Financial matters

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As many of you know, Florida’s legislators, in a special session last year, attempted to respond to the tragic collapse of the condominium in Surfside with changes to the laws governing many community associations. Those changes may have been well-intended but created all kinds of headaches for condominium and cooperative associations and the unit owners…

I’m typing this blog entry on an absolutely beautiful afternoon in Sarasota. Sunshine, low humidity and temperatures in the mid-seventies. It’s hard to believe that it’s been just six weeks since Hurricane Irma rampaged through our state and disrupted our lives.

All in all,most of the resident owned communities we work with were spared…

Lost in all of the controversy surrounding the recent amendments to Florida’s laws governing community associations–and, in particular, the changes to condominium association laws enacted by House Bill 1237–were revisions to the financial reporting requirements for condominium and cooperative associations.

House Bill 6027 became effective on July 1 and amends provisions of Chapters 718…

Effective July 1, 2017, Florida’s condominium, cooperative and mandatory homeowners’ associations (and the management companies hired by those associations) will have some certainty and guidance when dealing with requests for estoppel certificates.

Florida Statute Sections 718.116, 719.108, and 720.30851 have all been amended.

Here are just a few highlights of those amendments:

As…

Several managers of resident owned communities have asked me to discuss the recent Florida Supreme Court opinion concerning certain activities performed by non-lawyer CAMs.   

The Court was asked whether these activities, if performed by a non-lawyer community association manager, would constitute the "unlicensed practice of law".   On May 14, 2015, the Court…

 Florida’s lawmakers "tweaked" the provisions relating to ROC "fining committees" during the recent legislative session in Tallahassee.  In summary, condominium associations, cooperative associations, and mandatory homeowners’ associations now follow a similar process:

  • The revisions now clarify that it is the "board of administration" (which most ROC’s refer to as the Board of Directors) that

…

Florida’s Governor has signed into law Senate Bill 807 which contains very important changes to the laws governing resident owned communities. I’ll discuss many of those in future entries to this blog but since we’re now into hurricane season, I thought I’d first highlight the creation of Florida Statute Sections 719.128 and 720.316…

 Now that Memorial Day is behind us, and many of our "snowbirds" have returned to their northern homes, my blog followers who are managers or board members in resident owned manufactured housing cooperatives can turn their attention to subsections (5) and (6) Florida Statute Section 719.1055.

When I last checked, none of the manufactured…