Informational only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this post. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.
Florida's voluntary condominium termination statute has never been more consequential than it is today, when aging buildings face the simultaneous pressure of mandatory milestone inspections, structural integrity reserve studies (SIRS), and a real estate market that has made redevelopment of older coastal properties extraordinarily lucrative. The June 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside reshaped both the regulatory landscape and the litigation calculus around § 718.117 in ways that practitioners on every side of the v. must understand.
Doctrinal Framing
Section 718.117, Florida Statutes, governs the voluntary termination of a Florida condominium. Its conceptual core is straightforward: because condominium ownership fragments a building into dozens or hundreds of individual fee interests, no single owner can unilaterally restructure that ownership. A statutory supermajority mechanism is required. The 2007 revision — which reduced the historical unanimity requirement to 80 percent approval — was itself controversial, grounded in the legislative finding that "continued enforcement of those covenants may create economic waste and areas of disrepair which threaten the safety and welfare of the public." Subsequent amendments in 2017 tightened the objection threshold from 10 percent to 5 percent and introduced Division review. Post-Surfside legislation in 2022, 2023, and 2025 has layered onto § 718.117 a new trigger based on economic waste as defined by SIRS and milestone inspection findings.
Statutory Framework
The Two Pathways to Termination
Voluntary/Optional Termination. Under the current version of § 718.117, optional termination requires:
- Approval by at least 80 percent of the total voting interests of the condominium;
- Fewer than 5 percent of the total voting interests voting against the plan or submitting written objections (reduced from 10 percent by Ch. 2017-188, effective July 1, 2017).
If 5 percent or more object, the plan fails and no subsequent plan may be submitted for 24 months from the date of rejection — a cooling-off period extended from the prior 18 months.
Once a plan achieves the required vote, it must receive approval from the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes within the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR). The Division has 45 days to approve or identify deficiencies; silence constitutes deemed approval. This Division-review layer — added in 2017 — gives owners a second procedural checkpoint beyond the vote itself.
Economic Waste or Impossibility. Under § 718.117(1), a condominium may be terminated without the 80/5 vote if continued operation would constitute "economic waste." As clarified by 2025 legislation (HB 913 analysis), economic waste now includes the circumstance where the total estimated cost of construction, replacement, or repairs necessary to bring the property into compliance with the Florida Building Code or applicable laws, plus the pre-repair fair market value of the units, exceeds the post-repair fair market value of the units. This definition directly incorporates the SIRS analysis that associations are now required to conduct.
A significant safeguard applies where a bulk owner holds 50 percent or more of the voting interests: in that scenario, even an economic-waste termination requires approval of at least 80 percent of all voting interests, preventing a developer who has accumulated units from engineering a forced sale.
Plan of Termination Requirements
A compliant plan of termination must address at minimum:
- The identity and address of the termination trustee (typically the association);
- A description of the real estate to be sold and the minimum terms of sale;
- The appraisal methodology for allocating proceeds among unit owners;
- Disclosure of any bulk purchaser arrangement or option agreement;
- A statement of factual circumstances establishing statutory compliance.
Proceeds are distributed to unit owners and lienholders as their interests appear, in proportion to the fair market value of each unit as determined by an independent appraiser selected by the termination trustee. The apportionment is presumed fair and reasonable if conducted pursuant to the statutory formula. Objecting owners bear the burden of demonstrating that apportionment is not fair and reasonable.
The Homestead Minimum-Purchase-Price Protection
Under current § 718.117, any owner who has homesteaded the unit must receive proceeds equal to at least the greater of: (a) the fair market value of the unit as determined by the independent appraiser; or (b) the price the owner originally paid for the unit. This protection — extended in 2017 from original developers' unit purchasers to all homesteading owners regardless of when or from whom they purchased — is a significant shield for long-tenured residents who are frequently the most vulnerable participants in a developer-driven termination.
The Right to Contest
Under § 718.117(16), a unit owner or lienor may contest a plan of termination by initiating a summary proceeding pursuant to Fla. Stat. § 51.011 within 90 days after the date the plan is recorded. Failure to contest within 90 days bars all subsequent claims against the association, the termination trustee, any unit owner, or any successor in interest. This is an unforgiving deadline; practitioners representing dissenting owners must calendar it immediately upon learning of a recorded plan.
In a contested proceeding, the contesting party bears the burden of proving that the apportionment of proceeds was not fair and reasonable. The court must order implementation of the plan if it finds the plan fair and reasonable. Third parties — including the association acting as class representative, managing entities, and mortgage lienholders — may intervene within 45 days of the petition's filing, after which the petitioner may seek final judgment if no contest has been filed.
Post-Surfside Legislative Context
The Champlain Towers collapse drove three successive waves of condo-safety legislation. SB 4-D (2022) mandated milestone inspections for buildings three or more habitable stories: buildings that reached 30 years of age before July 1, 2022 were required to complete an initial inspection by December 31, 2024; buildings reaching 30 years of age between July 1, 2022, and December 31, 2024, must complete inspection by December 31, 2025. A coastal acceleration applies for buildings within three miles of the coastline (25 years rather than 30).
SB 154 (2023) layered onto those requirements the SIRS obligation: residential condominium buildings three or more habitable stories must complete a SIRS every ten years, with associations existing on or before July 1, 2022, required to complete their first SIRS by December 31, 2025 (later extended by HB 913 in 2025 to allow SIRS completion simultaneously with the milestone inspection if the inspection deadline falls on or before December 31, 2026, in no event later than December 31, 2026). Beginning January 1, 2026, associations may no longer waive or reduce SIRS-mandated reserve contributions — a dramatic shift from prior practice under which annual membership votes to reduce reserves were routine.
The practical consequence is twofold. First, associations facing massive SIRS-driven special assessments have a new, statutory basis to pursue termination on economic-waste grounds. Second, HB 913 (2025) explicitly authorizes boards — without prior membership approval — to levy special assessments or obtain loans to perform maintenance, repair, or replacement required by the milestone inspection or SIRS report, when necessary to protect health and safety. This emergency-assessment authority exists alongside, not instead of, the termination mechanism.
The "Kaufman Language" Problem
Practitioners representing owners in legacy condominiums — those whose declarations were recorded before the 2007 reduction of the threshold to 80 percent — confront a threshold question: does the statutory 80 percent threshold bind the condominium? The Darrow Everett analysis of the Biscayne 21 case illustrates the tension: a Florida appellate court ruled that a legacy declaration requiring unanimous consent to terminate could not be amended to adopt the lower statutory threshold unless all owners consented. The rule is that unless the declaration incorporates future changes to Florida law via so-called "Kaufman language," the higher declaration threshold may govern. Counsel for objecting owners in developer-driven terminations should examine the original declaration carefully before conceding that 80 percent controls.
Practice Notes
For objecting unit owners: The 90-day contest window under § 718.117(16) is jurisdictional in the sense that missing it forecloses all remedies. File first, negotiate second. Establish in your complaint that your client's apportionment is not fair and reasonable — challenge the independence of the appraiser selected by the termination trustee, the comparables used, and the exclusion of any intangible value. If your client is homesteaded, make clear the minimum-purchase-price protection applies regardless of whether the appraised fair market value meets that floor.
For association/board counsel: Ensure that the plan of termination addresses the Division's procedural checklist before it is submitted. Deficiencies returned by the Division restart the clock and may signal that the plan lacks statutory support. Confirm that any bulk purchaser arrangement is disclosed; undisclosed side agreements between the termination trustee and a developer purchaser have been the basis for successful contests.
Milestone/SIRS interplay: A milestone inspection revealing Phase II (intrusive) deficiencies, combined with a SIRS estimating repair costs that exceed post-repair value, creates the predicate for economic-waste termination. Document the SIRS methodology carefully; the independent-appraiser selection and the appraisal comparables will be the flashpoint in any contested proceeding.
Scope of intervention: Do not overlook the rights of mortgage lienholders. In a voluntary termination, proceeds are paid to unit owners and lienholders as their interests appear. Lenders holding underwater mortgages have both practical leverage and litigation standing that sophisticated counsel should deploy in pre-termination negotiations.
Open Questions and Where the Law Is Moving
The 2025 legislation raises but does not fully answer whether a board's emergency authority to levy SIRS-mandated assessments without a membership vote will hold up when the assessment is effectively a step toward making termination the only viable option. Expect challenges framed in fiduciary-duty and breach-of-governing-documents terms. A second open question is whether the economic-waste definition — which is now statute-based rather than equitable — displaces any common-law or case-law economic-waste tests. Third, the interplay between § 718.117 termination proceedings and active litigation over construction defects remains complex; owners who have contingency-fee counsel in a defect case may find themselves on both sides of the termination calculus simultaneously.
The migration of aging coastal inventory toward forced termination is unlikely to slow. The SIRS reserve-funding mandate taking effect in 2026 will generate thousands of dollars per unit in new annual assessments for older buildings. Some owners will welcome termination as an exit; others — those with homestead properties, long-term tenants, and fixed incomes — will experience it as displacement. Practitioners representing the latter group must be ready to move the moment the plan is recorded.
Closing
Florida § 718.117 is a statute that benefits from being read twice: once for what it says, and once for what it does not say. The 80/5 threshold, the 90-day contest window, the homestead minimum-price protection, and the Division-approval requirement each represent a potential winning argument or a fatal trap, depending on which side of the transaction your client occupies. The post-Surfside regulatory overlay has changed the economic calculus of condominium ownership in Florida in ways that will generate complex, high-stakes litigation for years to come.
Talk to Yates Anderson
If you are litigating a matter in this area — or weighing whether to — the working analysis above only goes so far. Request a case evaluation and a Yates Anderson attorney will respond within one business day.
Informational only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this post. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.