Florida Statute 718 Special Assessment: Notice, Approval, and Collection

A special assessment under Florida Statute 718 is any charge a condominium association imposes on unit owners outside the regular annual budget, and Chapter 718 sets strict rules on how the board must notice it, who must approve it, how the money can be spent, and how unpaid amounts can be collected.¹ Miss one of those steps and the assessment can be invalidated. What follows is what the statute actually requires, and where owners have leverage.

The 14-Day Notice Rule

Before the board can vote on a nonemergency special assessment, written notice must go to every unit owner at least 14 days ahead of the meeting. The notice has to be mailed, hand-delivered, or electronically transmitted to each owner, and it must also be conspicuously posted on the condominium property.² Both steps. Sending without posting, or posting without sending, does not satisfy the statute.

The notice itself has to say three things: that assessments will be considered at the meeting, the estimated cost, and a description of the specific purposes the money will be spent on.² “Building maintenance” is not a specific purpose. An owner reading the notice should be able to tell what the money is for and roughly what it will cost.

Someone at the association, usually the manager or the board member who handled delivery, then has to sign an affidavit confirming the notice was provided as required, and file that affidavit with the association’s official records.² If a challenge comes later, the presence or absence of that affidavit is often the first thing a court looks at.

Email or other electronic delivery is only permitted for owners who have affirmatively consented to receive notices that way. An owner who opts in then takes on the risk that their spam filter blocks association emails.² Owners who have not consented must still receive notice by mail or hand delivery.

When the Board Can Act Faster

The 14-day window applies to nonemergency assessments. In a genuine emergency, such as a hurricane peeling off part of a roof or a burst pipe flooding common areas, the board can take up a matter not on the posted agenda if at least a majority plus one of the directors vote to address it. Any emergency action then has to be formally noticed and ratified at the next regular board meeting.² Boards that stretch the word “emergency” to skip the 14-day period risk having the assessment overturned.

Who Has to Approve a Special Assessment

By default, the board of directors can levy a special assessment on its own. Owner approval is required only when the declaration or bylaws specifically call for it.² Many declarations do impose a cap, such as requiring an owner vote for any single assessment above a stated dollar amount, so the governing documents should always be the first thing you check.

The statute itself forces an owner vote in two situations, whatever the declaration says:

Waiving or reducing reserve funding, or redirecting existing reserve money to a different purpose, requires a majority vote of the total voting interests, with voting limited to owners whose units are subject to the assessment that funds those reserves.³
Funding reserve items identified in a structural integrity reserve study through a special assessment, rather than the regular budget, requires a majority vote of the total voting interests.⁴

Material Alterations Need 75 Percent

A special assessment that funds a material alteration or substantial addition to the common elements triggers a separate rule under Section 718.113. If the declaration does not spell out its own procedure, 75 percent of the total voting interests must approve the alteration before the work begins. In a multicondominium association, that 75 percent applies separately to each affected condominium.⁵ Routine maintenance and repairs do not trigger the rule. The line is between keeping something in its current condition and fundamentally changing it.

Structural Integrity Reserve Studies Are Now Driving Assessments

Since 2022, Florida law has required every residential condominium with a building three habitable stories or higher to complete a structural integrity reserve study, or SIRS, at least every 10 years. Associations existing on or before July 1, 2022 were required to complete their first SIRS by December 31, 2025, with a possible extension to December 31, 2026 for associations that also had a milestone inspection due and could complete both studies together.⁴

The SIRS evaluates the remaining useful life and replacement cost of specific building components, including the roof, load-bearing walls and primary structural systems, fireproofing and fire protection, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing and exterior painting, windows and exterior doors, and any other item with a deferred maintenance or replacement cost above $25,000 whose failure would affect those components.⁴

Reserves for these SIRS-identified components must be fully funded based on the study, and since December 31, 2024, owners can no longer vote to waive or reduce that funding.⁴ For associations that deferred maintenance for years, this often means a large special assessment now. The law lets the association fund the shortfall through a special assessment, a line of credit, or a loan, and each option requires a majority vote of the total voting interests to approve.² For many owners, particularly in older coastal buildings, the practical result has been special assessments in the tens of thousands of dollars per unit, with no waiver option available.

How the Money Can Be Spent

Funds collected from a special assessment are restricted to the specific purpose stated in the notice. The association cannot collect for a roof replacement and then redirect the money to a lobby renovation, and its accounting records have to track these funds separately with itemized receipts and expenditures.⁶

If money is left after the stated purpose is finished, it is treated as common surplus. The board can either return the surplus to owners or apply it as a credit toward future assessments, at its discretion.⁶

What Happens If You Don’t Pay

Once a special assessment becomes due, any unpaid amount is automatically a lien on the delinquent owner’s unit. That lien secures the unpaid balance plus interest, late fees, and all reasonable costs and attorney fees the association incurs collecting it.⁷ But before the association can start adding legal fees to the balance, it has to work through a set sequence of notices.

First is a Notice of Late Assessment, sent by first-class mail to the owner’s last known address, and also to the unit address if those differ. This gives the owner 30 days to pay before the association can engage an attorney and add legal costs. Pay within that 30-day window and no attorney fees can be charged.⁸

If the owner still does not pay, the next step is a notice of intent to record a claim of lien, which gives the owner at least 45 more days to cure the delinquency before the lien is recorded.⁸ The recorded claim must include the legal description of the unit, the owner’s name, the association’s name and address, the amount owed, and the due dates, and it has to be signed and acknowledged by an officer or authorized agent of the association.⁹

After the lien is recorded, the association must send a written notice of intent to foreclose at least 45 days before filing suit. If it skips that final 45-day notice and the owner pays the balance before final judgment, the association loses its right to recover attorney fees and costs for the entire proceeding.⁷ A recorded lien expires after one year if the association does not file a foreclosure action within that time.

Interest, Late Fees, and the Payment Order

Unpaid assessments accrue interest from the due date at the rate in the declaration, or 18 percent per year if the declaration does not set one. The declaration or bylaws may also authorize an administrative late fee up to the greater of $25 or 5 percent of each delinquent installment.⁶

When the association receives a payment, the statute dictates the order it is applied: first to accrued interest, then to any administrative late fee, then to costs and reasonable attorney fees, and only after all of that to the unpaid assessment principal.⁷ Partial payments from a delinquent owner may never touch the principal, meaning the outstanding amount can grow even as checks go in. A $5,000 special assessment can turn into a $10,000 or $15,000 collection problem once interest, late fees, and legal costs stack on top.

Buying a Unit With Unpaid Assessments

An owner is liable for every assessment that comes due during ownership, however that ownership was acquired, including at a foreclosure sale or by deed in lieu. A new owner is also jointly and severally liable with the previous owner for any unpaid assessments that accrued before the transfer of title.⁹ Buy a unit with $20,000 in unpaid special assessments and the association can come after you for the full amount. You would have a right to seek reimbursement from the seller, but that right is only as good as the seller’s ability to pay. Requesting an estoppel certificate before closing is how buyers avoid walking in blind.

The First Mortgagee Safe Harbor

When a first mortgage lender or its successor takes a unit through foreclosure or deed in lieu, its liability for the previous owner’s unpaid assessments is capped at the lesser of the unpaid common expenses and regular assessments that accrued during the 12 months immediately before the lender took title, or one percent of the original mortgage debt.⁷ The safe harbor applies only if the association was joined as a defendant in the foreclosure. Whatever the lender does not have to pay becomes a loss the association absorbs, and that loss often gets spread across the other unit owners in a future assessment.

Challenging a Special Assessment

Owners sometimes assume they can take an assessment dispute to the Division of Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes at the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. They cannot. Florida law explicitly excludes disputes over the levy or collection of assessments from the mandatory pre-suit mediation and nonbinding arbitration process available for other condominium disputes.¹⁰ Election disputes, records access, and disagreements over board authority can go through DBPR arbitration. Assessment fights go straight to circuit court.

An owner who believes an assessment was improperly levied, whether because the notice was defective, the board lacked authority, or the funds are being misused, has to file a lawsuit. Courts typically look at whether the notice met the 14-day and content requirements, whether the board had authority under the declaration and the statute, and whether the stated purpose was legitimate. The affidavit of notice compliance, or its absence, often becomes a central piece of evidence. Weigh the legal costs before filing: associations that prevail can recover their reasonable attorney fees, so a losing challenge gets expensive.

1
The Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 718 – Condominiums
2
Official Internet Site of the Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 718.112 Bylaws
3
Florida House of Representatives. Florida Statutes 0718.112 – Condominiums
4
Florida Senate. Chapter 718 Section 112 – 2025 Florida Statutes
5
Florida House of Representatives. Florida Statutes 0718.113 – Maintenance; Limitation Upon Improvement
6
Official Internet Site of the Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes 718.116 – Assessments; Liability; Lien and Priority; Interest; Collection
7
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 718.116 – Assessments; Liability; Lien and Priority; Interest; Collection
8
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 718.121 – Liens
9
Florida Senate. Chapter 718 Section 116 – 2024 Florida Statutes
10
Division of Condominiums, Timeshares & Mobile Homes. Arbitration