Renting out a Florida condo: what the association controls.

When you rent out a condominium unit in Florida, you are not just a landlord under Chapter 83. You are also a unit owner under Chapter 718, the Condominium Act, and the association sits between you and your tenant. It can screen your applicant, charge for doing it, hold a deposit your tenant pays to it rather than to you, and — in one specific situation — collect your rent directly.

Owners are usually clear on the first of those and unaware of the last. Here is where the association's authority actually begins and ends.

Can the association approve or reject my tenant?

Only if the condominium documents say so. An association's power to approve a lease is not automatic under the statute — it has to come from the declaration, articles or bylaws. The same is true of any fee for that approval. If your documents are silent on approval, there is no approval right and no fee to pay.

What the association may charge

This is the number owners are most often overcharged on, because the governing paragraph is short and specific.

Four rules follow from that paragraph, and three of them save money:

Because the DBPR publishes the current adjusted figure, the number your association may lawfully charge today is whatever the DBPR has published — check it there rather than relying on any blog, this one included, to have the live figure. The statutory base is $150 per applicant.

The second deposit your tenant may have to pay

Separate from your own security deposit, an association may require a prospective lessee to place a security deposit with the association — but only if that authority appears in the declaration, articles or bylaws, and only up to the equivalent of one month's rent. It goes into an escrow account maintained by the association and protects against damage to the common elements or association property, not to your unit. Interest, claims, refunds and disputes are handled the same way as under Part II of Chapter 83.

Tell applicants about this before they sign. A tenant who budgeted for first month, last month and your deposit, and then meets a fourth demand from the association, is a tenant who walks — and you restart a vacancy you had already ended.

The rule most condo owners have never read

This is the one that costs real money, and it has nothing to do with your tenant's behaviour.

If you fall behind on assessments, the association can write to your tenant and redirect your rent to itself. The statute prescribes the wording of that notice, and the consequences are stacked against the owner:

1. The tenant is protected, not you. A tenant who pays the association has complete immunity from any claim by you for rent timely paid, and you must credit those payments against rent due.
2. It continues until you are current. The tenant keeps paying the association until it releases them or the tenancy ends.
3. The association can evict your tenant. If the tenant fails to pay the association after written demand, the association may serve notice under § 83.56 and sue for eviction under §§ 83.59-83.625 as if it were the landlord.
4. But it takes on none of your duties. The statute is explicit that the association is not otherwise considered a landlord under Chapter 83 and has no obligations under § 83.51 — the maintenance section. Repairs remain yours while the rent goes elsewhere.
5. The tenant gets no owner rights. Paying the association does not let them vote in association elections or inspect its books.

One protection exists for the tenant caught mid-period: if they already paid you for the current rental period before the demand arrived and give the association written proof within 14 days, their obligation to the association starts with the following period instead.

The practical lesson is unglamorous. In a condo, falling behind on assessments does not just accrue interest and a lien — it can sever your income stream while leaving your repair obligations intact. Assessments come first.

Association screening does not replace your screening

An association approval is not a tenant screening report, and it is not run for your benefit. The association is protecting the community against its own criteria; it is not assessing whether this applicant will pay you rent for twelve months. Its approval tells you nothing about income stability, and you cannot rely on it as your qualification decision.

Your own screening still has to satisfy federal law — permissible purpose before you pull a consumer report, and a proper adverse action notice if you reject someone on the strength of one. That is the same standard covered in our guide to tenant screening in Florida, and it applies to a condo unit exactly as it applies to a house.

Run your screening before you send the applicant to the association. Paying an approval fee on someone your own criteria would have rejected is money spent in the wrong order.

An owner's order of operations

1. Read your declaration first. Confirm whether approval is required, whether a fee is authorized, whether an association deposit is authorized, and what the documents say about leasing.
2. Confirm you are current with the association before you market the unit, for the reason above.
3. Screen the applicant yourself against written criteria applied identically to everyone.
4. Send the approved applicant to the association, and check the fee charged against the cap: per applicant, family as one, nothing on a renewal.
5. Disclose the association's deposit to the tenant before signing, if the documents authorize one.
6. Handle your own deposit correctly. The association's escrow has nothing to do with your obligations under Fla. Stat. § 83.49, which continue to run on their own timeline.

Where this goes wrong quietly

Nearly all of it is timing. An owner markets the unit, finds a tenant, and only then discovers the association meets monthly and will not approve before the first of the month. Or the approval fee is charged four times for a family of four. Or an owner who has been disputing an assessment finds their tenant has been told to pay someone else.

None of those are dramatic and all of them are avoidable by reading the declaration before the listing goes up rather than after an application is in hand.

CIMCO manages both sides of this — individual condo units for their owners, and condominium and HOA associations themselves — across Broward County, including Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. If you own a unit in a building whose rules you have never fully read, that is the part worth handing to someone as part of full-service management.

This is general information, not legal advice. Florida landlord–tenant law is detailed and fact-specific, and statutes change. Verify anything you intend to act on against the current Florida Statutes Chapter 83, Part II, and consult a Florida attorney before serving notices or filing an eviction.