New Florida Laws 720

You link is bad. It should read http://www.ccfj.net/HOAFS720new.htm and says this in red at the top "ATTENTION: NEW PROVISIONS EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2007 ARE NOT INCLUDED!"

This link talks about the financial changes to the law as well:

http://condolaw.blogspot.com/

I have only read commentaries about the changes, not the changes themselves. Part of the problem is that Florida has not updated the website to include 2007 version of the statutes. So you have to look at the bills themselves and try to compare them to 2006 version of the statutes to try to understand how it all works together.

For us the changes are going to be:

45 days instead of 30 days notice for lien or foreclosure. We use a collections attorney for this but it means an additional delay in the collections.

The payment application order is now set and is different from our policy and late fees / interest are set. It gives more teeth to late fees / interest and further discourages people who pay late. I think we might change our covenants to go from 6% to the 18% suggested (if your covenants don't say a rate) and the late fee from $25 to $25 or 5% of the amount owed whichever is greater. That might not sound like a big difference but we have been trying to collect for almost a year on an account with a balance over 2k; that would make the late fee over $100.

The ARC guidelines have to be written and have to be published and you can't deny a request that does not deviate from them. We use our covenants for a large part of the unwritten guidelines but there are things we have decided that are not specifically written. The number of lawn ornaments and their sizes for example or the type of fence will all now have to be written and published.

The lot now retains the owed dues regardless of what has happened. So if a house goes into foreclosure and they still owe 1k (like we have) we can still collect from the new owner. I know that sucks but they can go after the bank.

Quite a few things in the bills we already do or our documents specify something and so it isn't really a change for us. I hope to go over it in our Monthly board meeting and then have a draft of changes for next month that we will implement to our policies to be in compliance.