New Requirements for Florida HOAs

One of the new laws impacting Florida homeowners associations, passed this year by the Florida legislature and recently signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, creates some straightforward new requirements for all HOAs in the state.

Impact for Florida HOAs

In accordance with the provisions of House Bill 59, which will take effect on July 1, associations will have until Oct. 1, 2024, to provide either a physical or digital copy of their rules and covenants to every member. They will also henceforth be required to provide a physical or digital copy to everyone who becomes a new member of the association.

For any future amendments to an HOA’s rules or covenants, associations will be required to again provide every member with an updated copy of the amended rules or covenants. The timing for this distribution will be up to each association to determine, as the law states associations “may adopt rules establishing standards for the manner of distribution and timeframe for providing copies of updated rules or covenants.”

The new law also includes yet another compelling reason for HOAs to implement and maintain a community website. It allows homeowners associations to meet these new disclosure requirements by posting a complete copy of their rules and covenants, or a direct link to them, on the homepage of the association’s website that is accessible to the members. One caveat: Associations must send notifications via email (for all those who have given prior consent and provided their address) or regular mail to alert each member of their utilization of the website for this purpose.

Conclusion

For Florida HOAs, these new requirements should not present any major difficulties. Those that already have community websites would be well advised to use them to post and update the rules and covenants, and then simply alert the members of such postings in order to help ensure the broadest possible compliance with the new requirements. The boards of directors for communities that are still considering the implementation of a website should take note of this new benefit with compliance with these new requirements.

Our firm’s South Florida community association attorneys write about important matters for associations in this blog, and we encourage association directors, members and property managers to enter their email address below and subscribe to our newsletter to receive our future articles.