Florida Special Assessments: The 14-Day Notice, the Vote, and the Spending Limit

By Carlos Castellano · Current as of August 27, 2026

A special assessment is the one money decision a board makes that owners feel immediately, and it is also the one most likely to be challenged. The law that governs it is thinner than most directors expect. Neither Florida chapter tells your board how many votes it takes to levy. What both chapters do is script the notice, and the condominium chapter adds a hard limit on what the money may be spent on. Get the notice wrong and the levy is exposed before a dollar is collected. Here is the procedure, and where the statute stops and your governing documents take over.

What makes an assessment “special”

The condominium chapter defines it in one line. Section 718.103(27), Florida Statutes, says a “special assessment” means “any assessment levied against a unit owner other than the assessment required by a budget adopted annually.” That is the whole test, and it is a test of timing rather than size. Anything the annual budget did not already cover is a special assessment, whether it is a $2 million roof or a $300 insurance shortfall.

Chapter 720 never defines the term at all. It uses the phrase in several places, including the notice rule below, but a homeowners’ association looking for a statutory definition will not find one. In practice HOA boards use the same working test, because Section 720.308(1)(a) draws the same line, referring to assessments “levied pursuant to the annual budget or special assessment.”

This is a different duty from adopting the budget, and boards conflate the two. The budget is the annual plan and it has its own meeting, its own notice and its own reserve rules, covered in adopting the annual budget. The special assessment is the one-off levy on top of it. The annual financial report is the third document in the set, and it is the retrospective one.

Who actually approves it

This is the question boards ask first and the statutes mostly decline to answer. Neither chapter contains a general rule setting the vote needed to levy a special assessment. There is no statutory percentage, no default owner referendum, and no dollar figure above which the members must be asked. The authority to levy, and the vote it takes, come from your declaration, articles and bylaws. Read them before you calendar anything, because they are the operative document and they vary widely: some communities let the board levy alone, some cap the amount the board may levy without a membership vote, and some require an owner vote for any special assessment at all.

There are four places where the statute does step in and set the vote, and each is narrow.

• A condominium funding its structural reserve items. Section 718.112(2)(f)2.c.(I) provides that reserves for the items listed in paragraph (g), the structural integrity reserve study items, “may be funded by regular assessments, special assessments, lines of credit, or loans,” and that a special assessment, a line of credit or a loan under that sub-subparagraph “requires the approval of a majority vote of the total voting interests of the association.” Note the denominator: a majority of all the voting interests, not a majority of those who show up. The reserve items themselves are covered in milestone inspections and SIRS.
• An HOA still under developer control. Section 720.315 is a short standalone section and it is easy to miss: “Before turnover, the board of directors controlled by the developer may not levy a special assessment unless a majority of the parcel owners other than the developer has approved the special assessment by a majority vote at a duly called special meeting of the membership at which a quorum is present.” Chapter 718 has no equivalent section, so this restriction is HOA only.
• A declared emergency. Both chapters flip the answer the other way. Section 718.1265(1)(l) lets a condominium board, in response to damage or injury caused by or anticipated in connection with a declared state of emergency, “levy special assessments without a vote of the owners” and says so “[r]egardless of any provision to the contrary and even if such authority does not specifically appear in the declaration of condominium, articles, or bylaws.” Section 720.316(1)(j) gives an HOA board the same power in nearly the same words. These powers switch on only when a state of emergency has been declared for the locale under Section 252.36, and they are tied to that emergency.
• An HOA forced to upgrade its financial report. Section 720.303(7)(c) is the odd one out, because it compels a levy rather than restricting one. If 20 percent of parcel owners petition for a higher level of financial reporting and a majority of the total voting interests approves, the association must “amend the budget or adopt a special assessment to pay for the financial report regardless of any provision to the contrary in the governing documents.”

Outside those four, the governing documents decide. A board that levies without checking them has skipped the only step that answers the question.

The 14-day notice, and the two ways boards get it wrong

Here both chapters do speak, and they speak in almost the same words. The ordinary board-meeting notice is not enough. A special assessment gets its own longer notice, and it has two required halves.

For a condominium, Section 718.112(2)(c)1. provides that “[w]ritten notice of a meeting at which a nonemergency special assessment or an amendment to rules regarding unit use will be considered must be mailed, delivered, or electronically transmitted to the unit owners and posted conspicuously on the condominium property at least 14 days before the meeting.” The same subparagraph then adds a proof requirement with no HOA counterpart: “Evidence of compliance with this 14-day notice requirement must be made by an affidavit executed by the person providing the notice and filed with the official records of the association.”

For an HOA, Section 720.303(2)(c)2. provides that “[w]ritten notice of any meeting at which special assessments will be considered or at which amendments to rules regarding parcel use will be considered must be mailed, delivered, or electronically transmitted to the members and parcel owners and posted conspicuously on the property or broadcast on closed-circuit cable television not less than 14 days before the meeting.” No affidavit is required, and the posting half has an alternative the condominium sentence does not offer.

The two failures are boring, and that is exactly why they happen.

• Counting the days off the ordinary rule. A condominium board posts board-meeting notice 48 continuous hours ahead, and an HOA board posts 48 hours ahead or mails 7 days ahead. Those are the general rules and they are covered in board meetings and notices. A special assessment overrides them with 14 days. A board that runs its usual notice and then takes the levy up at that meeting has not noticed the levy.
• Sending the notice without also posting it. Read the conjunction. Both statutes say transmitted to the owners and posted, not or. Emailing every owner is half of the requirement. This is the defect that survives into the minutes, because the board has a clean mailing log and never asks whether anything went up on the property.

What the notice has to say

A notice that arrives on time and says the wrong thing fails the same way. The two chapters set different content bars, and the condominium bar is higher.

A condominium is covered by Section 718.112(2)(c)3.: “Notice of any meeting in which regular or special assessments against unit owners are to be considered must specifically state that assessments will be considered and provide the estimated cost and description of the purposes for such assessments.” A dollar estimate is not optional, and neither is the description of what it is for. The same subparagraph adds that if an agenda item relates to approving a contract for goods or services, a copy of the contract must go out with the notice, which is the usual shape of a special assessment for a repair project.

An HOA is covered by the first sentence of Section 720.303(2)(c)2., and it is written as a prohibition: “An assessment may not be levied at a board meeting unless the notice of the meeting includes a statement that assessments will be considered and the nature of the assessments.” The bar is “the nature of the assessments” rather than an estimated cost, so Chapter 720 does not on its face require a dollar figure in the notice. Putting one in anyway costs nothing and closes the argument.

The money is restricted to the purpose you named

For a condominium this is express, and it is the sentence boards should read before they decide how much to levy. Section 718.116(10) requires that the specific purpose or purposes of any special assessment be set out in a written notice sent or delivered to each unit owner, and then says: “The funds collected pursuant to a special assessment shall be used only for the specific purpose or purposes set forth in such notice.”

The statute also says what happens to what is left over. “[U]pon completion of such specific purpose or purposes, any excess funds will be considered common surplus, and may, at the discretion of the board, either be returned to the unit owners or applied as a credit toward future assessments.” So the surplus is not stranded and it is not free money either. The board chooses between a refund and a credit, and that choice is a board decision made at a properly noticed meeting like any other.

The practical consequence is a drafting one. A purpose written narrowly, “to replace the north building roof,” is a purpose you can overspend against. A purpose written to match the project, with the contingency named, is one you can fund. Section 718.116(10) expressly contemplates a contingent special assessment levied alongside an insurance purchase under Section 718.111(11), so contingency amounts are not foreign to the statute.

Chapter 720 has no counterpart. We swept the whole chapter and there is no HOA provision restricting special assessment funds to the stated purpose and no HOA rule on surplus. That is our reading of the text and not legal advice, and it does not mean an HOA board may spend the money on something else. The fiduciary duty in Section 720.303(1) still applies, and a board that collects for a roof and spends on a clubhouse has a problem that does not need a special assessment statute to describe it. Fiduciary duty is covered in fiduciary duty for board members.

How the amount is divided among owners

The board does not get to choose who pays more. For an HOA, Section 720.308(1)(a) requires that assessments levied pursuant to the annual budget or a special assessment “be in the member’s proportional share of expenses as described in the governing document,” a share that may differ among classes of parcels based on the state of development, the level of services received, or other relevant factors. That section applies to communities created after October 1, 1995, with an exception for certain development-of-regional-impact communities, so an older community reads its declaration alone. For a condominium the share follows the undivided interest in the common elements set in the declaration.

What the statutes leave open

The following is our reading of what is open, not legal advice, and capable lawyers land in different places. If one of these decides what your board does this year, get the association’s counsel to put a position in writing before the meeting rather than after it.

• What happens to a levy that was noticed badly? Neither chapter says. The HOA sentence is phrased as a prohibition on levying, which reads as though the levy should not happen at all, but Chapter 720 does not say the resulting assessment is void, voidable or curable, and Chapter 718 says nothing on the point either. Secondary sources state confidently that a defectively noticed assessment is voidable. The statutes do not say it, so we do not either. What is clear is that the defect is real and the cheapest cure is the obvious one: notice it again correctly and take the vote again.
• Does the estimated cost in a condominium notice bind the board? Section 718.112(2)(c)3. requires an estimate and says nothing about what happens if the levy adopted comes in higher. The stated-purpose limit in Section 718.116(10) constrains the spending but not the amount.
• Is an HOA held to the stated purpose the way a condominium is? Chapter 720 has no equivalent of Section 718.116(10). Whether the notice an HOA gave under Section 720.303(2)(c)2. limits the spending, and what happens to a surplus, are questions the chapter does not reach.
• How far does an emergency levy reach? The emergency powers are tied to damage or injury caused by or anticipated in connection with the declared emergency, and both sections limit the board to powers exercised in response to it. Where a repair stops being emergency work and becomes ordinary deferred maintenance is a judgment call the statute does not make for you.

The sequence, in the order it actually happens

Read the declaration and bylaws first and write down what they require, because that is what sets the vote. Check whether one of the four statutory situations applies to you: structural reserve items in a condominium, a developer-controlled HOA board before turnover, a declared emergency, or a forced financial-report upgrade. Fix the purpose and the number before the notice goes out, because the notice has to carry them. Draft the notice so it says assessments will be considered, describes the purpose, and for a condominium gives the estimated cost and carries any contract that is up for approval. Send it to every owner by a permitted method and post it conspicuously on the property, at least 14 days before the meeting. If you are a condominium, have the person who gave the notice execute the affidavit and file it with the official records. Hold the meeting, take the vote the documents require, and record the purpose and the amount in the minutes in the same words the notice used. Keep the money separate and spend it on what you said. When the project is done, decide the surplus question on the record.

Every document that sequence produces is an association official record, which means an owner can ask for it and the board has a deadline to answer. That side is covered in responding to a records request. The notice, the affidavit and the minutes are the proof that the levy was done properly, and they are worth as much as the vote itself.