The prospectus is the disclosure document a Florida mobile home park owner files with the Division and gives to a homeowner before the lot rental agreement becomes enforceable. It describes the park, the facilities, the utilities, the rules, the fees and, most consequentially, the manner in which the lot rental amount will be increased. Everything the park owner may later charge or change traces back to it. A park that never delivered one is exposed on both rent and rules.
Which parks must file, and which file nothing
Section 723.011(1)(a) sets the threshold. In a mobile home park containing 26 or more lots, the park owner shall file a prospectus with the Division, and prior to entering into an enforceable rental agreement for a mobile home lot the park owner shall deliver to the homeowner a prospectus approved by the Division. Both duties are in that one sentence, and they are separate. Filing without delivering does not produce an enforceable agreement.
A park with 10 to 25 lots is fully covered by Chapter 723 but does not file a prospectus. Instead, § 723.013 requires written notification in the absence of a prospectus. Note the section's own wording. It is not drafted as a 26-lot rule. It applies whenever a park owner enters into a rental agreement in which a prospectus is not provided, and requires the notification prior to occupancy. The notification must state the nature and type of zoning under which the park operates, the zoning authority with jurisdiction, and a detailed description of all information available to the park owner about the time, manner and nature of any definite future plans for a change in the use of the land. It must also give the person authorized to receive notices and demands, and all fees, charges, assessments or other financial obligations not included in the rental agreement, with a copy of the rules in effect.
A park below 10 lots is outside Chapter 723 altogether. If you are not certain which category the community falls into, start with our guide to what Chapter 723 governs and count the lots offered for rent or lease before anything else.
Division review and approval
The Division does not merely receive the filing. Under § 723.011(1)(b) it determines whether the proposed prospectus or offering circular is adequate to meet the requirements of the chapter, and notifies the park owner by mail within 45 days after receipt that the document has been found adequate or that specified deficiencies exist. If the Division makes neither finding within 45 days, the prospectus is deemed to have been found adequate.
That deemed-adequate default is useful to know, but it is not a substitute for a clean approval letter. A prospectus that went effective by default still has to survive a later attack on its contents in circuit court, where the Division's silence proves nothing. Section 723.011(1)(c) sets a filing fee scaled to park size.
Approval is also not a shield against every claim. The Division reviews for adequacy under the chapter. It does not decide whether a rent escalation method is reasonable, because § 723.005 withholds from it any authority to enforce § 723.033. A prospectus can be approved and still produce an increase a court refuses to enforce, which is why the escalation language deserves more drafting attention than any other part of the document.
Delivery, receipts and the 15-day rule
Section 723.011(2) states the delivery rule. The park owner shall furnish a copy of the prospectus or offering circular together with all of the exhibits to each prospective lessee. Delivery shall be made prior to execution of the lot rental agreement or at the time of occupancy, whichever occurs first. Upon delivery, the lot rental agreement is voidable by the lessee for a period of 15 days. The same subsection excuses re-delivery where the tenancy is a renewal and the mobile home owner previously received the prospectus.
Two different 15-day periods live in this statute, and confusing them is a common error.
| Prospectus delivered on time | Prospectus never delivered | |
|---|---|---|
| Governing provision | § 723.011(2) | § 723.014(1)–(2) |
| When the clock starts | On delivery of the prospectus | On the homeowner's later receipt of the prospectus and all exhibits |
| Length of the window | 15 days | 15 days after receipt |
| How the homeowner cancels | Voids the agreement within the window | Delivers written notice to the park owner within 15 days after receipt |
| What the homeowner recovers | Release from the agreement | Refund of any deposit plus relocation costs for the home, or the market value of the home including appurtenances the owner paid for |
Read the § 723.014(2) remedy carefully. It is not limited to a deposit. A park owner who cannot prove delivery faces a claim for the cost of moving the home or, in the alternative, its market value including appurtenances the homeowner paid for. For a home that cannot practically be moved, that is the whole value of the structure.
Proof of delivery is therefore an operational problem, not a legal one. Get a signed, dated receipt that identifies the prospectus by name and revision date and confirms the exhibits were included, and keep it with the lease for as long as the tenancy lasts. A homeowner who refuses to sign a receipt is a different situation from one who was never given the document, and the file should show which happened.
What the prospectus must contain
Section 723.012 lists the required contents in 14 subsections. The sequence matters, because the Division reviews against it.
- (1) Front cover or first page, in conspicuous type, carrying four statements, the last of which is that upon delivery of the prospectus to a prospective lessee the rental agreement is voidable by the lessee for a period of 15 days.
- (2) and (3) A summary page consolidating the conspicuous-type statements, and an index of contents and exhibits.
- (4) The park name and address, the person authorized to receive notices and demands, a description of the lots including sizes, setbacks and separation distances, and the maximum number of persons permitted to use the shared facilities.
- (5) A description of the recreational and other common facilities, including buildings, pools, other improvements, personal property, hours of operation and completion status.
- (6) The arrangements for park management, maintenance and operation.
- (7) A description of all improvements, temporary or permanent, required to be installed by the mobile home owner as a condition of occupancy.
- (8) Utilities and services and the fees and charges associated with them.
- (9) The manner in which the lot rental amount will be increased, including notification of the mobile home owner at least 90 days in advance of the increase, the factors that affect increases, and the method of assessing pass-through charges.
- (10) and (11) User fees and the manner of increasing them, and the park rules and regulations together with an explanation of the manner in which rules will be set, changed or promulgated.
- (12) and (13) The zoning classification and the zoning authority with jurisdiction.
- (14) The exhibits, including ground leases, the lot layout, covenants and restrictions, and the forms of rental agreement.
Subsection (5) also carries a rule park owners forget until they expand. If the number of lots is increased by more than 15 percent over the number stated in the original prospectus, the park owner must offset the impact of the additional lots by increasing the shared facilities, at the park owner's expense, and the cost may not be passed on to the existing homeowners. An expansion plan that assumes the new residents will pay for the larger pool has the economics backwards.
Why the prospectus controls what you can charge and change
Four provisions work together to make the prospectus the operative document, and they are the reason a thin prospectus is expensive years later.
- § 723.031(10). The rules and regulations and the prospectus are deemed to be incorporated into the rental agreement. The prospectus is not background material. It is contract terms.
- § 723.031(7). No park owner may increase the lot rental amount until an approved prospectus has been delivered, if one is required. A park owner who cannot prove delivery cannot raise rent, no matter how carefully the 90-day notice was drafted.
- § 723.035(2). No rule or regulation may provide for payment of any fee, fine, assessment or charge except as otherwise provided in the prospectus or offering circular filed under § 723.012, and only after the park owner has complied with § 723.037. A fine schedule invented by management, with no prospectus basis, is unenforceable.
- § 723.042. A person may not be required, as a condition of residence in the park, to provide any improvement unless the requirement was disclosed under § 723.012(7) prior to occupancy. Skirting, carports, sheds, steps, driveways and tie-down upgrades all live or die on that disclosure, a point we develop in our guide to replacement homes and lot improvements.
Section 723.012(9) is the hinge for money. It requires the prospectus to state the manner in which the lot rental amount will be increased, the factors affecting increases, and the method of assessing pass-through charges. A prospectus that says only that rent may be increased from time to time has disclosed almost nothing, and a park owner relying on it is more exposed in a § 723.033 reasonableness fight than one whose prospectus identified specific cost factors years earlier. Our guide to the lot rental increase procedure follows that through.
Amendment, alternative prospectuses and the flood disclosure
A prospectus is amended by filing with the Division, and the amendment mechanics and review deadlines come partly from Division rule rather than the statute alone. Do not assume an amendment binds existing homeowners. Section 723.011(4) requires that for existing tenancies the prospectus contain the same terms and conditions as rental agreements offered to all other mobile home owners, excepting only rent variations based on lot location and size.
Multiple prospectuses in one park are normal and are not a defect. Parks that have operated for decades typically have several generations of approved prospectus in circulation, each governing the homeowners who received it. Section 723.059(3) reinforces that pattern by letting a purchaser assume the seller's prospectus, while allowing the park owner to offer an approved alternative instead. Which prospectus a given lot is under is a question of file evidence, and it needs to be answerable lot by lot.
One recent addition sits alongside the prospectus rather than inside it. Chapter 2025-166, Laws of Florida, added a flood disclosure requirement at § 723.011(6), effective October 1, 2025. It calls for a separate written disclosure, delivered before occupancy or execution of the agreement, whichever comes first, stating whether the park owner knows of flooding during its ownership, whether flood damage insurance claims were filed, and whether flood assistance was received. In a Southwest Florida park that is not a formality, and it belongs in the same delivery packet and on the same receipt as the prospectus.
Where prospectus problems actually come from
In practice the failures are rarely about the drafting of the original document. They are about what happened to it over twenty years of ownership changes.
- The park changed hands and the new owner received the leases but never received the approved prospectus file or the Division correspondence.
- Delivery receipts were kept in the resident file and the resident file was purged, leaving no evidence of delivery for tenancies that began in the 1990s.
- Management adopted a fine schedule or a new fee by posting a rule, without checking whether the prospectus authorized a fee at all.
- The park expanded past the 15 percent line in § 723.012(5) without amending or adding shared facilities.
- The rent increase notice used an escalation method that management believed was standard, but that no prospectus in the park actually describes.
- A purchaser of a home was handed a current-form prospectus without anyone deciding whether the seller's prospectus was being assumed under § 723.059(3).
The fix is an audit, and it is a finite project: identify every prospectus generation in the park, match each occupied lot to one, locate or reconstruct the delivery evidence, and compare the fees and rules being enforced today against what those documents authorize. Doing that before a rent increase cycle is far cheaper than doing it during a mediation. Our guide to lot rental agreements covers the other half of the file.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Mobile Home Park Prospectus
Does every Florida mobile home park need a prospectus?
No. Section 723.011(1)(a) requires a filed and delivered prospectus in a park containing 26 or more lots. A park with 10 to 25 lots is under Chapter 723 but gives the written notification described in § 723.013 instead, prior to occupancy. A park offering fewer than 10 lots is outside Chapter 723 and falls under Part II of Chapter 83.
What happens if we cannot prove we delivered the prospectus?
Two things. Under § 723.031(7) you may not increase the lot rental amount until an approved prospectus has been delivered where one is required. Under § 723.014 the rental agreement stays voidable until 15 days after the homeowner receives it, and cancellation entitles the homeowner to a refund of any deposit plus relocation costs for the home or its market value including appurtenances the owner paid for.
Can we add a new fee by adopting a rule?
Generally no. Section 723.035(2) provides that no rule may provide for payment of any fee, fine, assessment or charge except as otherwise provided in the prospectus or offering circular filed under § 723.012, and then only after complying with § 723.037. If the prospectus does not authorize the charge, adopting a rule does not create the authority.
How long does the Division take to approve a prospectus?
Section 723.011(1)(b) gives the Division 45 days after receipt to notify the park owner by mail that the document is adequate or that specified deficiencies exist. If it makes neither finding within 45 days, the prospectus is deemed to have been found adequate. Deemed adequacy is not the same as a clean approval letter, and the contents can still be challenged in court.
A buyer is purchasing a home already in our park. Which prospectus applies?
Under § 723.059(3) a purchaser who will reside in the park may assume the remainder of the seller's rental agreement and may assume the seller's prospectus, but the park owner may offer the purchaser any approved prospectus instead. Decide which before closing, document the choice, and deliver the document with a signed receipt so the lot's file shows one answer.
Do we have to give a renewing resident a new prospectus every year?
No. Section 723.011(2) excuses the park owner from furnishing a copy where the tenancy is a renewal and the mobile home owner previously received the prospectus or offering circular. That exception assumes you can prove the earlier delivery, which is the reason the original receipt is worth keeping for the life of the tenancy.
Contact Hamilton Mikes
Hamilton Mikes reviews and drafts mobile home park prospectuses, audits delivery records before a rent increase cycle, and advises park owners and homeowners' committees in Southwest Florida on what a given prospectus does and does not authorize. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Governing Documents page.
Statutes and authorities referenced
- § 723.011, Fla. Stat. (prospectus filing and delivery; 26-lot threshold at (1)(a); Division review at (1)(b); filing fee at (1)(c); delivery and 15-day voidability at (2); disclosure purpose at (3); uniform terms at (4); flood disclosure at (6))
- § 723.012, Fla. Stat. (contents of the prospectus, subsections (1) through (14))
- § 723.012(5), Fla. Stat. (recreational and common facilities; 15 percent lot expansion)
- § 723.012(7), Fla. Stat. (improvements required as a condition of occupancy)
- § 723.012(9), Fla. Stat. (manner of increasing the lot rental amount; 90 days' advance notification; pass-through charges)
- § 723.012(11), Fla. Stat. (park rules and the manner in which they are set or changed)
- § 723.013, Fla. Stat. (written notification in the absence of a prospectus)
- § 723.014, Fla. Stat. (failure to provide the prospectus; voidability and remedy)
- § 723.031(7), (10), Fla. Stat. (no increase before delivery; incorporation of prospectus and rules)
- § 723.033, Fla. Stat. (unreasonable lot rental amount, increase or provision)
- § 723.035(2), Fla. Stat. (rules may not impose fees except as provided in the prospectus)
- § 723.037, Fla. Stat. (90-day notice and the procedure preceding a change)
- § 723.042, Fla. Stat. (provision of improvements)
- § 723.059(3), Fla. Stat. (assumption of the seller's prospectus; alternative approved prospectus)
- § 723.005, Fla. Stat. (Division has no authority to enforce § 723.033)
- Ch. 2025-166, Laws of Fla. (flood disclosure; effective October 1, 2025)