Florida HOA Rental Restriction Vote & Grandfathering Calculator

How this calculator works

Florida community associations have spent more than a decade trying to figure out how to limit short-term and investor-driven rentals without running into one of two walls: the 75% supermajority required to adopt the restriction in the first place, and the grandfathering rule that protects existing owners from any restriction they did not vote for. This calculator walks both walls. It computes the binding vote count under F.S. § 718.110(13) (condos) and F.S. § 720.306(1)(d) (HOAs), returns a Passes / Falls Short / Pending verdict against the current tally, quantifies the grandfathered cohort, projects how long it takes the new rule to reach full effect at the entered churn rate, and surfaces the procedural lease-application authority under F.S. § 718.112(2)(i) that remains available even if the supermajority fails.

The math is not the hard part. The hard part is understanding which Florida statutes apply, which legislative sessions changed them, and how the grandfathering carve-out interacts with the Contracts Clauses of the federal and state constitutions.

The 75% supermajority — origin and scope

Before 2018, Florida condominium declarations could be amended using whatever threshold the declaration itself specified — commonly two-thirds (66.67%) for general amendments, sometimes lower. Boards facing rising rental activity discovered they could adopt rental caps, occupancy limits, and lease-approval requirements using the same 2/3 vote they used for routine declaration amendments. Owners harmed by these restrictions challenged them under the Contracts Clauses, but the underlying vote was procedurally regular and the challenges varied in outcome.

The 2018 Florida legislative session added subsection (13) to F.S. § 718.110, imposing a 75% supermajority floor on declaration amendments that materially restrict owner use. Rental restrictions sit squarely inside that category. The HOA parallel, F.S. § 720.306(1)(d), operates the same way for community associations governed by Chapter 720. The 75% floor controls regardless of the declaration's general amendment clause — a 2/3 declaration cannot be used to adopt a rental restriction at 2/3, and the declaration may require more than 75% but not less.

The denominator for the 75% calculation is total voting interests, not votes cast. Abstentions and non-votes are excluded from the numerator (they do not count as yes) but do not reduce the denominator. The practical effect is decisive: an apathetic ownership base makes the 75% threshold structurally hard to clear. A campaign supporting a rental restriction must mobilize affirmative yes votes from at least three-quarters of all voting interests, not just three-quarters of the owners who happen to return a ballot.

The 2021 grandfathering rule

The 2018 supermajority cleaned up the procedural irregularities but did not directly address the constitutional question: does a rental restriction adopted by 75% of owners bind the 25% who voted no and the owners who held title as of the effective date? The answer was already implicit in the Contracts Clauses of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, § 10) and the Florida Constitution (Article I, § 10), but the case law varied across DCAs and the rule was hard to administer.

The 2021 legislative session — HB 463 and the companion SB 630 — amended F.S. § 718.110(13) to spell out the grandfathering rule. A condominium declaration amendment that (a) prohibits owners from renting their units, (b) alters the duration of the rental term, or (c) specifies or limits the number of times owners may rent during a calendar year applies only to:

1. Owners who consent to the amendment (typically by voting yes), and
2. Owners who acquire title after the effective date of the amendment.

Owners holding title as of the effective date — and not consenting — are grandfathered. The new restriction does not bind them. The right to rent under the pre-amendment regime runs with their existing title and transfers only when they sell. The HOA parallel under § 720.306(1)(d) was tightened by HB 919 (2021) to extend similar protections for HOA residential parcel owners.

The 2021 amendment also protects leases existing on the effective date — a new minimum-lease-term amendment cannot retroactively invalidate a lease already in place. The existing lease runs to its natural termination. Boards adopting new rental restrictions should publish a clear effective-date notice and maintain an owner-and-lease registry to establish the grandfathered cohort with documentary support.

How grandfathering shapes enforcement

The 75% supermajority is hard to clear. The grandfathering rule, once cleared, slows enforcement to the pace of natural ownership turnover. The combination means a rental-restriction amendment is rarely a fast tool — it is a multi-decade community-design decision.

The calculator quantifies the slow-roll using compound-decay math. Owner churn — sales, transfers, deaths, foreclosures — reduces the grandfathered cohort over time. If churn is c as a fraction per year, the remaining cohort at year t is (1 - c)^t. "Full effect" is the year at which the remaining cohort falls below 5% of the association, the practical horizon at which the restriction binds essentially everyone.

The Florida-wide median annual churn rate is approximately 8%. At that rate, the grandfathered cohort drops below 5% remaining in 36 years. Coastal high-rise condos with higher turnover (12% annual churn from seasonal sales and investor flips) reach full effect in roughly 24 years. Stable inland HOAs with low turnover (5% annual churn) take approximately 59 years.

These horizons matter for community planning. A board adopting a no-rental rule today should expect that, even after a successful 75% vote, the rule will bind only the post-amendment ownership base for the next two to four decades. Budget, enforcement policy, and owner communications should reflect that timeline. A common misstep is to treat the recorded amendment as immediately effective against all owners; doing so invites a § 718.110(13) Contracts-Clause challenge with very predictable results.

The procedural overlay — § 718.112(2)(i) lease applications

A failed 75% vote does not leave the board powerless. F.S. § 718.112(2)(i) authorizes Florida condominium associations to require lease applications, reasonable fees (statutory cap, indexed annually), basic tenant background screening, and lease-data reporting without any owner vote at all. The procedural authority is distinct from a substantive use restriction: collecting a lease application and a modest fee does not "materially restrict" owner use under § 718.110(13).

The line between procedural application authority and substantive use restriction is fact-specific. Two safe boundaries:

1. Reasonable fees. The statutory fee cap (indexed annually — check current DBPR guidance) anchors what counts as "reasonable." Fees significantly above the cap, or fees structured to deter rentals, collapse into a substantive restriction.
2. Uniform, published criteria. Background-screening criteria must be objective, uniformly applied, and published in advance. Board-by-board "approval" with no published criteria is a substantive use restriction in disguise — it requires the 75% vote.

The procedural overlay survives a failed cap and can be implemented by board rule. Many Florida associations adopt the procedural overlay as a baseline regardless of the cap question — it captures tenant data, supports community-safety policies, and creates an enforcement record for any later substantive amendment.

HB 1537 (2024) — vacation-rental preemption failed

The 2024 Florida legislative session brought HB 1537, which would have preempted local short-term-rental (vacation-rental) ordinances and centralized vacation-rental regulation at the state level. The bill did not pass — the Senate companion stalled and the session ended without enactment. The pre-2024 status quo remains: local short-term-rental ordinances are enforceable, and association rental restrictions adopted under § 718.110(13) / § 720.306(1)(d) sit on top of the local ordinance. Owners running short-term rentals must clear both the local-ordinance stack and the association rule set.

Boards considering minimum-lease-term amendments to address Airbnb / Vrbo activity should review the local ordinance first. In many Florida coastal communities, the local rule already forecloses short-term rentals; an association supermajority vote may be redundant if the city or county has already done the work. The vacation-rental calculator in this Florida HOA cluster covers the local-ordinance stack in more detail.

Worked example

A 100-unit Florida condo, organized in 1994 with a 2/3 declaration-amendment clause, proposes a 6-month minimum-lease-term amendment in 2026. All 100 owners hold title as of the effective date the board has scheduled. Annual churn is 8% (the Florida-wide median). The board conducts the vote and tallies:

• 65 yes
• 20 no
• 15 abstain / non-vote

The calculator returns Falls Short. The amendment needs 75 yes votes (75% of 100); only 65 are recorded. The 10-vote gap is the campaign's renewed-mobilization target. The board's options:

1. Run a second vote after an owner-education campaign emphasizing that the amendment grandfathers all current owners — current owners' rental rights are preserved until they sell. Framing rental restrictions around new-purchaser expectations rather than existing-owner takings tends to improve passage odds.
2. Adopt the § 718.112(2)(i) lease-application procedure by board rule. Capture tenant data on every new lease, charge a reasonable fee, run a basic background check. The procedural authority survives without a 75% vote.
3. Review the local short-term-rental ordinance. If the local rule already requires minimum stays or vacation-rental registration, the association rule may be partially redundant.

If a second vote clears the 75% threshold and the amendment is recorded with a clear grandfathering clause naming the effective date, the restriction begins to bite at the pace of turnover. At 8% annual churn, the original 100-owner grandfathered cohort drops below 5 remaining owners around year 36. Until then, enforcement is partial — the board must track grandfathered status and apply the rule selectively.

What the calculator does not do

This calculator is a planning and analysis tool. It does not:

• Verify the declaration's amendment clause. The 75% floor controls regardless of the declaration, but the declaration may require more. Read the declaration's general amendment clause for any higher threshold.
• Compute mortgagee-consent requirements. Many Florida declarations require institutional-mortgagee consent for amendments affecting collateral value. Coordinate with the title company and any large institutional lender separately.
• Verify the local short-term-rental ordinance. Local rules vary widely across Florida. The vacation-rental calculator in this cluster covers the local-ordinance stack.
• Draft the recordable amendment. The vote outcome is the first step; recording the amendment with the certification required by F.S. § 718.110(3) (condo) or § 720.306(1)(e) (HOA) is procedural and follows passage.

How this page is maintained

The 75% supermajority of F.S. § 718.110(13) has been stable since 2018. The 2021 grandfathering codification (HB 463 / SB 630) clarified the existing constitutional baseline and has not been disturbed. HB 1537 (2024) failed and the local-ordinance stack remains intact. We monitor each Florida legislative session for changes to § 718.110(13), § 720.306(1)(d), § 718.112(2)(i), or any renewed vacation-rental preemption attempt, and re-stamp the page within the quarter after any substantive change.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-15 against F.S. § 718.110(13), F.S. § 720.306(1)(d), F.S. § 718.112(2)(i), HB 463 / SB 630 (2021), HB 919 (2021), HB 1537 (2024 failed).