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THE
RIGHT TO RENT – THERE’S MORE TO KNOW THAN YOU THINK
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published
February 24, 2014
The
right to rent your unit has undergone some change over the
years. It all
started in a landmark case called Woodside
v. Jahren which was ruled upon by The Florida Supreme
Court in 2002. A
condominium in Clearwater amended its declaration of condominium
to suddenly prohibit the rental of your unit to no more than
nine (9) months in any twelve (12) month period.
Mr. Jahren had been renting out several of his units for
nearly twenty (20) years and he sued the association, seeking a
ruling from the court that this amendment was illegal because it
took away a vested right he had to rent his unit all year long.
The Florida Supreme Court disagreed.
Basically, The Florida Supreme Court ruled that despite
the fact that the declaration of condominium originally allowed
Mr. Jahren to rent his units, he was on notice that the unit
owners had the authority to amend the governing documents to
prohibit renting in the future.
In simple terms, The Florida Supreme Court opined that if
a super majority of owners in a condominium can finally agree on
something, the courts should not stand in the way, unless the
amendment violated a constitutional right of an owner.
Since there was no Constitutional right to rent your
unit, the amendment which limited rentals was affirmed by The
Florida Supreme Court.
This did not sit well with one Florida Supreme Court
Justice who thought it was unfair for Mr. Jahren to lose this
valuable property right after so many years, and she urged The
Florida Legislature to ensure a fairer system was put in place.
So, in 2004 The Florida Legislature passed the following
law in regards to condominiums only:
FS
718.110(13) Any amendment restricting unit owners'
rights relating to the rental of units applies only to unit
owners who consent to the amendment and unit owners who purchase
their units after the effective date of that amendment.
So,
as of 2004 if your declaration gave you the right to rent your
unit, that right could not be taken away from you during your
ownership, unless you specifically voted in favor of such an
amendment to your declaration of condominium.
Once you sell however, your buyer becomes stuck with that
restriction. That
remains the law today.
Over
the years I have heard a million arguments both for and against
the rental of units and homes.
Many people think that owner occupied communities are
less likely to suffer from a foreclosure problem.
I don’t know. It
seems to me that lots of people lost their homestead property
during the recent foreclosure crisis.
In fact, some owners were begging the Board to please let
them rent their unit in order to avoid the unit slipping into
foreclosure. Many
Boards still said NO. Then,
these same associations foreclosed on some units and took back
title to several units. Now
the association wanted to rent out the unit each month.
Was the association bound by the same rental limitations
as all of the owners? Of
course they were. But
that didn’t stop many of them.
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About
HOA & Condo Blog
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Eric Glazer graduated from the University of
Miami School of Law in 1992 after receiving a B.A. from
NYU. He is currently entering his 20th year as a
Florida
lawyer practicing |
community association law and is the owner of
Glazer and Associates, P.A. an eight attorney law firm in
Orlando
and Hollywood. For the past two years Eric has been the host of Condo Craze and
HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show on 850 WFTL. See: www.condocrazeandhoas.com.
He is the first attorney in the State of Florida
that designed a course that certifies condominium residents as
eligible to serve on a condominium Board of Directors and has
now certified more than 7,000 Floridians. He is certified as a
Circuit Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has
mediated dozens of disputes between associations and unit
owners. Finally, he recently argued the Cohn v. Grand
Condominium case before The Florida Supreme Court, which is
perhaps the single most important association law case decided
by the court in a decade.
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