Florida's HOAs and condo associations are making the housing crisis worse

A housing crisis has three parts: what a home costs, how many are for sale, and whether the people in them get to stay. In Florida the homeowner and condominium associations push on all three. HOA Spy indexes 104,659 Florida associations — the 27,377 with a unit count on file hold 1,518,436 homes between them. Their records show 10,296 foreclosure suits the associations brought against their own members, 460,412 claims of lien and 277,047 lis pendens recorded against homes, 48,999 court records in all, and 6,661 associations whose own corporation has lapsed or fallen out of standing. Every count on this page comes from official court dockets and county records, and every community named links to its own record; the dues and price figures are someone else's, dated and linked where they appear. Suits and liens are counts of filings, not of homes lost.

8,148 of the 13,601 Florida communities with court records (rings — red where foreclosure is the most common case type) and 8,165 of the 34,198 with recorded liens (dots, coloured by liens in the last five years) have an address or ZIP in the record and are drawn here. Click a pin for the community's report, or open the full-screen map.

An association exists to keep a community maintained and insured and to collect the dues that pay for it. The records show what else the 104,659 Florida associations do with the powers the law gives them, and what it does to the housing around them.

Florida law gives every association a lien on each home for unpaid assessments and the right to foreclose it — section 720.3085, Florida Statutes for homeowners' associations, section 718.116, Florida Statutes for condominiums. The debt that starts it can be a few hundred dollars; by the time a suit is filed it carries interest, late charges, collection costs and the association's attorney's fees, all secured by the lien. 10,296 foreclosure suits on file were brought by a Florida association against one of its own members, from 2,695 communities — 2.6% of those indexed. The lender's foreclosures that merely name an association number 1,629: the association is the foreclosing party more often than the bank is.

The peak was 2009, with 875 suits (about 2 a day); 2025, the last full year, had 599, and 667 have been filed so far in 2026.

Each suit is a household that may be forced to sell, a home that may go to auction for the debt and the fees, and a sale that takes place under a deadline instead of on the market. A foreclosure suit is not a lost home — most end when the owner, or the owner's lender, pays — but the pressure is the point.

brought by the associationlender's suit naming the association · 2026 is partial

Before any suit there is a claim of lien, a one-page document in the county's official records against the home. A lien does not have to be foreclosed to do damage: a title company will not close a sale over it, a lender will not refinance behind it, and clearing it means paying whatever the association's lawyer says is owed. In the recorder indexes HOA Spy collects (Broward County Official Records index, Miami-Dade County Official Records index), 460,412 claims of lien have been recorded by associations since 1978, and 277,047 lis pendens — 60% of the liens were followed by a foreclosure filing. 5,702 communities recorded a lien in the last five years; 1,047 liens on file were contested.

2025 saw 7,916 claims of lien, up 8% on 2020 (7,352); the peak was 2008 with 29,518.

claims of lienlis pendens · 2026 is partial

The communities with the most liens on record: BEACHPLACE TOWERS CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, INC. (8,798); PALM-AIRE RESORT OWNERS ASSN (4,951); SILVERLAKES COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION, INC. (4,569); BEACH PLACE TOWERS CONDO ASSN INC (2,602); CHAPEL TRAIL OWNERS ASSN INC (2,407).

Since the Surfside collapse, Senate Bill 4-D (2022) and the laws that followed it require older condominium buildings to pass a milestone structural inspection (section 553.899, Florida Statutes) and to fund structural reserves on the strength of a structural integrity reserve study (section 718.112(2)(g), Florida Statutes), reserves the owners can no longer vote to waive. The repairs and the reserves are paid by the owners, through higher dues and special assessments, and an owner who cannot pay is back at step one above.

The cost is visible in the dues. Redfin reported in August 2024 that median monthly HOA fees in the three months to July 2024, against a year earlier, rose Tampa 17.2% to $614 a month, Orlando 16.7% to $467 a month, Fort Lauderdale 16.2% to $611 a month, against 5.7% across the metros it tracked (Redfin).

Buyers price that in: Mortgage Professional America reported in January 2026, citing housing analyst Nick Gerli, that condo values in Florida fell 9.9% over the preceding twelve months (source). A home that costs more each month to keep and less to sell is the crisis in one sentence.

No public index records what an association charges, so HOA Spy cannot count the assessments. What it can count is what happens when they go unpaid — the liens and foreclosure suits above.

Every suit an association files or defends is paid for out of the dues — and the cost of a suit an owner wins is still passed back to the owners. 48,999 court records name a Florida association, from 13,601 communities. The association is the plaintiff in 29,947 of them and the defendant in 14,113; when it is sued, the most common suit is Appellate (4,380). 92 communities have fifty or more cases each — litigation as a matter of routine. The ten busiest communities account for 2% of all the records. Among the 24,664 closed cases with both dates on the docket, half took more than 223 days.

An association is a corporation, and a corporation that is dissolved, delinquent or not in good standing with the state cannot reliably insure the property, keep its reserves, sign a contract or answer a lender's questionnaire — which is enough to stall every sale in the community. Of the 104,659 Florida associations checked against the state's corporate registry, 3,753 have no active corporation on file and 2,908 are delinquent in their registration — 6% in all.

Corporate status as the registry records it: active (51,981).

The county is the community's own, from its registration or ZIP. Court records are counted only in the courts HOA Spy indexes and liens only in the recorder indexes it collects, so a county whose portal is not read shows few or none.

Florida associations bring more foreclosure suits against their members than those of any other state on HOA Spy. 10,296 of the 14,168 on file (73%); Texas is next with 2,349.

These are counts of records on file, not rates. Florida has 104,659 indexed associations — more than any other state — and its county courts publish deep case histories, so it counts more. Per hundred communities, Florida has 47 court records; Maryland has 603 and Texas has 231. A state whose courts hide older cases ranks lower whatever its associations do.

Foreclosure cases are the dockets whose nature of suit is a foreclosure, in the courts HOA Spy indexes; the association's side is the role the court recorded, else the caption. Corporate standing is the state registry's as last checked. A community outside the indexed courts can have records this page does not count; names are matched conservatively, so an ambiguous match is left out rather than guessed. Sources & methodology.