Collecting Maintenance Fees in a Florida Cooperative: The Statutory Sequence

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

Collection in a Florida cooperative runs on section 719.108, not on section 718.116. The economics are similar to a condominium file and the notice forms look alike, but the sequence has its own deadlines, and Chapter 719 leaves out a few steps that condominium practitioners treat as automatic. The board's job is to run the same sequence every time, document it, and decide early whether the association's real pressure point is the lien, the suspension of privileges, or the proprietary lease.

The assessment obligation itself

Section 719.106(1)(g) requires assessments to be made not less frequently than quarterly, in an amount no less than is required to fund all anticipated current operating expense in advance plus any unpaid operating expense previously incurred. That obligation flows from the adopted annual budget, and an owner's share is fixed by the proportions in the cooperative documents under section 719.107.

Section 719.108(1) sets out who owes. A unit owner, regardless of how title is acquired, including without limitation a purchaser at a judicial sale, is liable for all rents and assessments coming due while the owner is in exclusive possession. On a voluntary transfer, the new owner is jointly and severally liable with the previous owner for that owner's unpaid share up to the time of transfer.

Section 719.108(2) closes the obvious escape routes. Liability may not be avoided by waiver of the use or enjoyment of the common areas or by abandonment of the unit. An owner who stops using the pool, moves out, or writes the board a letter surrendering their interest still owes.

Interest, late fees and how payments are applied

Section 719.108(3) supplies three rules the board should know by heart.

• Interest. Rents and assessments not paid when due bear interest at the rate provided in the cooperative documents from the date due until paid, up to the maximum rate allowed by law. If the documents provide no rate, interest accrues at 18 percent per annum.
• Late fee. If the cooperative documents or bylaws so provide, the association may charge an administrative late fee in addition to interest, not to exceed the greater of $25 or 5 percent of each delinquent installment. If the documents do not provide for it, there is no late fee to charge.
• Application of payments. Any payment received must be applied first to accrued interest, then to the administrative late fee, then to costs and reasonable attorney fees incurred in collection, and then to the delinquent assessment.

The application rule is mandatory and it does not yield to a restrictive endorsement. An owner who sends a check marked "payment in full for December assessment only" does not control where the money goes. Managers should be instructed not to negotiate around that rule at the counter, because a well-meaning accommodation creates an argument that the association waived its position.

The two notices before a lien

Chapter 719 requires the association to send two different letters before it can record a claim of lien and charge the owner for the lawyer who prepared it. They serve different purposes and neither substitutes for the other.

Use the statutory forms. The statute says the notices must be in substantially the form it sets out, and a homemade letter that omits an element is the kind of defect that costs the association its attorney fee award at exactly the moment the fees have grown. Our written collection policy guide covers how to build the sequence into a board-adopted schedule so it runs the same way for every delinquent account.

What Chapter 719 leaves out

Two absences are worth naming, because a form file built for condominiums will assume both are present.

There is no statutory pre-foreclosure notice. Section 718.116(6)(b) bars entry of a condominium foreclosure judgment until at least 45 days after the association gives written notice of its intent to foreclose, and penalizes an association that files without it. Section 719.108(5) contains no equivalent requirement. Sending the notice anyway costs nothing and removes an argument, and where the cooperative documents require a notice, the documents govern.

There is no statutory payment plan. Chapter 719 does not create a right to a payment plan or prescribe one. Whether to offer one is a board decision, and it should be made under a written policy applied uniformly. Any plan should be in writing, should state that it does not waive the lien or the accrual of interest, should specify what happens on a missed installment, and should not disturb the statutory order of application of payments.

Suspending use rights

Section 719.303(4) is the most underused tool in a cooperative collection file. If a unit owner is more than 90 days delinquent in paying a monetary obligation due to the association, the association may suspend the right of the owner, and the owner's tenant, guest or invitee, to use common areas and facilities until the obligation is paid in full.

The procedural point that matters: the 14-day notice and committee hearing that section 719.303(3) requires before a fine or a compliance-based suspension do not apply to a suspension imposed under subsection (4). Boards routinely assume they must convene a hearing committee to suspend an amenity for nonpayment. They do not.

What cannot be suspended in any case:

• Limited common areas intended to be used only by that unit.
• Common areas needed to access the unit.
• Utility services provided to the unit.
• Parking spaces.
• Elevators.

In a mid-rise co-op that list leaves the pool, the clubhouse, the fitness room, the tennis or pickleball courts and the social calendar. It does not leave the elevator, and a board that turns off an elevator over a delinquency has created a far larger problem than the one it was solving.

Suspending voting rights, and the counting rule

Section 719.303(5) allows the association to suspend the voting rights of a unit or member for nonpayment of any monetary obligation more than 90 days delinquent, until the obligation is paid in full.

The part boards get wrong is arithmetic, not eligibility. A voting interest that has been suspended may not be counted toward the total number of voting interests for any purpose. It comes out of the denominator, not just the numerator. If a 100-unit co-op has suspended eight voting interests, a majority of the total voting interests is 47 of 92, not 51 of 100. That changes quorum, it changes election math, and it changes what it takes to approve a reserve decision or an amendment.

Under section 719.303(6), every suspension under subsection (4) or (5) must be approved at a properly noticed board meeting, and the association must then notify the owner, and any affected occupant, licensee or invitee, by mail or hand delivery. Put the list of accounts on the agenda by unit number, approve them by motion, and send the letters the same week. Suspensions applied by a manager without a board vote are vulnerable, and in an election year an improperly suspended interest is grounds to challenge the result.

Fines are not a collection tool

Section 719.303(3) permits a fine for failure to comply with the cooperative documents, the rules or the chapter, if the documents or bylaws so provide. The fine may not exceed $100 per violation, may be levied for each day of a continuing violation with a single notice and opportunity for hearing, and may not exceed $1,000 in the aggregate. A fine may not be imposed without 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, or close relatives of officers, directors or employees. If that committee does not agree with the fine by majority vote, the fine may not be imposed.

Coordinating collection with the proprietary lease

Section 719.108(7) provides that the remedies in that section do not exclude other remedies provided by the cooperative documents and permitted by law. In a cooperative that sentence is the gateway to a second track, because the association is not only the assessing body. It is the lessor under the proprietary lease, and the delinquent owner is its lessee.

Most proprietary leases contain a default and termination clause covering nonpayment. Whether a Florida cooperative may use it to terminate and remove a shareholder, rather than foreclosing the lien, is genuinely unsettled on the face of the statute. Section 719.103(26) provides that an interest in a unit is an interest in real property, and section 719.108(5) directs that liens be foreclosed in like manner as a mortgage on real property, both of which cut against summary removal. We take that question up separately in our guide to terminating a proprietary lease for nonpayment.

One related remedy is not in doubt. Under section 719.108(10), where the unit is occupied by a tenant and the owner is delinquent, the association may demand in writing that the tenant pay subsequent rent to the association until the owner's monetary obligations are paid, and the tenant receives credit against the rent owed the owner. If the unit is rented, run that demand early; it is the fastest source of cash in the file. The leasing rules that govern in the first place are covered in our guide to leasing and subletting in a cooperative.

One procedural note before filing anything. Section 719.1255 routes cooperative dispute resolution through section 718.1255, and that section's definition of a "dispute" expressly excludes the levy of a fee or assessment, the collection of an assessment levied against a party, and the eviction or other removal of a tenant. Collection matters do not go through presuit arbitration or mediation. They go to court. Our guide to cooperative arbitration and mediation covers what does.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes handles cooperative assessment collection for boards across Southwest Florida, from the statutory notice sequence through lien recording, foreclosure and the coordination of suspensions with proprietary lease remedies. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Assessment Collection page.