Who controls the denominator: a live illustration

A Miami-Dade Circuit Court suit filed in May 2026 shows why the arithmetic is contestable. Owners at Villa Portofino East, a 117-unit townhouse community in Homestead, sued the association and developer-affiliated entities alleging that developer-backed representatives stayed on the board roughly twenty years past the statutory turnover point.

The legal theory the plaintiffs advance is worth understanding at a category level. As one owner put it in reported comments, the developer “does have the right to annex/withdraw property, but in our case they are asserting that that withdrawn property transferred for a hotel commercial expansion is still a part of our residential community.” The alleged effect is to keep the residential conveyance ratio artificially below the threshold that triggers turnover. The association's reported position is that the benchmark simply has not been reached.³

These are allegations. No court has ruled, and we found no case number in the public reporting. What generalises is not the outcome but the question: in a phased or mixed-use community, what counts as a parcel for the turnover calculation? Any owner in a developer-controlled association with later phases or a commercial component can ask that question of their own documents today.

What did change on turnover inspections — and what did not

Two separate proposals in this area also failed this session, and they are easy to confuse with each other.

For cooperatives, CS/SB 1498 would have required a developer, before turnover of a cooperative association, to have a turnover inspection report for all buildings rather than only those three stories or higher. It cleared Regulated Industries 7-0 on 3 February 2026 and then died in the Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment and General Government.

For condominiums, HB 657 would have struck the same height qualifier from s. 718.112(2)(g)6, so a developer needed a turnover inspection report for each building. That bill passed the House and died in Senate Rules.

The height qualifier therefore stands in both chapters. A developer turning over a community of two-story buildings does not owe the turnover inspection report that a three-story building would trigger.

What the state does now collect — and it is not nothing

The database these bills would have built does not exist. But a different state register does, and it went live in the same period without much notice.

Under s. 718.501, as amended by HB 913, every condominium association was required to create an online account with the Division on or before 1 October 2025, and cooperatives followed under s. 719.501. Rule 61B-23.002, F.A.C., effective 18 June 2026, then set what has to go into it: association contact details, the management firm, the name and board title of each board member, the association website, and per building the physical address, story count, unit count and certificate-of-occupancy year — plus current and projected assessments inclusive of reserves and “the name of all financial institutions with which the association maintains accounts.”⁴

The data had to be populated within 45 days of the rule's effective date — roughly 2 August 2026, now past — and must be reviewed and verified annually by 15 January. Cooperatives are on the same regime under Rule 61B-78.001, effective 14 July 2026, with a corresponding date around 28 August 2026.

Turnover certificates are not on that list. But board composition, buildings and banking now are, which is a considerably more searchable state record of Florida condominium governance than existed two years ago.

What to watch next

Nothing has been refiled for 2027, and the filing window runs to noon on 2 March 2027. The nearer date for any association is 15 January 2027, the first recurring annual verification of the Division account — and note that under the rule, annual updates “are deemed received only upon the association's receipt of electronic confirmation from the department.” Submitting is not the same as having submitted.