This means that when a rule applies to one homeowner, it must apply to all other homeowners in the community. As a general rule, HOAs and COAs are required to enforce restrictions uniformly. HOAs and COAs are further required to comply with Federal laws such as the Fair Housing Act and may be further restricted from prohibiting certain activities by county and municipal codes and ordinances. For example, a homeowner’s right to display the US flag or have a service animal in their home is protected. Chapter 720 of Florida Statutes (for HOAs) and Chapter 718 (for COAs) outline specific restrictions on prohibiting certain activities. Such new homeowners will certainly be required to join the HOA automatically when they purchase a property in the community.Īre there restrictions on what an HOA or COA can prohibit? This, however, is rare and does not apply to new homeowners entering the community. Some HOAs, while in the early stages of being established, may allow some existing members of the community to exclude themselves from membership. This means that those members will be required to follow all HOA rules, pay dues and special assessments and be legally bound to the HOAs bylaws and restrictive covenants. In almost all cases, a community with an established HOA will require all homeowners living in that community to be a member of that HOA. This will ensure that you are aware of your rights and obligations under Federal, state and local laws and that your best interests are being served by the actions you take. Consult a real estate attorney with extensive HOA experience before attempting to take any legal action against an HOA in Florida. In some rarer cases, association disputes are able to go to court where they can be resolved through litigation. In most cases, the decision of an arbitration committee is final and legally binding. Florida statute requires that HOA and COA disputes are resolved at first through mediation and secondly through arbitration. Here is a list of those frequently asked questions with answers to each.Īn HOA can either be started in a new community when the property developer turns over management of the community to its property owners, or it can be created in an existing community when property owners vote to create an HOA and elect a board of directors. In the process of handling association-related matters, frequent questions arise. “Any smart business person can make a business look like it’s not making a profit,” Horan says.As a Florida real estate law firm experienced in the field of Homeowners Associations (HOAs) and Condo Owners Associations (COAs), South Florida law frequently works to resolve HOA disputes, establish HOAs, draft and review HOA documentation and transact properties in communities managed by associations (either HOAs or COAs). Moreover, taxes and tax returns can be manipulated. “As the judge said, just because you’re a bad business person doesn’t mean the use isn’t commercial.” The court wasn’t persuaded, finding that earning a profit wasn’t the test for whether a use is residential. In court, the owners claimed that they couldn’t have violated the residential use restriction because they never turned a profit from their rentals. “The board took the usual steps of trying to resolve the dispute out of court first, but it came to a head, and they took the next step to preserve the residential nature of their community,” Hirzel says. The association’s declarations limited the property to residential use, and the owners were cited for violating the restriction (the declarations didn’t include commercial use or rental restrictions). The association sued several owners who had engaged in extensive short-term renting through Airbnb, VRBO, and other online platforms on a daily basis for several years, according to the association’s attorney, Kevin Hirzel of Hirzel Law, PLC. The case involved a community of more than 200 single-family homes. The court’s ruling not only rejected the owners’ defense, it also provides some hope to associations that haven’t been able to amend their documents to deal with the onset of short-term rentals. That’s what happened in a recent case out of Michigan where the owners asserted a novel theory for why their short-term rental activities didn’t violate the association’s residential use restriction. The good news is that courts are providing a bulwark against such arguments in some cases. “With Airbnb and those platforms becoming such a huge percentage of rentals,” says Jennifer Horan, a shareholder in the Naples, Fla., office of Becker & Poliakoff, “we’re going to see a lot of creative arguments.” Short-term rental arrangements continue to plague community associations, with owners and powerful lobbying groups for companies like Airbnb constantly devising new tactics for avoiding restrictions.
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