“Review of New Condominium Laws for 2025” – News-Press
With today’s column, we will begin our annual review of recent Florida legislation affecting community associations. There were no changes to the statutes governing homeowners’ associations governed by Chapter 720 of the Florida Statutes, the Florida Homeowners’ Association Act. The Florida Legislature has adopted several changes that will fundamentally impact condominium operations, effective July 1, 2025.
One of the most significant involves the annual budget process. Under the new law, if a board proposes an annual budget which exceeds 115 percent of the prior year’s budget, the board must simultaneously propose a substitute budget that does not include any “discretionary expenditures that are not required to be in the budget.” Previously, if a proposed budget exceeded 115 percent of the prior year’s budget, unit owners had to petition the board to present the unit owners’ substitute budget for approval, which rarely happened.
Under the new law, if the 115 percent threshold is exceeded, boards must affirmatively provide a “substitute budget” for vote by the unit owners, at the same time as the budget that is typically proposed and adopted by the board.
Certain expenses, such as insurance premiums, mandatory reserves, and anticipated repair costs for specific building components which are not expected to be incurred on an annual basis are excluded from this calculation.
The Florida Condominium Act does not define required versus “discretionary” expenditures. The statute does mandate that certain expense categories be included in the budget, and many condominium documents outline required services and authorized expenditures.
If a board determines that its proposed budget exceeds 115 percent of the prior year’s budget, both the board’s proposed budget and the “substitute budget” without the “discretionary expenditures” must be sent to unit owners at least 14 days in advance. A unit owner meeting must be held to vote on the substitute budget before the board convenes to adopt its proposed budget.
In other words, if the owners vote to approve the “substitute budget,” that is the adopted budget. If the members reject the substitute budget, then the board meets to approve its proposed budget. The substitute budget requires approval by a majority of all voting interests, or any greater percentage specified in the bylaws.
The new statute explicitly allows condominium associations to hold membership meetings, board meetings and committee meetings to be held by “video conference.” The term “video conference” is defined in the statute to mean “any real time audio or video meeting between two or more people via audio or video enabled devices. A meeting held by video conference must include a physical location for those owners who choose to attend in person.”
Any notice of meeting for a meeting held by video conference must state that the meeting is to be held via video conference and include a hyperlink to the video conference, a conference telephone number for unit owners to attend the meeting by phone and provide the physical location of the meeting for in person attendance. All meetings conducted by video conference must be recorded and such recording must be maintained as an official record of the association for one year.
If the association is obligated to maintain a website, then video recordings for all meetings conducted by video conference or hyperlinks to all recordings of meetings conducted by video conference must be posted on the association website. Associations operating a condominium with 150 or more units are currently required to have a website. As of January 1, 2026, this requirement will apply to associations operating a condominium with 25 or more units.
Next week, we will continue reviewing the new statutes with a review of new procedures for absentee voting by owners, annual meeting requirements, new website laws, and other noteworthy changes to the statutes.
Joe Adams is an attorney with Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., Fort Myers. Send questions to Joe Adams by e-mail to jadams@beckerlawyers.com. Past editions may be viewed at floridacondohoalawblog.com.
