01
What a Florida Co-Op Actually Is
You do not own your unit. The corporation owns the building and you own shares plus a proprietary lease, and almost every argument later in this book turns on that sentence.
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Contents guide
Twenty-nine chapters follow the work in the order a board encounters it: understand the legal structure, organize the people and meetings, control records and money, handle enforcement and occupancy, take charge of the building itself and the work done to it, and build an operating system that survives director turnover.
Part I
01
You do not own your unit. The corporation owns the building and you own shares plus a proprietary lease, and almost every argument later in this book turns on that sentence.
02
Seven layers of authority, from federal law down to a board resolution, and one rule for when two of them disagree. Bylaw amendments take two-thirds of every voting interest, whether or not its owner shows up.
03
Before the board acts, someone at the table should be able to say what authorizes it. The president has no more unilateral power than any other director, and an ultra vires vote can be undone years later.
04
The vendor’s holiday basket is a civil-penalty question under § 719.104(9)(a). Disclosure costs a conflicted director almost nothing, and this chapter also marks where D&O coverage stops covering you.
Part II
05
Removing someone as president does not remove them from the board. That one distinction resolves most of what boards get wrong about their own structure, and vacancies left unfilled can bring a receiver.
06
Your fiduciary duty attaches the day you are seated, and no one hands you a grace period with the binder. Here is the 30/60/90 curriculum that gets a new director useful by the second meeting.
07
Miss the 90-day certification deadline and you are suspended by operation of statute, whether or not anyone notices. Day 30, day 60, and day 85 reminders cost nothing and prevent the usual failure.
08
Silence is a yes vote. A director who wants to dissent has to vote no and have it recorded, and a special assessment taken up on 48-hour notice is a meeting you will be holding again.
09
A recall takes a majority of all voting interests, and most petitions that fail were counted against the wrong denominator. The election calendar runs backward from the meeting date, starting 60 days out.
10
You may not notice a recall meeting by electronic transmission, whatever consent the shareholder gave. Proxies expire at 90 days, and website posting requires a duly adopted rule before it counts.
Part III
11
A records system is only as good as its worst answer to “where is that?” One acceptable answer is “we hold it and you may not see it,” and this chapter builds the system that can say it.
12
Ten working days, then $50 a day. The member never has to say why, and you may not charge them for the phone camera they photograph the file with.
13
Under-assessment compounds quietly and arrives years later as a special assessment nobody planned for. If your buildings run three habitable stories or higher, the reserve waiver you used to take is gone.
14
Payments apply to interest first and assessments last, and no restrictive endorsement on the check changes that. Record a lien and forget it, and § 719.108(4)(b) extinguishes it in a year.
15
The person who controls disbursements should not be the person who reconciles the account, and that is usually the long-serving treasurer everyone trusts. Twelve controls, sized for a volunteer board.
16
Insurance is where four separate duties meet: what you insure, what you claim, what you maintain, and what you can prove five years later.
Part IV
17
A rule cannot do the work of an amendment. Leasing terms, assessment structure, and voting rights live in the documents, and reaching them by resolution buys you an invalid rule and a fight.
18
Levy a fine without the § 719.303(3)(b) committee hearing and it is usually unenforceable, however plainly the rule was broken. The committee confirms or rejects what the board levied; it may not rewrite it.
19
The transfer interview is where a well-run cooperative gets sued. Written criteria, a written question protocol, and counsel review before a denial are what keep the approval power out of a fair-housing file.
20
Decorum rules reach manner and stop at viewpoint, and they have to exist before the meeting you wish you had them for. Five difficult-resident patterns follow, with a response for each.
Part V
21
Name what the cooperative owns: the component inventory a reserve schedule assumes. Then sort the four documents boards routinely conflate.
22
Read roof, structure, waterproofing, and windows as one water-management assembly, and the milestone inspection as capital planning.
23
Place the association/shareholder boundary in the systems moving air, water, waste, current, and people, with the elevator a license you hold.
24
Turn the regime behind five statutory words (testing, licensure, two retrofit elections, three thresholds) into one calendar of filed results.
25
Fund the servicing a reserve study’s useful lives already assume; a deferred maintenance dollar is a reserve dollar taken early.
26
Buy work under § 719.3026 rather than board policy, level bids against one written scope, and close out under Florida’s lien law.
Part VI
27
Knowing the rules and running a board are different skills. This chapter supplies the second one, so that a competent board stops rediscovering its own calendar every time the directors change.
28
Fifteen record categories, a 90-day clock, a 10-working-day window: at some point the paper stops working. The chapter says which tools help, where AI stops helping, and that the author built one of them.
29
The year ends with a handover. Do it properly and the next board starts in January instead of March.
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