Legal Update 2026 Webinar
The Florida community association legal update 2026 marks a year when a wave of new statutes moved from pending legislation into the rules that govern daily operations. We recently hosted a continuing education course featuring Alan Schwartzseid of Kaye Bender Rembaum, who instructed licensed community association managers and board members through the changes now shaping their legal obligations.
This insightful webinar delivered the 2026 legal update for community associations, walking through the changes that now govern everything from professional standards for managers and management firms to condominium rules on reserves, meetings, official records, insurance, and voting. Attendees learned how one year of new community association laws in Florida reshaped compliance statewide.
Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only. You will not receive credits for watching the recording. Credits were issued only to those that attended the course.
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Key Takeaways
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Board Direction Is No Defense: Managers can no longer carry out a board instruction that breaks state or federal law, making professional judgment part of the job.
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Withholding Records Is a Crime: Willfully withholding official records is a second-degree misdemeanor on the first offense, ending the old three-strikes cushion for condominium boards.
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Websites Are Mandatory in 2026: Condominiums of 25 units or more must now post minutes, affidavits, and recordings on an official association website within thirty days.
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Choose Real Electronic Voting: Condo boards can adopt electronic voting on a 48-hour notice, a far safer path than the fraud-prone email ballot alternative.
What Changed for Florida Associations in 2026?
The Florida community association legal update 2026 reflects a full slate of laws that took effect on July 1, 2025, with no new condominium or HOA legislation added in 2026. That timing matters, because the rules managers and boards must follow today are the ones now fully operative rather than a fresh round of changes still being interpreted.
A Single Year of Sweeping Change
These changes came out of the 2025 legislative session, and they arrived across three broad fronts. The first reshaped the professional standards governing community association managers and management firms. The second overhauled condominium operations, from reserves and meetings to records, insurance, and voting. The third tightened the financial controls and disclosures that tie those two worlds together.
Why the 2026 Update Still Matters
Although the 2026 session added no new condominium or HOA legislation, that absence is exactly why this update matters. The 2025 changes are now fully in force, so a board that let compliance slip while the rules were taking hold is already exposed rather than merely behind. Reviewing each requirement against current operations is the fastest way to close that gap.
New Ground Rules for Managers
Some of the most consequential changes fall on community association managers and the management firms that employ them, whose statutory duties expanded well beyond where they stood a year ago.
When a Board's Instruction Is Not a Defense
A manager or management firm can no longer knowingly carry out an act that violates state or federal law, even when the board directs it. The familiar defense that the board gave the instruction and the manager simply served at its discretion no longer shields anyone from a bad act. When a directive looks like it may cross a legal line, the sound practice is to decline until the board obtains a written legal opinion from association counsel, and to make clear in the agreement that asking for that opinion is not itself a breach of contract.
Registration, Contracts, and Contact Duties
The update also formalized a set of baseline obligations. Managers and firms must maintain an online account with the state, identify the firm each manager works with, and update that information within thirty days of any change. Management contracts now must state, in at least twelve-point type, that the manager will follow the statutes governing the profession, and they can neither waive those practice standards nor use an indemnity clause to erase claims arising under them.
Several service duties were also extended to condominiums and cooperatives after applying mainly to HOAs before. A manager must attend at least one association meeting each year, which can be satisfied virtually unless the contract says otherwise, and must give members a clear way to make contact. Any owner who asks for a copy of the management contract must now receive it promptly, a simple hand-off that stands apart from the formal records inspection process.
“The excuse that the board told me to do it, and I follow their direction, and I work at their discretion, no longer protects the CAM or the management firm from bad acts.” - Alan Schwartzseid, Kaye Bender Rembaum
Conflicts of Interest Reach Managers
The same conflict-of-interest rules that have long applied to officers and directors now apply, by statute, to managers and management firms.
Disclosing Affiliated Services in Advance
When a manager or an affiliated company wants to provide services beyond management, that relationship creates the same rebuttable presumption of a conflict that a director's outside business would. The cleanest way to handle it is to disclose every affiliated entity and service up front, ideally as an exhibit to the management agreement, so the disclosure is complete before any work is proposed. Where a non-management service will exceed twenty-five hundred dollars, the association generally must solicit multiple bids unless that advance disclosure is already built into the contract.
Undisclosed Conflicts and Voidable Contracts
A newly proposed conflict must appear on the agenda for the next board meeting, described plainly and accompanied by copies of the proposed contracts. If a conflict was never disclosed, the resulting contract becomes voidable, and the association can terminate it and owe only what was earned through the termination date. A wrongful termination carries its own risk, so boards are wise to confirm the conflict with counsel in a closed session before sending any notice.
Structural Safety and Reserves
Condominium structural and reserve rules saw some of the year's most technical revisions, several of which turn on a single added word.
The One Word That Redefined Inspections
A milestone inspection and a structural integrity reserve study were long triggered by a residential condominium standing three stories or more. The legislature added one word, habitable, to both requirements, so the count now turns on stories actually built to be lived in rather than, for example, a ground-level carport. A building with even one habitable unit on a lower floor can still reach the three-story threshold, so boards should confirm how their structure is classified under the Florida Building Code.
Pooling, Pausing, and Funding Reserves
The catch-all reserve threshold for non-recurring items rose from ten thousand dollars to twenty-five thousand, a figure that now adjusts upward every year. Reserves may be pooled, but structural components can only be pooled with other structural components, which in practice means keeping at least two separate pools. A board may now switch between pooled and straight-line reserve funding without an owner vote, though moving money that already sits in a straight-line account into a pool still requires one.
Contributions can be paused without a membership vote when a building is uninhabitable or condemned, and an association that has completed a milestone inspection can pause reserves for up to two consecutive budget years to focus on required repairs. Special assessments, loans, and lines of credit are now expressly available to fund structural work, but using them specifically for structural reserve components generally requires a member vote, even where the governing documents would otherwise let the board act alone.
Honest Reports from Design Professionals
A parallel conflict rule now governs the architects and engineers who perform these inspections. A design professional who intends to bid on the actual repair work must disclose that intention in writing before submitting the inspection report, because the incentive to recommend unnecessary work is otherwise built into the arrangement. If that disclosure is skipped, the resulting contract becomes voidable, and a community can be left finding a new partner partway through a project.
Meetings, Records, and Websites
Transparency requirements tightened across the board in 2026, changing how condominium meetings are held, how records are handled, and where association information must live.
Virtual Meetings and Recording Rules
A video conference is now defined as two or more people in different locations using both video-enabled and audio-enabled devices, and any meeting held that way must offer a hyperlink and a call-in number as well as a physical location where owners can attend in person. Meetings conducted by video conference must be recorded and kept as an official record for one year, though maintaining a document that links to each recording satisfies the rule rather than hosting every file directly. One quirk deserves attention, because when an annual meeting is noticed as a video conference, a quorum of the board must be physically present at the in-person location, which means absent directors can effectively stall a meeting by not showing up.
Records, Websites, and Real Penalties
The definition of official records expanded, and copies of the governing documents, the frequently asked questions sheet, and the most recent financials must be kept on condominium property. The stakes for withholding them rose sharply, because a willful failure to produce records is now a second-degree misdemeanor on the first offense, replacing the earlier standard that required a repeat violation. The practical takeaway is simple, since records that owners are entitled to should be produced rather than fought over.
The new website requirement for condominiums is just as concrete. Starting in 2026, a condominium of twenty-five units or more must maintain an official website, and approved board minutes from the last twelve months, affidavits required under Chapter 718, and meeting recordings must be posted within thirty days of creation. Condominiums also gained breathing room on annual financial reporting, which now runs one hundred eighty days after the fiscal year rather than the previous one hundred twenty.
“You are committing a crime by not producing official records.” - Alan Schwartzseid, Kaye Bender Rembaum
Voting, Insurance, and Storm Risk
The remaining changes touched how owners vote, how buildings are insured, and how communities prepare for hurricane season.
Insurance, Hurricane Protection, and Storm Funding
Adequate property insurance was redefined so that coverage based on replacement cost must be supported by an independent appraisal updated at least every three years. Storm readiness gained new rules as well, including a default that unit owners are not responsible for removing and reinstalling hurricane protection when the association takes it down to perform its own maintenance, which is a strong reason to amend the declaration so the cost lands on the units involved rather than the whole community. Communities that communicate an official evacuation order also gain liability protection when owners choose to stay, and the My Safe Florida Condo program continues to match two state dollars for every dollar an association spends hardening its buildings, now with a seventy-five percent owner vote rather than unanimous approval.
Why Electronic Voting Beats Email Ballots
Condominium boards can now adopt electronic voting on a forty-eight-hour meeting notice rather than the former fourteen-day requirement, and owners holding twenty-five percent of the voting interest can petition to force the question onto a board agenda. When a condominium has not adopted electronic voting, it must instead accept email ballots, an option that removes ballot secrecy because each vote carries the owner's name and unit. That design invites abuse, since duplicate ballots submitted under another owner's name can cancel a legitimate vote, which is why moving to a qualified, anonymous electronic voting system is the far safer route for Florida condominiums.
“Electronic ballots is one of the worst things I've seen the legislature do to us in a long time. I think it is an invitation for fraud.” - Alan Schwartzseid, Kaye Bender Rembaum
A Steadier Path to Compliance
The through-line across every one of these changes is accountability, whether it falls on a manager who can no longer hide behind a board's instruction, a board that must produce records or face criminal exposure, or an association that has to publish its business to the world on a website. Communities that treat this update as a standing checklist, revisiting their contracts, reserve methods, meeting procedures, and voting systems against the current law, will spend far less time reacting to problems and far more time preventing them. When compliance becomes a routine part of how a community operates rather than a scramble after something goes wrong, the association protects its finances, its property values, and the trust of the owners who depend on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do these 2026 changes apply to HOAs or only to condominiums?
Most of the year's condominium-specific changes, including the website, records-penalty, financial-reporting, and electronic voting provisions, apply under Chapter 718 and do not reach HOAs. The professional standards and conflict rules for managers, however, apply across community types, so HOA boards should not assume the update passed them by.
Can a board still hold meetings in person only to avoid the recording rules?
Yes. A meeting held entirely in person, with no video or audio conferencing offered, falls outside the video-conference recording requirement altogether. Boards that want to avoid the recording and retention obligations can still meet the traditional way, though few communities choose to give up virtual access.
What happens if our manager's license is suspended during the contract?
A license suspension or revocation is now grounds to terminate the contract of a directly hired manager, effective on the date the discipline takes effect. When the contract is with a licensed management firm rather than an individual, the firm can usually assign a replacement manager, so the agreement with the firm continues.
Explore Florida Association News (FAN) for current legal updates, helpful resources, and practical guidance for community associations.
Ashley Dietz is the VP of Marketing at Campbell Property Management and has led the company’s educational and marketing initiatives since 2013. A Florida Atlantic University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in communications, Ashley specializes in community association education, digital outreach, and industry engagement for Florida HOAs and condominiums.
