Bill to reform HOA oversight, allow owners to dissolve Boards coasts to final House Committee

Legislation to overhaul how Florida handles legal matters involving homeowners’ associations (HOAs) and allow unit owners to dissolve their Boards just breezed through its penultimate House stop.

The chamber’s Budget Committee voted unanimously for the bill (HB 657), which Miami Republican Rep. Juan Porras, its sponsor, called the “culmination of years of frustration and concerns from over half of Floridians that live in” a Florida HOA.

“I represent some of the largest HOAs in our state that have dealt with some of the worst corruption,” he told the panel Monday. “This is just a first step in the right direction.”

Porras wasn’t being hyperbolic. In recent years, there have been multiple high-profile cases of HOA Board corruption, from the Hammocks HOA fraud scandal involving upwards of $13 million in stolen funds and the Turnberry on the Green condo President’s arrest for racketeering, fraud and grand theft in 2024 to a case last year in which the Ro Mont South Condominium President allegedly stole $15,000 in association money to cover personal expenses and a scheme in Tarpon Springs allegedly involving more than $754,000.

Those and other cases were allowed to happen in large part because of the “toothless” way in which Florida’s HOA laws are now written, according to the state’s former condominium ombudsman Spencer Henning, who detailed the wide regulatory loopholes through which wrongdoers on condo and homeowner boards evade punishment or removal.

HB 657 could help to close those gaps by implementing three major changes to Florida’s HOA laws.

First, it would address transparency issues by creating a state-funded court process to address condo and HOA disputes, which would replace an existing pre-lawsuit mediation process required today.

Second, it would provide processes for the dissolution of HOAs. Porras previously stressed that it wouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach, and there would be several necessary steps — petition gathering, an election and final approval by a Judge — before an organization could be terminated.

And third, the measure would address a lack of accountability that malfeasant HOA Board members now enjoy by mandating that HOAs include Kaufman language in their governing documents that require organization bylaws to change in accordance with changes in state law automatically.

A condo association member from Coral Springs took exception with that last provision during HB 657’s first Committee stop last month, warning that the Kaufman language provision would essentially “hand over a blank check to (the) Legislature” to write future laws undermining homeowner rights. The HOA Board dissolution part, meanwhile, would leave properties without management and upkeep, leading to devaluation and a “fire sale environment” for opportunistic real estate investors, the man argued.

Neither of those concerns were mentioned during Monday’s talk of the bill, which Porras amended to fund its court provisions and specify where and how they will begin: with two Judges on the 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade and one apiece on the 13th and 17th Judicial Circuits covering Hillsborough and Broward counties, respectively.

The only query from the crowded Budget Committee dais came from House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell, who asked about the creation of new Judge positions. Her understanding, she said, is that since Judges are constitutional officers, the Legislature could create new judgeships in those circuits, but that they couldn’t limit their jurisdictional authority only to HOA and condo association cases.

Porras said Driskell’s assessment was correct, and the Legislature’s authority also extends to creating new courts, as was the case with the Veterans Court in 2012, but the Judges in this case wouldn’t only be handling HOA and condo cases.

Representatives from the HOA Reform League and Latino Hispanic Republican Executive Club signaled support for HB 657, which will next go to the House Commerce Committee, its last stop before reaching a floor vote.

A similar Senate bill (SB 1498) by Fleming Island GOP Sen. Jennifer Bradley advanced through the first of three Committees to which it was referred with unanimous support Feb. 3.