Florida writes six deadlines into a condo special assessment and a ceiling into none of them

Fourteen days. That is the notice a Florida condominium board owes unit owners before it meets to consider a nonemergency special assessment, and it is the number owners reach for first when a six-figure levy lands in the mailbox.

The number is real. Section 718.112(2)(c)1 says written notice of a meeting at which a nonemergency special assessment will be considered must be mailed, delivered or electronically transmitted to the unit owners and posted conspicuously on the condominium property at least 14 days before the meeting. It goes further than most owners realise: evidence of compliance must be made by an affidavit executed by the person who gave the notice and filed with the association's official records.

What the number is not is a limit on anything. Read the chapter end to end and a pattern emerges that the explainer pages almost never state. Florida regulates the paperwork of a special assessment in fine detail, across at least six separate clocks. It does not regulate the size.

What is a condo special assessment, and who has to approve it?

A special assessment is a charge levied on unit owners in addition to the regular periodic assessment, for a purpose the board identifies in writing. In Florida the board ordinarily levies it. Chapter 718 requires a vote of the members in one situation only, and the declaration and bylaws govern the rest.

That single statutory exception is worth naming precisely, because it is the one place the legislature took the decision out of the board's hands. Under section 718.112(2)(f)2.c.(I), reserves for the structural items listed in paragraph (g) may be funded by regular assessments, special assessments, lines of credit or loans, and a special assessment, line of credit or loan under that provision requires the approval of a majority vote of the total voting interests of the association.

Note the denominator. A majority of the total voting interests is not a majority of those who turn up. In a building where half the units are seasonal and mail is forwarded north for eight months of the year, that is a materially harder threshold than a quorum vote, and it applies to exactly the assessments now arriving in Southwest Florida: roof, structure, waterproofing, plumbing, electrical, windows, and the rest of the eight categories a structural integrity reserve study must cover.

Everywhere else, the source of the authority is the declaration. This is why two owners in two buildings receive different answers to the same question and both are correct.

What notice must a Florida condo association give before levying a special assessment?

Three requirements stack. The board meeting needs 48 continuous hours of conspicuous posting under section 718.112(2)(c)1. A nonemergency special assessment needs the separate 14-day notice, mailed or delivered or electronically transmitted and posted, with an affidavit filed afterwards. And the content of the notice is specified.

That third piece is the one that gets skipped. Section 718.112(2)(c)3 says notice of any meeting at which regular or special assessments against unit owners are to be considered must specifically state that assessments will be considered and provide the estimated cost and description of the purposes for such assessments. A notice that lists "budget matters" on the agenda and nothing else does not meet the sentence.

The same subparagraph adds a requirement that matters more than its length suggests. If an agenda item relates to the approval of a contract for goods or services, a copy of the contract must be provided with the notice, and made available for inspection and copying on written request or posted to the association website. An owner asked to fund a roof at a stated cost is entitled to the contract that produced the number, in advance, in the envelope.

There is an emergency route around the 14 days. An item not included on the notice may be taken up on an emergency basis by a vote of at least a majority plus one of the board members, and that emergency action must be noticed and ratified at the next regular board meeting. The statute does not define the emergency. It requires the supermajority and the ratification, and leaves the characterisation to the board in the first instance.

Can the association spend special assessment money on something else?

No. This is the clearest constraint in the chapter and the one owners are least likely to know exists.

Section 718.116(10) requires the specific purpose or purposes of any special assessment to be set out in a written notice of the assessment sent or delivered to each unit owner. It then provides that the funds collected pursuant to a special assessment are used only for the specific purpose or purposes set forth in that notice. On completion of the purpose, any excess funds are considered common surplus, and the board may either return them to the unit owners or apply them as a credit toward future assessments.

Two things follow. The written notice of the assessment is a document distinct from the meeting notice, and it is the document that fences the money. And the disposal of a surplus is discretionary: the statute permits a refund and permits a credit, and the choice belongs to the board.

What happens if an owner does not pay?

The collection sequence is the most heavily specified part of the chapter, and it runs on its own set of clocks. It is also where the practical answer to "can I withhold payment while I argue" is found, although the statute never phrases it that way.

Interest first. Section 718.116(3) provides that assessments not paid when due bear interest at the rate in the declaration from the due date until paid, and if the declaration provides no rate, interest accrues at 18 percent per year. Where the declaration or bylaws allow it, the association may also charge an administrative late fee of up to the greater of $25 or 5 percent of each delinquent instalment.

Then comes the sentence that decides everything else. Any payment received by an association must be applied first to accrued interest, then to any administrative late fee, then to costs and reasonable attorney fees incurred in collection, and then to the delinquent assessment. The statute adds that this holds notwithstanding section 673.3111, any purported accord and satisfaction, or any restrictive endorsement, designation or instruction placed on or accompanying a payment.

An owner who writes "paid in full under protest" on the cheque has written a sentence with no legal effect on where the money goes. The assessment is the last thing the payment touches.

Section 718.116(2) closes the other exit: liability for assessments may not be avoided by waiver of the use or enjoyment of any common element, or by abandonment of the unit.

How long does the association have to take before it can foreclose?

Longer than most owners expect, and in a fixed order. Three separate written notices precede a foreclosure judgment, and two of them are worth 45 days each.

Section 718.121(5) bars an association from requiring payment of attorney fees related to a past due assessment without first delivering a notice of late assessment, in the statutory form, giving 30 days to pay without fees. Section 718.121(6) then bars any lien until 45 days after a notice of intent to record a claim of lien has been delivered by registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, and by first-class mail. Section 718.116(6)(b) bars a foreclosure judgment until at least 45 days after written notice of the intention to foreclose, and provides that if that notice is not given 45 days before filing, and the unpaid assessments are paid before final judgment, the association recovers no attorney fees or costs.

The lien itself carries an expiry. Under section 718.116(5)(b), a claim of lien is not effective one year after it was recorded unless an action to enforce it is commenced within that time.

Is there anything an owner can file that puts the association on a clock?

One thing. Section 718.116(5)(c) lets a unit owner, or the owner's agent or attorney, record a Notice of Contest of Lien in the statutory form. The clerk of the circuit court then mails a copy to the association by certified mail, and service is complete on mailing. After service, the association has 90 days to file an action to enforce the lien. If it does not, the lien is void.

The chapter prints the form. It runs to six lines and it is the only device in the collection sequence that shortens a deadline rather than extending one. The trade is that it accelerates litigation rather than avoiding it.

Where does an owner contest a special assessment that was not properly noticed?

Here the statute does something that repays close reading. Section 718.1255 creates a cheap forum, then removes the assessment from it.

Subsection (1)(b)2 defines a "dispute" to include the failure of a governing body, when required by the chapter or an association document, to give adequate notice of meetings or other actions. A dispute of that kind goes to the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares and Mobile Homes for nonbinding arbitration on a petition carrying a $50 filing fee, or to presuit mediation instead. Before litigation, a party to a dispute other than an election or recall dispute must do one or the other.

The same subsection then says that "dispute" does not include any disagreement that primarily involves, among other things, the levy of a fee or assessment, or the collection of an assessment levied against a party.

Everything turns on the word "primarily". A complaint that the board failed to give adequate notice of the meeting sits inside (1)(b)2. A complaint that the resulting special assessment is invalid primarily involves the levy, and the exclusion sends it to circuit court. The same set of facts produces different forums depending on what the petition asks for, and the cheaper forum cannot award the relief the owner usually wants.

The legislature stated the imbalance this section was written to address, in the section itself. Subsection (3)(a) records a finding that unit owners are frequently at a disadvantage when litigating against an association, and that a condominium association, with its statutory assessment authority, is often more able to bear the costs and expenses of litigation than the unit owner. The instrument named as the source of the disadvantage is the same instrument the definition excludes from the remedy.

Can the state regulator settle it instead?

Only within limits it sets out expressly. Once an association has passed from developer control, section 718.501(1)(a) gives the division jurisdiction to review records and investigate complaints related only to an enumerated list of twelve items.

Read that list for what it does and does not reach. It covers procedural aspects and records relating to financial issues, the annual operating budget and the allocation of reserve funds under section 718.112(2)(f), the maintenance of and owner access to association records, and the procedural aspects of meetings including budget meetings under section 718.112(2). It does not reach the amount of a levy or the business judgment behind it. The word carrying the weight, again, is procedural.

Records are the practical opening. Section 718.111(12)(a)20 makes a copy of all affidavits required by the chapter an official record of the association, which is the 14-day notice affidavit. Section 718.111(12)(b) requires records to be made available within 10 working days after a written request, and failure to do so creates a rebuttable presumption of a willful failure to comply. Minimum damages are $50 per calendar day for up to 10 days, beginning on the eleventh working day after the request.

What does contesting cost, and who pays?

Fees shift to the prevailing party, in both directions. Section 718.303(1) provides that the prevailing party in an action for failure to comply with the chapter, the declaration or the bylaws is entitled to recover reasonable attorney fees.

It then adds a remedy that runs one way only. A unit owner who prevails against the association may recover, in addition to reasonable attorney fees, additional amounts the court determines necessary to reimburse the owner for that owner's share of assessments levied by the association to fund its own expenses of the litigation. An owner who wins does not end up having funded part of the defence. An owner who loses funds both sides.

Section 718.303(2) is the backstop on the whole chapter: a provision may not be waived if the waiver would adversely affect the rights of a unit owner or the purpose of the provision.

What changes on 1 July 2027?

A fourth category of dispute arrives. Chapter 2023-203, Laws of Florida, adds paragraph (1)(d) to section 718.1255 effective 1 July 2027, making it a dispute when a board fails to obtain the milestone inspection required under section 553.899, fails to obtain a structural integrity reserve study, fails to fund reserves as required for an item identified in section 718.112(2)(g), or fails to make necessary maintenance or repairs recommended by a milestone inspection or a reserve study. Those disputes are not subject to nonbinding arbitration and must go to presuit mediation.

That is the underfunding, rather than the assessment it produces, becoming actionable. The gap it does not close is the same one: the levy stays excluded.

What did the 2026 legislature change?

Nothing here. Fourteen bills filed in the 2026 regular session cited chapter 718. Twelve of them died, most on 13 March 2026, including every bill titled Condominium Associations or Community Associations: HB 255, SB 638, HB 657, SB 1498, SB 1744 and HB 1541.

Two became law. SB 104 is the annual reviser's bill, chapter 2026-14, and its treatment of section 718.112 consists of cross-reference corrections carrying reviser's notes. HB 797, chapter 2026-168, is a nonprofit corporations act. Section 718.121 drew no bill at all in the session, and the two bills that cited section 718.116 both died.

After five consecutive sessions of substantial condominium legislation, the rules governing how a special assessment is announced, spent and collected are what they were a year ago.

Frequently asked questions

Does a Florida condo board need a member vote to levy a special assessment? Not in the ordinary case. Chapter 718 requires a majority vote of the total voting interests only for a special assessment, line of credit or loan funding the structural reserve items listed in section 718.112(2)(g), under section 718.112(2)(f)2.c.(I). Otherwise the declaration and bylaws control.

Is there a cap on how large a special assessment can be? Chapter 718 sets none. The 115 percent substitute-budget provision in section 718.112(2)(e) applies to the annual budget and expressly excludes reserves, structural items and insurance from the calculation, which is a separate mechanism covered in our reserve-funding piece.

How much notice is required before the meeting? At least 14 days for a nonemergency special assessment, mailed, delivered or electronically transmitted and posted conspicuously, with an affidavit of compliance filed in the official records. The notice must state that assessments will be considered and give the estimated cost and a description of the purposes.

What does a buyer see before closing? The estoppel certificate under section 718.116(8) must itemise all assessments, special assessments and other money owed on the date of issuance, and any scheduled to become due during the certificate's effective period. Under paragraph (c) the association waives the right to collect amounts in excess of the certificate from a person who relies on it in good faith. The fee is capped at $250 where nothing is delinquent, with $100 more for delivery within three business days.

What can an association recover from a lender that forecloses? Under section 718.116(1)(b)1, a first mortgagee that takes title by foreclosure or deed in lieu is liable for prior unpaid amounts limited to the lesser of the unit's unpaid common expenses and regular periodic assessments accruing in the 12 months before it took title, or 1 percent of the original mortgage debt.