Closing or Converting a Florida Mobile Home Park: Change of Use, the Six-Month Notice and Relocation Payments

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: Mobile home communities

Closing a mobile home park, or converting part of it to another use, is the most consequential thing Chapter 723 allows a park owner to do. It displaces an entire community of people who own their homes. The statute answers that with a long notice period, a purchase right for the residents, a state-administered relocation fund, and a short window in which homeowners must object. Every piece of it is a date, and the dates do not move.

What a change in use is, and what triggers the statute

Section 723.061(1)(d) permits eviction on a change in use of the land comprising the mobile home park, or the portion of it from which mobile homes are to be evicted, from mobile home lot rentals to some other use. Chapter 723 does not define "change in use," so whether a particular plan is one, or a partial one, is decided on the facts. Redeveloping half a park as townhomes while the other half keeps renting lots is a change in use as to the portion being cleared.

The paragraph is written as two conditions. Subparagraph 1. is the notice to the homeowners' association of its right to purchase. Subparagraph 2. is the six-month eviction notice to the residents. Both have to be satisfied before the ground exists, so a park owner who sends a flawless six-month notice but skips the association notice has not established the ground. Our guide to evictions under Chapter 723 covers how the ground fits alongside the other four.

One timing rule sits inside subparagraph 2. and is easy to trip over: the park owner may not give a notice of increase in lot rental amount within the 90 days before giving notice of a change in use. A routine annual increase sent in the same quarter as the closure decision can contaminate the notice, so the lot rental increase calendar has to be checked first.

The association's right to purchase

Subparagraph (1)(d)1. requires written notice to the homeowners' association formed and operating under §§ 723.075 through 723.079, stating the price and the terms and conditions of sale. The mechanics are tight:

• Notice is delivered by United States mail.
• The association has 45 days after the date of mailing to execute and deliver a purchase contract at the stated price and terms.
• If no contract is executed and delivered in that period, the park owner has no further obligation except as to a later price reduction.
• If the park owner later offers the park at a lower price, the association gets an additional 10 days to meet the revised terms.
• The park owner need not give further notice or negotiate after 6 months from the date of mailing of the initial notice.

This tracks, but is not identical to, the general right of first refusal in § 723.071, which applies whenever a park owner offers the park for sale and carries the same 45-day and 10-day periods. Section 723.071(2) is the provision purchasers ask about: on a bona fide offer the owner intends to consider, it must notify the association of the price and material terms, but it need not sell to the residents or delay other negotiations. Section 723.071(4) exempts a list of transfers, and § 723.072 lets the park owner record an affidavit of compliance that purchasers and title insurers have an absolute right to rely on.

For residents to exercise any of this, the association has to exist and be operating before the notice arrives. Formation, the two-thirds written consent requirement in § 723.075, the officer notification in § 723.076 and the recorded notice of the right to purchase cannot be assembled inside 45 days. See our guide to homeowners' committees and association meetings, and, for what the park already promised residents in writing, our guide to prospectus requirements.

The six-month eviction notice and what must be in it

Subparagraph (1)(d)2. requires the park owner to give affected mobile home owners, tenants and occupants at least six months' notice of eviction due to the projected change in use. Three further requirements attach to it.

1. Within 20 days after giving an eviction notice, the park owner must provide the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes with a copy, and the Division must provide a copy to the executive director of the Florida Mobile Home Relocation Corporation.
2. The notice must state, in a font no smaller than the body of the notice, that the recipient may be entitled to compensation from the Florida Mobile Home Relocation Trust Fund administered by FMHRC, whose contact information is available from DBPR.
3. No notice of increase in lot rental amount may be given within the 90 days before the change-of-use notice.

Service follows the general rule in § 723.061(4): in writing, posted on the premises, and sent by certified or registered mail with return receipt requested to the homeowner and any tenant or occupant, with mailed notice deemed given 5 days after the postmark. Only the association purchase notice is excepted. Because the FMHRC statement is mandatory content, a notice that omits it is defective on its face.

Zoning and local government

A change of use almost always needs something from the county or city, and Chapter 723 puts two obligations in that path. Section 723.081 requires the park owner to notify each mobile home owner in writing, or the association directors if one has been established, of any application for a change in zoning of the park within 5 days after it is filed with the zoning authority.

Section 723.083 is stronger and often overlooked. No agency of municipal, local, county or state government may approve any application for rezoning, or take any other official action, that would result in the removal or relocation of mobile home owners residing in a mobile home park without first determining that adequate mobile home parks or other suitable facilities exist for their relocation. In Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties after 2022, that finding is not a formality.

The Relocation Corporation and the Trust Fund

The Florida Mobile Home Relocation Corporation is created by § 723.0611. Its board has six directors appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, three nominated by the mobile home owners' side and three by the manufactured housing industry side, on staggered three-year terms. The Corporation is considered an agency of the state for sovereign immunity purposes and its meetings are subject to § 286.011.

The Florida Mobile Home Relocation Trust Fund sits within the Department under § 723.06115. It is funded by park owner payments under § 723.06116, the surcharge under § 723.007(2), a surcharge collected by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, appropriations and interest, and may be spent only on the Corporation's administration and operations and on relocation payments.

Section 723.007 requires a park owner to pay $4 for each lot in the park on or before October 1 each year, with a 10 percent penalty if not paid by December 31, and includes a $1 surcharge per annual fee for the Relocation Trust Fund. The surcharge is suspended if the fund balance exceeds $10 million on June 30 and reinstated if it falls below $6 million on June 30. A park owner that has not paid the amount due plus any penalty has no standing to maintain or defend an action in the courts of this state.

What a displaced homeowner can claim

Section 723.0612 gives a homeowner required to move by a change in use two mutually exclusive options, and the homeowner, not the park owner, applies for either.

Moving expenses include taking down, moving and setting up the home. The Corporation must approve payment within 45 days after receiving the application materials or payment is deemed approved, and on approval it issues a voucher in the amount of the contract price that the moving contractor redeems after the move. § 723.0612(4). Corporation actions are reviewable only by writ of certiorari in the circuit court where the claimant resides. § 723.0612(5).

Four situations disqualify a homeowner: the park owner moves the home to another space or park at its own expense; the homeowner told the park owner before the change-of-use notice that they were vacating; the homeowner abandons under subsection (7); or a nonpayment eviction under § 723.061(1)(a) was already pending before the mailing date of the change-of-use notice. § 723.0612(2). The section does not apply to eminent domain under Chapter 73 or 74.

There is a real election of remedies. Under § 723.0612(9), a homeowner whose application is approved is barred from asserting any claim arising out of the change in use against the Corporation, the park owner or its successors. Deadlines are in subsection (12): within 1 year after the eviction period stated in the notice expires; if a disqualifying claim was dismissed with prejudice, within 6 months after that dismissal; and never later than 2 years after the eviction period expires.

What the park owner pays

Section 723.06116(1) requires the park owner, upon the change in use, to pay the Corporation $2,750 for each single-section home and $3,750 for each multisection home for which a homeowner has applied for moving expenses. Those payments, and the reimbursement owed under § 723.0612(7) when a homeowner abandons, are due within 30 days after the park owner receives the invoice. Late fees escalate: 10 percent after 30 days, 15 after 60, 20 after 90, and 25 on any payment received 120 days or more after receipt of the invoice.

Two things about those numbers deserve attention. The park owner's contribution for a relocating homeowner is lower than the maximum the homeowner can receive, because the Trust Fund carries the difference. And the abandonment option is different in kind: under § 723.0612(7) the park owner pays the Corporation an amount equal to what the homeowner received, and in exchange ends up with an endorsed title and lien releases rather than a derelict home on a lot it needs to clear.

The same four exceptions that disqualify the homeowner relieve the park owner of the § 723.06116(1) payment, and the Corporation enforces these payments by court action with venue available in Leon County. Section 723.0612(11) awards fees and costs to the prevailing party in an action to enforce §§ 723.0611, 723.06115, 723.06116 and 723.0612.

The homeowner's ninety days

Section 723.061(2) is the shortest provision in this area and the one with the sharpest consequence. On eviction for change in use, homeowners must object by petitioning for administrative or judicial remedies within 90 days after the date of the notice, or they are barred from any subsequent action to contest the change in use. The subsection preserves the right to object to a change in zoning at any time, which is a different proceeding.

Ninety days inside a six-month notice period means the decision whether to fight has to be made long before anyone has to move. A residents' group that spends the first three months organizing, negotiating and hoping for a buyer may have given up its ability to contest the change in use at all.

The timeline a purchaser should plan around

For anyone underwriting the purchase of a park intending to redevelop it, the statutory path is long and mostly not compressible.

1. Confirm the seller's § 723.007 fees are current. An unpaid annual fee costs the park owner standing to maintain or defend an action.
2. Identify whether a homeowners' association exists and is operating under §§ 723.075 to 723.079, which determines whether the purchase notice is owed and whether § 723.071 has already been triggered.
3. Allow 45 days from mailing for the association to execute a contract, plus 10 more if the price is later reduced; the duty to negotiate ends 6 months after the initial notice.
4. Send no lot rental increase notice in the 90 days before the change-of-use notice.
5. Give the six-month eviction notice with the FMHRC statement, served by posting plus certified or registered mail, and deliver a copy to the Division within 20 days.
6. Expect the zoning path to run in parallel, with 5 days' notice to residents after any rezoning application and a § 723.083 adequacy determination before approval.
7. Budget the § 723.06116 payments and § 723.0612(7) reimbursements, payable within 30 days with escalating late fees.
8. Expect homeowner applications to arrive up to a year after the eviction period expires, and in some cases up to two.

In Southwest Florida the practical timeline runs longer than the statutory one, because the § 723.083 adequacy finding is genuinely contested where relocation capacity is short. Storm damage does not create an expedited track either, a point we take up in our guide to hurricane recovery in mobile home communities.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes advises mobile home community associations and boards in Bonita Springs, Naples, Fort Myers and Port Charlotte on change-of-use notices, purchase rights under §§ 723.061 and 723.071, and relocation claims. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Regulatory Compliance page.