Two Florida boards ask the same question in the same week. What is our association required to carry?
One is a three-hundred-unit oceanfront condominium with a master policy, an elevator, and a milestone inspection due. The other is seventy-nine single-family homes whose entire common property is a perimeter wall, an entrance sign, and a playground.
Both will find the same checklist online, and it will have been written for the first one. Only one of these associations is governed by the statute that checklist describes.
Getting this right starts before any coverage discussion. Condominium associations are governed principally by Chapter 718 of the Florida Statutes. Homeowners associations are governed by Chapter 720. Those are different legal frameworks with different insurance obligations, and treating them as interchangeable is how boards end up buying the wrong program or believing a requirement applies to them that does not.
Start With the Governing Documents
An association’s declaration and bylaws establish what it is actually responsible for maintaining, repairing, and insuring, and what stays with individual owners.
Two communities that look identical from the street can have completely different obligations. One association owns a clubhouse, a pool, and private roads. Another maintains landscaping and an entrance monument and nothing else. A townhome community can land anywhere between them depending entirely on how its documents allocate maintenance.
This is also why comparing premiums with a similar-sized association down the road tells a board almost nothing. They may not be insuring anything close to the same scope of property. The useful starting question is not what a comparable community carries. It is what this association owns and what it has agreed to be responsible for.
What Chapter 718 Actually Requires of Condominium Associations
Condominium associations face a specific statutory framework that homeowners associations do not.
Under Fla. Stat. §718.111(11), a condominium association must maintain adequate property insurance based on the replacement cost of the insured property, determined by an independent insurance appraisal or an update of a prior appraisal at least once every thirty-six months. That is a recurring obligation, not a limit the board picked once and carried forward.
The statute also defines the dividing line between association property and owner property. The association insures the portions of the condominium as originally installed, including approved alterations. Items generally left to the unit owner include floor, wall, and ceiling coverings, appliances, water heaters, and built-in cabinets within the unit boundaries.
That division is exactly why unit owners still need their own HO-6 policies even where the association carries a substantial master policy. The two are designed to cover different property, not to overlap.
What a Chapter 720 Association Actually Insures
Chapter 720 does not duplicate that framework, and this is where most published guidance simply stops. Knowing what is not required is less useful to a board than knowing what its own property actually is.
For a single-family homeowners association, the property schedule is usually made up of things that are not buildings: a perimeter wall, gates and gate operators, entrance monuments and signage, perimeter and landscape lighting, mailbox structures, a guardhouse, playground equipment, and sometimes a clubhouse or pool.
Insurance treats that category differently from a building, and boards are frequently caught by it. Structures like walls, signage, and play equipment are typically written as property in the open, scheduled individually with their own limits. Left unscheduled, they can fall to a policy’s outdoor property extension, which carries a small sublimit and responds only to a short list of perils that does not include windstorm. In wind-exposed parts of the state, windstorm may not be available on property in the open at all.
Private roads, walks, and other paved surfaces are usually listed as property not covered, along with land. An association that owns its streets should be planning for repaving as a reserve item rather than an insurance one.
None of this appears in the condominium statute, because none of it is what the condominium statute is about. It is, however, the entire property picture for a large share of Florida associations.
Reserves and Insurance Answer Different Questions
Florida’s reserve requirements have become a major board-level issue, primarily for condominiums.
Under Fla. Stat. §718.112, qualifying condominium associations must obtain Structural Integrity Reserve Studies on a recurring schedule, at least every ten years, covering specified structural components, with restrictions on waiving or reducing that funding.
This should never be confused with insurance. A reserve study estimates money needed for predictable future replacement, a roof reaching the end of its useful life. Insurance responds to covered, usually sudden losses, that same roof torn off in a hurricane. An association can carry excellent property insurance and still face large expected capital costs insurance was never designed to pay, and it can hold strong reserves and still take a catastrophic loss reserves were never sized for. Both need planning, and neither substitutes for the other.
Chapter 720 does not impose the same structural reserve mandate. A homeowners association’s budget may include reserves for capital expenditures it is responsible for, but the rules depend on how those reserves were established and on the association’s own governing documents rather than a uniform statutory framework.
Deductibles Are a Financial Decision, Not a Premium Lever
A higher deductible lowers premium by moving retained risk onto the association, and Florida law makes that tradeoff explicit for condominiums. The statute allows the board to consider available funds, including reserves and predetermined assessment authority, in setting property deductibles, and directs that deductibles be consistent with industry standards for comparable communities.
The practical version applies to any association regardless of type. Convert the percentage on the proposal into a dollar figure. Decide where that money would come from after a major storm. A five percent wind deductible on a $250,000 scheduled value is $12,500, which across seventy-nine homes is about $158 per lot if it has to be assessed.
That is a manageable number for most communities. It is much less manageable when the board learns it for the first time during a claim.
D&O Covers a Different Kind of Dispute Entirely
Not every serious association problem involves damaged property. Boards make continuous decisions about budgets, assessments, vendor selection, rule enforcement, and architectural approvals, and residents challenge those decisions.
Directors and officers coverage exists for allegations of wrongful acts in governance, and it is a genuinely separate exposure from general liability or property. It deserves its own line on the proposal rather than an assumption that a package handles it.
Two things are worth checking specifically where D&O is included within a package rather than written on its own. Whether it carries its own limit or shares the general liability limit. And whether defense is provided for claims seeking injunctive or declaratory relief rather than only monetary damages, which matters because covenant enforcement disputes frequently seek the former.
Good governance remains the first layer. Following the record-keeping requirements that apply under Chapter 718 or 720, documenting significant decisions, and keeping organized minutes will not prevent every dispute, but it creates a record of what the board actually considered. That matters enormously when a decision is questioned years later by people who remember it differently.
Crime and Fidelity Requirements Differ Between the Two Chapters
Associations control real money, and that exposure is separate from property damage and governance disputes.
Florida condominium law requires insurance or fidelity bonding for anyone who controls or disburses association funds, with coverage tied to the maximum funds in that person’s custody at any one time.
Chapter 720 contains a comparable fidelity bonding requirement for homeowners associations, but with a mechanism allowing it to be waived annually by the vote the statute specifies. That is a meaningful difference, and boards should not assume the two frameworks operate identically.
Modern fraud has added a layer beyond simple theft. A criminal impersonating a vendor or a board member by email can convince an authorized person to send a legitimate payment to the wrong account. Whether crime, cyber, or social engineering coverage responds to that depends on the forms, and those terms are not interchangeable. The strongest protection is still operational: independently verify any changed banking instructions before the transfer, using a phone number the association already had rather than one in the email.
Flood Needs Its Own Evaluation Regardless of Type
One hurricane can produce wind damage and flood damage through entirely different mechanisms, and those losses are not covered by the same policy.
This applies to both association types. A coastal tower faces surge into its parking structure and lower floors, where the elevator equipment and switchgear usually sit. An inland community faces drainage failure and heavy rainfall reaching a clubhouse or gatehouse that is nowhere near the coast.
Neither the presence of wind coverage nor the absence of a high-risk flood zone designation settles the question. It gets answered by looking at the actual property and where it sits.
Maintenance and Insurability Are Connected
Insurance responds to sudden covered losses. It was never designed to finance ordinary deterioration or years of postponed repairs.
A board that repeatedly defers roof, plumbing, or electrical work is not only building a larger eventual repair bill, it is building a harder underwriting story. Carriers increasingly want documented evidence of condition: permits, inspection reports, records of completed work. A well-maintained older community with real documentation often presents better than a newer one where upkeep has been neglected.
That connects directly to reserves. Funding realistically and acting on maintenance recommendations protects the association’s future insurability, not just its buildings.
Vendors and Records
Associations depend on outside contractors, and none of that risk disappears because the work was outsourced. Insurance requirements should scale to the work actually being performed rather than applying one generic certificate requirement to a landscaper and a roofer alike, and a certificate collected at the start of a relationship is not ongoing proof of anything.
The same discipline applies to the board’s own records. Minutes, vendor contracts, inspection reports, and the reasoning behind significant insurance decisions do not need to be exhaustive. They need to exist clearly enough that a future board, an insurer, or a court can reconstruct what the association knew and decided at the time.
Policies themselves are worth retaining. General liability is written on an occurrence basis, so a claim arriving years after an incident is answered by the policy that was in force then, not the one in force now.
Review When the Community Changes, Not Only at Renewal
The right renewal conversation starts with what changed at the association over the past year. A roof replacement, a clubhouse renovation, new playground equipment, a new security vendor, a change in management, a significant claim.
A policy that accurately described the community five years ago may not describe it now, and that gap tends to surface during a claim rather than during a review.
What Boards Should Confirm
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Is the association governed by Chapter 718 or Chapter 720? Nearly everything else follows from that.
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What do the governing documents actually make the association responsible for insuring?
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For condominiums, is the independent appraisal current within thirty-six months?
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For homeowners associations, is every outdoor structure scheduled with its own limit, including walls, gates, signage, lighting, and play equipment?
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Is windstorm included on those scheduled items, or excluded?
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What is the deductible in dollars, and where would that money come from?
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Does D&O carry its own limit, and does it defend non-monetary claims?
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Is the fidelity requirement satisfied, and if it was waived, was that done the way the statute requires?
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Has flood been evaluated based on the actual property and its location?
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Are past policies and inspection records retained?
HOA and Condo Association Insurance in Florida
Prestige Insurance Group works with homeowners associations, condominium associations, and the property managers who run them across Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Tampa, and throughout Florida.
There is no single package that fits every Florida association. The right program starts with which chapter governs the community, what the documents make the association responsible for, and what the property schedule actually needs to list.
Miami 305-969-8776 · Orlando 407-993-2331
General information only, not legal advice. Florida’s condominium and homeowners association statutes have been amended repeatedly and are subject to further change; confirm current obligations with the association’s counsel and with the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Policy forms, endorsements, sublimits, exclusions, and the availability of windstorm coverage vary by carrier, by territory, and over time. Refer to your association’s governing documents and to the actual policy forms for the terms that apply to your community.
