MRTA IMPOSED?

An Opinion By Jan Bergemann

Published June 30, 2026

Many owners of property in older homeowners’ associations with no or just a very few amenities are just waiting for their deed-restrictions to expire after 30 years and just hope that nobody gets the “stupid” idea to renew the old deed-restrictions with a mandatory HOA or even revitalize it after expiration date. There are already some “dubious” provisions in place that seem to make revitalization much easier. This has already caused lots of expensive lawsuits – and there are still boards around trying to convince their neighbors that the HOA is still in place, even if MRTA ended the HOA successfully and revitalization attempts failed.

But cities and counties just love to collect more property taxes from HOA owners since HOA fees often already contain services cities and counties don’t have to supply, even if they still collect for these services with their property tax.

And to make sure that HOA boards don’t forget to renew the deed-restrictions in a timely manner, the pushed the Florida Legislature to add a new paragraph into the HOA ACT FS 720.

This provision tells board members to “consider” renewing the covenants in the first board meeting after the election. It looks like the authors of the bill that created the provision were hoping that board members would just do it without looking twice at the exact wording. It just says: “CONSIDER”!

That doesn’t really mean that they have to do it. They follow the law if they just consider it – without taking any action. I have seen many owners of property within older HOAs making sure that they elected board members that were against renewing the deed-restriction or revitalizing the covenants once they had expired.

Many HOA members have over the years realized that they are actually been charged twice for the same services: HOA maintenance fees and property taxes.

Wouldn’t being charged once be enough?