Florida's HOA Dissolution Bill (HB 657) Passed 108 to 2. It's Still Not Law.
On March 5, 2026, the Florida House passed HB 657 by a vote of 108 to 2. Eight days later it was dead. The Senate sent it to Rules and never gave it a floor vote. The last action line on its own page reads "Died in Rules," 3/13/2026.
The claim going around is that Florida homeowners can now vote their own association out of existence. Those eight days are why a board member can repeat it in complete good faith and still have it wrong. The bill it belonged to never became law.
Why this is landing on board agendas
The specific version we hear is short: we can vote the HOA out now. It comes up in the open forum at a meeting or in a neighborhood group, and it arrives with enough detail attached to sound researched. A date. A percentage. The name of an act. A director who has not read HB 657 has no fast way to tell whether any of that is real. The board either tables the item or gives it twenty minutes.
The real risk is not the twenty minutes. It is a board or an owner who leaves that room assuming a dissolution path exists. Then a decision turns on that assumption.
Every fragment of what is circulating traces back to something real in HB 657's own text. This post shows where each piece came from, and what Chapter 720 lets a Florida homeowners' association do today.
Where did the July 1, 2026 date come from? HB 657 proposed it and never took effect.
The date is real and it came from the bill itself. HB 657's closing section proposed an effective date. It read, in full: "Section 35. This act shall take effect July 1, 2026." An effective date inside a bill is a proposal. HB 657 never became law. July 1 came and went this year, with HB 657 dead since March.
Both facts live on the same public bill page at flsenate.gov: the proposed effective date, and the line recording that the bill died. A different 2026 bill did take effect on July 1, and it is not this one.
The petition threshold: 20 percent as filed, 50 percent as passed by the House
Twenty percent was real, in the version filed in December 2025. Representative Juan Carlos Porras of Miami-Dade filed HB 657 on December 4, 2025. The filed text required a petition signed by "at least 20 percent of the voting members of the association." Four committees took it up, and between January and March 2026 it came out as a new committee substitute four times. The version the House voted on was the engrossed CS/CS/CS/CS/HB 657. It required a petition signed by "at least 50 percent of the voting members of the association."
So the percentage people are repeating is the December draft's number, and the House had already replaced it with 50 percent before the floor vote. Neither version is law.
Was there a Homeowners' Association Dissolution and Accountability Act?
Yes, and that is a large part of why this sounds official. HB 657 would have created a new section of Chapter 720, numbered 720.319. Its first subsection read: "This section may be cited as the 'Homeowners' Association Dissolution and Accountability Act.'" The operative words are "this section." The name belonged to one proposed subsection, not to the bill.
The bill's actual subject line was plainer: "An act relating to community associations." The name lived inside a section that never became law. Chapter 720 today ends at section 720.318, First responder vehicles. There is no 720.319.
What can Florida homeowners actually do to end an HOA today?
Under Chapter 720, nothing. The statute contains no owner-initiated mechanism for terminating a Florida homeowners' association or its declaration.
| HOA (Chapter 720) | Condominium (section 718.117) | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner-initiated termination path | None | Yes, optional termination under 718.117(3) |
| Approval needed | Not applicable | At least 80 percent of total voting interests |
| Regulatory approval | Not applicable | DBPR Division of Condominiums must approve |
| Plan fails if | Not applicable | 5 percent or more of total voting interests reject it |
| Wait after a failed vote | Not applicable | 24 months |
Two other routes come up, and neither ends an HOA. Dissolving the corporation under section 617.1402 ends the entity. The declaration of covenants is a separate recorded instrument on the land, and ending one does not by its terms erase the other. Revitalization under sections 720.403 through 720.407 runs the other direction. It revives a declaration that has lapsed, usually after thirty years under the Marketable Record Title Act.
Whether a particular declaration can end at all depends on its own text. That is a question for your association's attorney. Royale manages communities. We are not a law firm, and we do not read declarations for you.
HB 657 died. Did another community association law take effect on July 1, 2026?
Yes, and it is a different bill. HB 797, the Nonprofit Corporations act, passed the House 114 to 0 and the Senate 36 to 0. The Governor approved it on June 25, 2026. It is now Chapter 2026-168, Laws of Florida. Its closing line reads "Section 190. This act shall take effect July 1, 2026." That one is in force.
Chapter 617 is the Not For Profit Corporation Act, and HB 797 is its first comprehensive rewrite in more than fifteen years. Most Florida community associations incorporate under Chapter 617, so this reaches them. Directors get a new inspection right under section 617.16051. Bylaws can no longer limit a member's right to inspect. The threshold to call a special members' meeting rises from 5 percent to 10 percent of the votes entitled to be cast. Governing documents that say otherwise still control.
That last figure belongs to special meetings under Chapter 617. It is a different statute from the condominium termination numbers above.
Why the vote traveled and the ending did not
Nobody invented any of this. Every piece of the rumor sits somewhere in HB 657's own text. What each retelling skipped is the last line.
A 108 to 2 floor vote is an event. It carries a date and a roll call, and it leaves behind a number a person can repeat from memory a week later. None of that happens to a bill that sits in Rules and never gets scheduled. There is no roll call for a hearing that never happened. The bill's page adds one line and stops updating: "Died in Rules," 3/13/2026.
A bill dying in Senate Rules is a silence, and silence does not travel the way a landslide does. A board that heard only the loud half is working from a version of Florida law that does not exist.
Where this stands today
HB 657 passed the Florida House 108 to 2, and it did not become law. It did not take effect on July 1. Chapter 720 today contains no mechanism for owners to vote their own homeowners' association out of existence.
The people repeating this are not careless or foolish. They read a real bill and stopped one line early. If it comes up at your next meeting, the answer is short. The bill passed the House and the Senate never voted on it. The record says it died on March 13. Nothing else needs to go on the agenda.
If this is landing on your next agenda, ask us for the one-page version. We will pull the record on HB 657 with the source links. Anything about your own declaration goes to your association attorney.
Sources
- Florida House Bill 657 (2026), bill page, action history and vote record, flsenate.gov. Final action: "Died in Rules," 3/13/2026. House vote 3/5/2026: 108 yeas, 2 nays.
- Florida House Bill 657 (2026), engrossed bill text, proposed section 720.319 and Section 35 effective date, flsenate.gov.
- Florida Statutes, Chapter 720, Homeowners' Associations, current through the 2026 session, leg.state.fl.us. Chapter ends at section 720.318.
- Florida Statutes, Section 718.117, Termination of condominium, flsenate.gov.
- Florida Statutes, Sections 720.403 through 720.407, revival of declaration of covenants, flsenate.gov.
- Florida Statutes, Section 617.1402, dissolution of a not for profit corporation, flsenate.gov.
- Florida House Bill 797 (2026), Nonprofit Corporations, Chapter 2026-168, Laws of Florida, approved by the Governor June 25, 2026, effective July 1, 2026, flsenate.gov.
