How a Florida condo or HOA works, for owners

The owners are the association. Every owner is a member automatically, and the members elect the board. In a condominium the association is governed by Chapter 718 of the Florida Statutes; in a homeowners' association it is Chapter 720; in a cooperative, Chapter 719.

The board is a small group of owners, almost always unpaid volunteers, elected to make decisions on everyone's behalf. They approve the budget, hire the vendors, carry the insurance, and are responsible for keeping the shared property in good repair. Most serve because someone has to, and most are doing it alongside a job and a family.

The manager, where there is one, is a licensed professional hired by the board to carry out its decisions: collecting assessments, paying bills, supervising vendors, keeping the records. A manager advises the board and runs the day to day. A manager does not set policy. Many smaller communities have no manager at all and the board does this work itself.

Assessments are your share of what it costs to run the community for a year. The largest lines are usually insurance, utilities for the shared areas, landscaping and maintenance, management, and contributions to reserves.

Reserves are savings for large, predictable replacements such as a roof, paving, or painting. Funding them steadily is what keeps a future repair from arriving as a single large bill. For Florida condominium buildings of three or more habitable stories, reserves for the main structural components are now based on a professional study rather than left to a yearly vote.

When costs rise, assessments rise with them. In Florida the line that has moved most in recent years is property insurance, and that is a cost a board has very little power to negotiate away.

Board meetings are open to owners. In a condominium, the right to attend includes the right to speak on the items on the agenda. The same is true in a homeowners' association. Associations may adopt reasonable rules about how long and how often members speak so that meetings can finish.

The most useful meeting of the year for an owner is the budget meeting. It is where next year's assessment is set, and it is where the reasons behind a change are explained. If you attend one meeting a year, make it that one.

The best way to understand your community is to read its own documents: the declaration, the bylaws, the rules, and the current budget. They answer most questions more precisely than any general guide can, because the law leaves a great deal to each community's own documents.

Boards are nearly always short of volunteers. Committees, such as landscaping, social, or finance, are a low-commitment way to learn how the community runs and to be useful to it.

If something is unclear, ask the manager or a board member. A short, specific question usually gets a faster and friendlier answer than a long one, and most misunderstandings in community associations turn out to be missing information rather than disagreement.