💬 Join us to post & get advice from 50,000 HOA & Condo leaders.

Create Free Account →

⚡ Takes 30 seconds

Already a member? Log in

RickH14 (Florida)
Posts: 3
Posted:
Under the Florida MRTA statutes:

an affected parcel owner no longer falls under the jurisdiction of the POA governing documents after 30 yrs, if not preserved.

If extinguished, the POA may follow proper procedures per the code that allow a vote of those affected owners to decide for or against revitalization of the governing documents.

My questions are:

If an affected parcel owner owns property in which the governing documents have been extinguished, does it mean that person is no longer an association member, unless revitalized?

If extinguished, and no longer a member of the association, must an affected parcel owner who is currently on the Board of Directors resign?

The vote for or against revitalization must only include the affected parcel owners and not the entire association inasmuch as the affected parcel owners are no longer association members?

DouglasK1 (Florida)
Posts: 2,046
Posted:
You may already know this, but there are two procedures:
1) prior to covenants expiring they can be "preserved", this can be done by a vote of the board.
2) after expiration, they can be "revitalized", which requires the membership to vote.

In many developments the lots are platted at the same time so expiration happens at the same time for all of them, it sounds from your post like that may not be the case for you. I'm not sure exactly how a split case like that would work, but in the typical case where all expire at once, all of the owners who were covered by the covenants would vote.

As far as being director, it depends on the bylaws whether directors even have to be members. In many cases developers write the original bylaws such that directors don't have to be owners so they can appoint anybody they want to the board during developer control. Some associations then change their bylaws to require directors to be members, but some never do.

In the case where the entire development expires at once, I'm not sure if there is even legally a board of directors.

There have been threads here where boards tried to to carry on as if nothing changed after MRTA expiration, and were challenged when they tried to collect assessments or enforce covenants. Search on site:hoatalk.com MRTA and you can see if any of them contain anything relevant for you.

Escaped former treasurer and director of a self managed association.
GwenG (Florida)
Posts: 669
Posted:
When even ONE parcel in a subdivision expires, they HOA can initiate a revitalization for ALL parcels that are or were subject to Covenants/restrictions. It would be nearly impossible for an entire subdivision to expire at once; this means they would ALL have to have the same root title date. There will necessarily be staggered expirations and parcels that have not yet expired.

There will also be an occasional instance of an individual homeowner-seller prepares the deed with a self-imposed preservation or self-imposed restriction. This will be an outlier situation but I did identify this with a sampling of title searches. Those few exceptions would be re-encumbered with an HOA (2/3 board directed) preservation or revitalization (50% owner affirmed) and that would become a new root of title, triggering the MRTA 30-year countdown.

The statute says that Revitalization may be initiated by the HOA or POA and, if affirmed by 50% of parcel owners, will create a new title transaction on ALL the parcels previously subject to Covenants/restrictions, even if there were a continuing (unexpired) preservation. It requires indexing the Grantor and Grantee in the public record, as a muniment of title.

To not do so would create an onerous burden on HOA's to perform frequent title searches to identify those parcels whose previous preservations were about to end, so the board would be filing preservations often to prevent the covenants/restrictions from expiring. There is no mechanism in the statute that addresses this in concept, process or methodology.

🎯 You've read this entire discussion

Join the conversation with 50,000 HOA & Condo Leaders:

  • ✓ Ask follow-up questions
  • ✓ Share your experience
  • ✓ Get expert advice
  • ✓ Access 350,000 discussions
Create Free Account →

⚡ Takes 30 seconds

Already a member? Log in here