investigates and decides what to charge has blurred a line a defendant will point at later.

The delinquency suspensions in subsections (4) and (5) work differently. They require no 14-day notice and no committee hearing, only approval at a properly noticed board meeting under subsection (6) and written notice to the owner by mail or hand delivery. Nothing may be suspended that is needed to access the unit, and utility services, parking spaces, elevators and the limited common areas serving only that unit are off limits as well.

The notice and cure sequence

For a non-monetary default the sequence has to satisfy two documents at once: the statute, if you are fining or suspending, and the lease, if you may later want to terminate. Running them together costs nothing and preserves both options.

1. Document the violation before you write to anyone. Date, time, location, what was observed, by whom.
2. Send a first notice identifying the specific clause violated, the facts, and what compliance looks like, with a definite deadline.
3. If the lease requires a formal notice of default with a stated cure period, send that notice in the form and by the method the lease specifies, and keep proof of delivery.
4. If the violation continues, give the at least 14 days' written notice of the opportunity for a hearing required by § 719.303(3) before any fine or use suspension.
5. Hold the hearing before the committee, and record in writing what the committee found and how it voted.
6. Take the board action at a properly noticed meeting and record it in the minutes.

Two sequencing notes. A continuing violation may be fined for each day it continues on a single notice and opportunity for hearing, but the aggregate still stops at $1,000, so the daily accrual is a pressure device rather than a revenue source. And if the association intends to rely on the lease's termination clause, the lease's own notice and cure period must be honored on its own terms; satisfying § 719.303(3) does not satisfy the lease, and the two periods frequently differ. The fines, hearings and suspensions guide walks through the hearing itself, and the fining committee guide covers who may serve.

Injunctive relief, and when to skip the fines

For a real nuisance, an unauthorized occupant who will not leave, or work under way without consent, the useful remedy is an injunction under § 719.303(1), not a fine. The statute authorizes damages or injunctive relief or both, the association may sue the tenant or invitee directly as well as the owner, and the prevailing party recovers reasonable attorney fees. An order that stops the work today is worth more than $100 a day toward a $1,000 ceiling.

Before filing, check whether a presuit step applies. Disputes over the authority of the board to require an owner to take or not take action regarding the unit fall inside the Division's program, which means either nonbinding arbitration or presuit mediation comes first. The levy of a fee or assessment is expressly excluded, so a fine dispute is not caught. Where the claim is framed as enforcement of a use restriction against the member, assume it is caught until counsel confirms otherwise. Our guide to cooperative arbitration and mediation sets out the categories.

Do not overlook the mirror image of § 719.303(1): the same fee-shifting provision lets an owner sue the association and recover fees, plus the owner's share of what the association assessed to fund the litigation. Enforcement that turns out to be unsupported is not merely unsuccessful. It is expensive.

Termination as the last remedy

Chapter 719 provides no procedure for terminating a proprietary lease for a non-monetary default. There is no statutory ground, no statutory notice, no statutory cure period, and no statutory consequence for the shares. Everything comes from the lease, backed by the injunctive relief power in § 719.303(1) and the preservation of document remedies in § 719.108(7).

The forfeiture problem is sharper here than in a nonpayment case. When a member fails to pay, the default can be cured with money and a court can see what making the association whole would require. When the claim is that a member is objectionable, there is no sum certain, and a court asked to end occupancy of a real property interest recognized by § 719.103(26) on that basis will want a record that would satisfy a jury. Boards that succeed on this ground generally have years of documentation, repeated written warnings, at least one completed hearing, and conduct that is serious and continuing rather than irritating and episodic.

Where the conduct is a tenant's rather than the member's, the analysis improves. Section 719.303(1) reaches tenants and invitees directly, and the lease and bylaws commonly make the member responsible for the conduct of occupants. Pursuing the member for the occupant's conduct is usually the cleaner path.

The evidentiary record a board needs before it acts

The proof problem is the whole problem. What should exist in the file before the board votes on anything:

• Dated, signed complaints from residents, with names. Anonymous complaints do not survive cross-examination.
• A manager's incident log kept contemporaneously, not reconstructed after counsel is retained.
• Photographs and video with dates, and for an alterations case, the permit record and any contractor correspondence.
• Every violation letter, with proof of the method and date of delivery.
• The committee's written findings and the vote, and the board minutes showing the action taken at a properly noticed meeting.
• The enforcement history for the same clause across other units, which is what answers a selective enforcement defense.

Nearly all of that is an official record. Section 719.104(2)(a)4. covers minutes of all meetings, item 9 covers accounting records, and item 15 sweeps in all other written records related to the operation of the association. Records must be made available within 10 working days after a written request, and a failure creates a rebuttable presumption of willfulness with minimum damages of $50 per calendar day for up to 10 days beginning on the 11th working day. Assume the member you are enforcing against will ask for the file, and assume they are entitled to most of it.

Two categories are not accessible. Section 719.104(2)(c)1. protects attorney-client privileged records and attorney work product, and item 2 protects information obtained in connection with the approval of a lease, sale or other transfer. That is a narrow shelter, and it does not cover the board's own notes about a neighbor dispute. Our guide to cooperative official records covers the full list.

Finally, be consistent and be able to prove it. Selective enforcement is the most common defense in community association litigation, and it is almost always documented by the association itself. If the board has not enforced a clause in a decade, the first step is a general notice to the membership that the clause will be enforced going forward, not a letter to one member.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes helps cooperative boards in Bonita Springs, Naples, Fort Myers and throughout Southwest Florida build enforcement records that hold up, run hearings correctly, and decide when a fine is enough and when an injunction is the answer. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Covenant Enforcement page.