January 1, 2019 was the due date for Florida condominiums with 150 for more units to have a compliant web portal available for unit owners to access a laundry list of official records. The Florida lawmakers originally set July 1, 2018, and then extended it to January 1st.  If you are a condo in Florida with 150 for more units, you need to comply.

If you are a property manager, attorney, accountant, insurance broker or other professional serving such a condo, you ought to take care to advise them that they need to comply.  Otherwise, there are consequences for them but also for you.

If you’re general counsel and don’t advise your condo client that they need to comply, you arguably expose yourself to professional liability.  Same goes for property management companies and other professionals who ought to be advising their clients to comply with the law.

We have heard from the insurance industry that if condos are supposed to comply and don’t, there are all sorts of insurance consequences like statutory fines and penalties not covered by D&O insurance, willful non-compliance not indemnifiable to board members, non-compliance a breach of fiduciary duty by board members and non-compliance exposing CAM’s to professional liability claims under their E&O which may or may not apply.

All it takes is one owner in a condo with 150 or more units (very likely) to request web portal access to the requisite official records, which triggers consequences that any condo should avoid.

Indeed, there are significant consequences which will be implicated if an applicable condo does not have a web portal up and running now that the January 1, 2019 deadline has happened.

Indeed, Florida Statutes Section 718.111 (12)(c)(1) (“Official Records”) provides that:

Office of the Board – Instant, Easy Compliance with the New Florida Web Portal Law