No, Florida Did Not Pass a Law to Dissolve Your HOA: The Truth About HB 657
A rumor keeps circulating that as of July 1, 2026, Florida owners can vote to dissolve their HOA with a 20 percent petition. It is not true. Here is what HB 657 actually was, what happened to it, and what Florida law really allows.
If you own a home in a Florida HOA, you have probably seen the claim: as of July 1, 2026, homeowners can dissolve their association if 20 percent of owners sign a petition. It has been repeated across social media and a lot of quickly written summaries. It is not true, and acting on a law that does not exist can cost you real time and money.
Here is what actually happened.
What HB 657 was
HB 657, the Homeowners' Association Dissolution and Accountability Act, was filed in December 2025 by Representative Juan Carlos Porras of Miami, who had publicly called HOAs a failed experiment. The bill would have created something Florida has never had: a clear, court supervised process for terminating an HOA governed by Chapter 720 of the Florida Statutes.
As written, the process would have required a petition from a portion of the membership, a meeting held within 60 days, and approval of a termination plan by at least two thirds of all voting interests, followed by review in circuit court. Common property would have transferred to a termination trustee for orderly wind down. Board officers who obstructed the process, hid financial records, or used association funds to campaign against termination would have faced penalties of $5,000 per violation. The bill also proposed a specialized Community Association Court Program and would have removed the presuit mediation requirement for many disputes.
That is a real, structured dissolution path. The problem is that it never became law.
What actually happened to it
The Florida House passed HB 657 in early March 2026 by a lopsided 108 to 2 vote, which is where much of the confusion starts, because a 108 to 2 vote sounds final. It was not. The bill reached the Senate on the last day of the session and was referred to the Senate Rules committee, where it died on March 13, 2026 without ever receiving a hearing or a vote. When the session clock ran out, the bill ran out with it.
This is confirmed by the Florida Senate's own bill record and by Florida Realtors' official 2026 legislative report, which listed HB 657 among the measures that did not pass. There was no signing, no effective date, and no new dissolution process.
Why so many people got it wrong
The bill text said its provisions would take effect July 1, 2026 if enacted. Summaries lifted that date and the headline mechanics, the petition and the two thirds vote, and repeated them without the crucial detail that the bill died in committee. The July 1 date was always conditional on passage that never came. A few other 2026 housing bills that also died in committee, including a roof age insurance measure, got folded into the same confusion, which made the misinformation spread faster.
What Florida law actually allows right now
There is currently no clean, unified statutory process for dissolving an HOA under Chapter 720. What exists is a patchwork: your community's own governing documents, plus the general dissolution provisions of the Florida Not For Profit Corporation Act in Chapter 617. In practice, dissolving an HOA is difficult, and not only on paper. A community has shared property, master insurance policies, debts, private roads, and amenities that all have to be resolved, and a dissolution can change how a future lender evaluates the property under Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac project review rules.
In other words, even where a path exists, it is rarely simple, and the sweeping shortcut people are describing is not on the books.
Could it come back?
Possibly. The 108 to 2 House vote signaled strong support, and bills that die in one chamber are often refiled. A companion Senate bill filed earlier in a session would give a future version a better chance of clearing committee before the clock runs out. If this issue matters to you, the Senate is where it stalled, not the House. But today, in the summer of 2026, it is not law.
The real takeaway for buyers and owners
The lesson here is bigger than one bill. HOA law is changing quickly across the country, and headlines routinely run ahead of what actually passed. Do not budget, plan a purchase, or start a fight with your board based on a summary. Verify the current status of any law before you rely on it, and for anything with real money attached, a licensed Florida attorney is worth the consultation.
If you are researching a specific community, its fees, rules, financial posture, and what residents actually say tell you far more about your day to day future there than any pending bill. That is exactly what HOAReview.com is built to help you find.
Sources: the Florida Senate bill record for HB 657 (2026); reporting and legislative summaries from ClickOrlando, WFLA, News4Jax, and independent 2026 legislative recaps confirming HB 657 passed the House but died in the Senate Rules committee on March 13, 2026.