Two Statutes, One State: Why Florida Polices Condos Like a Regulated Industry and Leaves HOAs Almost Entirely Alone

If you own a condo in Florida, a state agency (The DBPR) can audit your association's books, subpoena your board, fine your directors, and remove them from office. If you own a home in an HOA, that same agency has no authority to investigate your board at all, even for identical misconduct. This isn't an oversight — it's deliberate policy written directly into the statutes.

Condominiums fall under Chapter 718, which gives the Department of Business and Professional Regulation's Division of Florida Condominiums broad enforcement power under section 718.501: investigating complaints, auditing finances, levying penalties, subpoenaing records, and referring fraud to law enforcement. That authority has only expanded since the 2021 Surfside collapse, most recently through 2025's House Bill 913.

HOAs, governed by Chapter 720, operate on the opposite premise. Section 720.302(2) states outright that the Legislature has decided it is not in homeowners' best interest to create a state bureau to regulate HOA affairs. The one exception, under section 720.311, lets DBPR arbitrate election and recall disputes and offer presuit mediation for covenant disputes — nothing more. DBPR's own guidance confirms it: no agency has authority to investigate general HOA complaints. Outside an election or recall fight, your remedy is a lawsuit.

The Condominium Act dates to 1963 and was rewritten in the 1970s–80s after widespread fraud in condo conversions and sales, prompting lawmakers to treat condo ownership like a regulated consumer transaction. Condos also share structural elements — roofs, foundations, façades — that carry collective safety risk, which is exactly why Surfside triggered new statewide inspection mandates with no HOA equivalent.

Chapter 720, built in 1992, treats HOAs as private, contract-based corporations governing detached homes through recorded covenants. The Legislature's view was that imposing a regulatory bureaucracy would intrude on that private contract. The 720.311 carve-out was added later as a narrow, pragmatic exception for the disputes most likely to deadlock a community.

I can tell you that each and every time there was an effort to place HOAs under the auspices of the DBPR, the effort got nowhere.  Interesting enough, apparently every member of The Florida Legislature lives in an HOA, except one.

If you live in an HOA, I want to hear from you. Are you willing to pay $4.00 per year to the DBPR in order that HOAs get regulated and supervised by the DBPR?  Why or why not?  Condominium owners, how would you advise HOA owners to vote on that issue?