Florida HOA Lawyer Blog
The Florida Marketable Record Title Act (MRTA) requires HOAs to reaffirm and renew their covenants and restrictions 30 years after they were originally recorded in the local county records. MRTA was created to extinguish claims to property which are at least 30 years old in an effort to stabilize property law by clearing old defects from the chains of title to real property, limiting the period of record searches, and clearly defining marketability by extinguishing old interests of record.
One of the unintended consequences of the Act is that the declarations of covenants, conditions and restrictions recorded by HOAs may be set to expire after 30 years of the date in which they were recorded. Keep in mind that for most HOAs, if the residents are no longer compelled to act in accordance with the community’s declaration, the results could be catastrophic for the associations’ administration and finances.
The Florida legislature passed a law earlier this year to update the process for HOAs to renew and preserve their covenants and restrictions under MRTA in order to keep them in place after the 30-year term. Under the new law, which is now in effect, at any time during the 30-year period following the effective date of the title for the covenants and restrictions of a community association, the association may preserve and protect those covenants or restrictions from extinguishment by following more simplified filing procedures which include the following: