Welcome to 2015 and my best wishes to all of my blog’s followers for a very happy and healthy new year.

2014 was an extremely busy year and I was unable to post entries here as often as in previous years.  I’m hereby resolving to do better in 2015. 

We’ll start 2015 with a reminder that all community associations are not created alike.  A board member in one of the cooperatives we work with asked me last week whether a husband and wife (who together own only one unit in the community) could both run for the board of directors.   Chapter 718 of the Florida Statutes, which governs condominium associations, prohibits co-owners of a unit from serving on the board of directors at the same time unless:

  • the condominium association has less than ten units,
  • the condominium association includes timeshare units or timeshare interests, or
  • there are not enough eligible candidates to fill the vacancies on the board at the time of the vacancy

Those provisions in Chapter 718 are not found in either Chapter 719 or Chapter 720, which governs mandatory homeowners associations.  This means that, in a cooperative association or mandatory homeowners association, if there are five named owners of the unit or parcel, assuming that each of those five named owners would otherwise be eligible to serve on the board, all five of them could run and all five could serve if they were elected--even if they only owned that one unit or parcel in the community.

This is just one example of why community association board members, managers (and their attorneys) cannot simply assume that "one size fits all".  At least for the time being. when it comes to condominiums, cooperatives, and subdivisions in Florida, nothing could be further from the truth!

I’m looking forward to speaking at the EPROC meeting this Friday at Emerald Pointe in Zephyrhills and hope to see many of our East Pasco County friends at this event!