Florida landlord-tenant law for property owners and investors
Video Description
Real estate is a business in Florida and rental properties provide significant income to owners. This is a video by Board Certified expert business lawyer David Steinfeld on Florida landlord-tenant law for real estate investors and property owners.
In this video expert business lawyer David Steinfeld explains Florida landlord-tenant law and walks you through the key parts of an eviction. He also identifies the most common mistakes that property owners make in evictions and tells you how to avoid them. Attorney Steinfeld also addresses how you can even buy rental property or property to rent with liens or superior mortgages including through tax certificates and tax deed sales.
In this video expert business lawyer David Steinfeld explains Florida landlord-tenant law and walks you through the key parts of an eviction. He also identifies the most common mistakes that property owners make in evictions and tells you how to avoid them. Attorney Steinfeld also addresses how you can even buy rental property or property to rent with liens or superior mortgages including through tax certificates and tax deed sales.
Video Transcript
I'm Dave Steinfeld. The owner of the Law Office of David Steinfeld and an expert in Florida business litigation law. This is a video about Florida's landlord tenant laws for the real estate investor. Now. there's no legal advice in this video but for that you can contact me through DavidSteinfeld.com and while you're on that site please take a look at the other helpful videos and articles on Florida business law and other topics. Thanks for watching.
I'm next going to transition into the topic of Florida's landlord tenant law and what I'll call debt structuring which is kind of a broad made up term if you will for things like lease with an option to buy that type of investment. This area when we start talking about debt structuring, should you buy a property coming out of a short sale, should you buy tax certificates, this is very very specific to an individual circumstance. I can't give you legal advice through this presentation and I would be throwing darts at a dartboard with a blindfold if I tried to tell anyone of you go ahead and do this. I might as well just tell you what the bet on at the tables in Vegas.
I'm next going to transition into the topic of Florida's landlord tenant law and what I'll call debt structuring which is kind of a broad made up term if you will for things like lease with an option to buy that type of investment. This area when we start talking about debt structuring, should you buy a property coming out of a short sale, should you buy tax certificates, this is very very specific to an individual circumstance. I can't give you legal advice through this presentation and I would be throwing darts at a dartboard with a blindfold if I tried to tell anyone of you go ahead and do this. I might as well just tell you what the bet on at the tables in Vegas.
Landlord-tenant law overview
So this is really designed to tell you sort of the broader overview of the area so you can have some understanding of it. Florida's landlord-tenant act which is what I'm gonna first deal with before going to the what I’ll call the debt structuring, Florida’s landlord tenant act resides in one particular Chapter of Florida law, it's chapter 83. You can find it online, you can look it up. It's divided into subsections. One is residential, the other one they call non-residential which is commercial. It gives certain requirements of what has to be in leases and it outlines the duties of a landlord and a tenant. But most importantly what the landlord tenant statutes do is provide for a mechanism for eviction.
No self-help in Florida
There's no self-help in Florida. You don't have automatic evictions and you can't just tell a tenant if you buy a property with a tenant in it or you’re a real estate investor and you put a tenant in it you can't just tell them out you go. It has to go through the courts. There has to be due process. Part of that due process and the cornerstone to every eviction be it commercial or residential and even more so in the residential sense because you're taking someone out of their home is the notice.
The two eviction notices used in Florida
Florida law provides for two kinds of notice, there's a notice if there's a defect or failure of the payment, that's the three day notice. That's what you commonly deal with. Then there's a seven day notice. The seven day notice deals with defects in performance. If the tenant is supposed to perform some particular act, replacing the carpet or painting the walls or something and they don't, if that is a material provision of the lease that can be grounds for an eviction using that seven day notice. But again you want to have counsel reviewing your lease and make sure that you have very clear and unambiguous terms in the lease and that those provisions are fair and balanced and in accordance with Florida’s landlord tenant law.
Where property owners and property managers always make the greatest mistakes is in these notices. There are certain things that you can put in the notice, certain things you can't put in these eviction notices. The eviction notice as I said earlier is the cornerstone to an eviction. If you don't do the notice properly the court has no choice but to throw the eviction out. If there's an attorneys fee provision in your lease you may wind up paying the tenant’s attorney’s fees for the failed eviction and then you've got to start the whole thing all over again. So the best way to do it, the best way to conserve money in any of those matters is to consult with counsel and make sure that the notice whichever one you're using is correct and appropriate and done right under Florida law.
Where property owners and property managers always make the greatest mistakes is in these notices. There are certain things that you can put in the notice, certain things you can't put in these eviction notices. The eviction notice as I said earlier is the cornerstone to an eviction. If you don't do the notice properly the court has no choice but to throw the eviction out. If there's an attorneys fee provision in your lease you may wind up paying the tenant’s attorney’s fees for the failed eviction and then you've got to start the whole thing all over again. So the best way to do it, the best way to conserve money in any of those matters is to consult with counsel and make sure that the notice whichever one you're using is correct and appropriate and done right under Florida law.
Lease with an option to buy and tax certificates
Now as we move into the area of what I'll call sort of a self-invented term of debt structuring that encompasses all different unique little investment opportunities or vehicles. That encompass is short sales, that encompasses tax certificates, that encompasses leases with options to buy.
These areas get into very very factually specific scenarios of what's right for your situation. I can't stand up here and tell you that it's a good investment for you to buy tax certificates on a particular property. I can explain to you what the process is but that business decision of whether or not it's a good investment has to be made by you. And that's beyond the scope of what we could do in this presentation.
But just very briefly when you're talking about leases with options to buy, for example, if you're going to get involved something like that you have to be sure that the conditions of the lease are satisfied. Because if you fail to perform under the lease you can lose the option to buy. And if you're in a particularly good real estate market and the property is increasing in value and you've got a lease on a property with the option to buy you could wind up throwing away the opportunity to activate that option, purchase the property and flip it or sell it for a lot more because your lease could be say it's a multi-year lease your lease value for the property could start down here, the property value could increase overtime as the market improves, and you could wind up buying the property, activating that option at the conclusion at least, for the first initial price and you've got all that gain that you're working with. But if you don't perform the terms of the lease, then you could wind up losing that option. So you want to be careful that you do perform those properly.
These areas get into very very factually specific scenarios of what's right for your situation. I can't stand up here and tell you that it's a good investment for you to buy tax certificates on a particular property. I can explain to you what the process is but that business decision of whether or not it's a good investment has to be made by you. And that's beyond the scope of what we could do in this presentation.
But just very briefly when you're talking about leases with options to buy, for example, if you're going to get involved something like that you have to be sure that the conditions of the lease are satisfied. Because if you fail to perform under the lease you can lose the option to buy. And if you're in a particularly good real estate market and the property is increasing in value and you've got a lease on a property with the option to buy you could wind up throwing away the opportunity to activate that option, purchase the property and flip it or sell it for a lot more because your lease could be say it's a multi-year lease your lease value for the property could start down here, the property value could increase overtime as the market improves, and you could wind up buying the property, activating that option at the conclusion at least, for the first initial price and you've got all that gain that you're working with. But if you don't perform the terms of the lease, then you could wind up losing that option. So you want to be careful that you do perform those properly.
