Florida Residential Lease: Chapter 83 Landlord Guide

The law behind every Florida tenancy, and how to read this page

Part II of chapter 83, Florida Statutes, the Florida Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, is the operating system of every ordinary residential rental in the state: it decides what a lease must and may say, what each side owes the other while the tenancy runs, how tenancies end, and what happens when they end badly. For the Canadian who owns one rental unit, the chapter is unusually friendly terrain: one statute, statewide, with no municipal overlay to research, and a structure simple enough to hold in your head.

This guide is the map of that statute, written for the owner. It walks the lease itself, the obligations on both sides, the rent rules, and the four lawful ways a tenancy ends. Where a topic has its own deep guide on this site, this page places it and hands off rather than duplicating: the security deposit machinery of s. 83.49, the eviction process from notice to writ, the landlord insurance stack, and the tenant's-eye view of the same rules.

One scope line before anything else: chapter 83 Part II governs ordinary residential tenancies. A vacation rental hosting transient guests runs under different law entirely, chapter 509 licensing included; if your unit rents by the night, start with the short-term rental framework instead.

Since 2023, one rulebook: the state preemption

Until recently a Florida landlord had to ask what the county or city added on top of chapter 83: local notice ordinances, local application-fee rules, local everything. The 2023 legislature ended that.

Verified fact: section 83.425, Florida Statutes, enacted by HB 1417 (2023), preempts the regulation of residential tenancies and the landlord-tenant relationship to the state, expressly superseding local government regulation of matters under Part II, including tenant screening, security deposits, rental applications and their fees, the terms and conditions of rental agreements, disclosures, and the rights and responsibilities of the parties. Source: Florida Statutes s. 83.425, Online Sunshine, consulted June 9, 2026.

For a remote owner this is a genuine simplification: the rules on this page are the rules in Miami-Dade, Lee, and every county between. What survives locally is what was never landlord-tenant law to begin with: zoning, building codes, vacation rental registration where grandfathered, and the county's tax machinery.

The lease itself: form, duration, and what fills the gaps

Chapter 83 does not require a written lease. An oral month-to-month arrangement is legally a tenancy, with every statutory protection and obligation attached. But the statute is built as a gap-filler: where the parties wrote nothing, default rules apply, and the defaults are rarely what an absent owner would have chosen.

Duration is the cleanest example. Under s. 83.46, if the agreement says nothing about how long it lasts, the duration follows the rent period: rent paid monthly makes a month-to-month tenancy, weekly a week-to-week. Rent itself, absent agreement, is due at the beginning of each rent period, without demand or notice. Write the term, the due date, the grace mechanics, and the late fee into the lease and these defaults never matter; leave them out and the statute answers for you.

What the lease may not do is waive the statute's floor. Provisions that purport to strip the tenant's basic chapter 83 rights or the landlord's core duties are unenforceable, and a lease imported from another state or built from a generic template is where such clauses usually come from. The standard Florida instruments, and the clauses an absentee owner should insist on, e-mail notice consent under s. 83.505 first among them, are the subject of the practical sections below.

What you owe the tenant: s. 83.51

The landlord's maintenance duty has two layers, and which layer binds you depends on what you rent.

Verified fact: under s. 83.51(1), the landlord must at all times comply with applicable building, housing, and health codes or, where none apply, keep the roof, windows, doors, floors, steps, porches, exterior walls, foundations, and other structural components in good repair and the plumbing in reasonable working condition, and must ensure window screens are installed in reasonable condition at the start of the tenancy, with screen damage repaired once annually when necessary. For dwelling units other than a single-family home or duplex, s. 83.51(2) adds, unless otherwise agreed in writing, reasonable provisions for extermination (including bedbugs, with rent abated during any vacancy required, on 7 days' notice and capped at 4 days), locks and keys, clean and safe common areas, garbage removal, and functioning facilities for heat during winter, running water, and hot water. For a single-family home or duplex, the subsection (1) obligations may be altered or modified in writing, and the landlord must install working smoke detection devices at the start of the tenancy unless otherwise agreed. Source: Florida Statutes s. 83.51, consulted June 9, 2026.

Two readings matter for the Canadian owner. First, air conditioning is famously absent from the statutory list: in the hottest state in the union, AC is a creature of the lease and the market, not of chapter 83. Your lease should say who maintains it, because the statute will not. Second, the single-family and duplex carve-out is a real drafting tool: the maintenance allocation can be customized in writing for a house in a way it cannot for a condo unit in a multifamily building, and a good Florida lease for a house does exactly that, typically passing lawn, pool, and filter duties to the tenant explicitly.

Failure on these duties is not abstract: it feeds the tenant's rent-withholding defence in an eviction and the condition complaints that managers exist to prevent. The maintenance file your manager keeps is litigation insurance as much as property care.

What the tenant owes you: s. 83.52

The tenant's statutory duties mirror yours at a smaller scale: comply with the codes that address occupants, keep their part of the premises clean and sanitary, remove garbage, keep plumbing fixtures clean and in repair, operate the electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning facilities reasonably, and neither destroy nor damage the premises nor permit guests to. Source for the list: s. 83.52, consulted June 9, 2026, and it reads like every move-out dispute you will ever have, which is the point: the move-in and move-out inspection reports that drive the deposit process are, legally, evidence of s. 83.52 compliance or breach.

Material breach of these duties is what opens the 7-day notice machinery of s. 83.56, cure-able or not, documented in the eviction guide. The practical owner's translation: the statute gives you the standard, the lease gives you the specifics, and the photographs give you the proof.

The four lawful endings, and the 2023 change every Canadian should note

A Florida tenancy ends in one of four ways: it expires on its own written term; it is terminated for breach through the s. 83.56 notice machinery; it is a periodic tenancy ended by notice under s. 83.57; or it ends by surrender or abandonment. The first is clean calendar work, the second belongs to the eviction guide, and the third is where the law recently moved.

Verified fact: under s. 83.57 as amended by chapter 2023-314, Laws of Florida (HB 1417), a tenancy without a specific term is terminated by written notice of not less than 60 days before the end of any annual period for a year-to-year tenancy, not less than 30 days for quarter-to-quarter, not less than 30 days for month-to-month, and not less than 7 days for week-to-week. Source: Florida Statutes s. 83.57, Online Sunshine, consulted June 9, 2026.

The month-to-month figure is the one to memorize, because the internet is still full of the old answer: the notice was 15 days for decades, and 2023 doubled it to 30. A snowbird owner who wants the unit back for personal use in January must now have the notice delivered before the start of December's monthly period, not mid-December. The notice must be written and delivered in the manner s. 83.56(4) prescribes; an e-mail counts only with the lease's s. 83.505 consent.

Holdover is the fourth ending's evil twin: a tenant who stays past the term while you accept rent has typically become a month-to-month tenant on the old terms, now subject to the 30-day rule. Decide before the term ends whether you are renewing, converting, or recovering the unit, and paper the choice; drift is how owners discover the statute chose for them.

Entering your own property: s. 83.53

The unit is yours; the possession is the tenant's. Section 83.53 draws the line: the tenant may not unreasonably withhold consent for you to inspect, make repairs, supply agreed services, or show the unit to buyers, lenders, workers, or future tenants, and you may enter at any time to protect or preserve the premises in an emergency.

Verified fact: for repairs, s. 83.53(2) defines the landlord's right precisely: entry on reasonable notice, which the statute fixes at not less than 24 hours before entry, and at a reasonable time, defined as between 7:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Source: Florida Statutes s. 83.53, Online Sunshine, consulted June 9, 2026.

For a remote owner this section is delegation law: it is your manager and your contractors who will exercise these rights, and the 24-hour written notice, sent through the lease's e-mail channel, is the habit that keeps a routine repair from becoming a harassment claim. The January showing season for a unit listed for sale runs on the same consent standard; calendar it with the tenant rather than testing the word unreasonable.

The disclosures a Florida lease must carry

Chapter 83 travels with a small set of mandatory paperwork that generic templates routinely miss.

Radon first, because it surprises everyone: Florida law requires a radon notification, in the statute's exact words, on at least one document executed at or before the signing of any rental agreement. Verified fact: s. 404.056(5), Florida Statutes, prescribes the radon gas notification language that must appear on at least one document, form, or application executed at or prior to execution of a rental agreement for any building. Source: Florida Statutes s. 404.056(5), consulted June 9, 2026. The standard Florida lease forms carry it; a homemade lease usually does not.

Two more layers complete the stack. Federally, a building built before 1978 requires the EPA lead-based paint disclosure and pamphlet, the same obligation Canadian owners may know from U.S. closing paperwork. And the deposit disclosure of s. 83.49(2), where it applies, plus the fire protection disclosure for buildings over three storeys, ride with the lease documents. None of this is burdensome; all of it is checklist material, which is why it sits in the checklist below.

When someone breaches mid-term: both directions

The chapter's enforcement core, s. 83.56, runs in both directions, and an owner should know the tenant's side of it as well as their own. Your side is the eviction sequence: the 3-day notice for unpaid rent, the 7-day cure and no-cure notices for other breaches, then county court, all documented step by step in the eviction guide.

The tenant's mirror right: for your material noncompliance with s. 83.51, the tenant may deliver a 7-day written notice specifying the failure and terminate if it is not cured, and the rent-withholding defence of s. 83.60 attaches the same maintenance file to a possession case. The unit that goes unrepaired in February becomes the defence exhibit in April; the manager's work-order log is what cuts the story short. A tenant-side view of these rights, written for the other chair, is in the tenant rights guide, and reading it as an owner is cheap risk management.

The money rules, mapped

Chapter 83's financial architecture spreads across sections, and the practical owner needs the index more than the text. Rent timing and apportionment live in s. 83.46. The security deposit and advance rent, holding rules, the 15 and 30 day move-out calendar, and the forfeiture trap, live in s. 83.49 and have their own guide. Late fees are creatures of contract: the statute neither grants nor caps them, so the lease must define them, reasonably, and as additional rent if you want them to ride on a 3-day notice. Application fees are unregulated by the state and, since the preemption, cannot be regulated locally either. And the e-mail delivery option of s. 83.505, which modernizes every notice in this chapter, exists only where the lease contains the parties' consent and addresses, the single highest-value clause an absentee owner can add.

What Florida does not have deserves its own sentence: there is no rent control anywhere in the state, no provincial-style guideline increase, and no tribunal approving raises. At renewal you offer the rent the market bears; the tenant's protection is the right to decline and the 30 or 60 day notice rules above.

Chapter 83 against the regimes Canadians know

The pattern is consistent: Florida trades security of tenure for speed and contractual freedom. A Quebec owner used to leases that renew by right discovers a regime where the lease means what it says and ends when it says; the discipline that replaces tribunal protection is drafting.

Opinion: the best few hundred dollars a new Canadian landlord spends in Florida is a flat-fee review of the standard lease by a Florida landlord-tenant attorney, once, with the e-mail consent, late-fee, and single-family maintenance clauses adapted to the property. Every statutory advantage in this chapter assumes the lease invoked it; the generic template is how owners volunteer for the defaults.

A worked example: one lease year in Cape Coral, 2026-27

Marc-André, of Québec City, signs a 12-month lease on his Cape Coral house on August 1, 2026, at 2,500 USD per month: written lease on the Florida standard form, rent due the 1st, late fee defined as additional rent after a 3-day grace, s. 83.505 e-mail consent for both sides, smoke detectors installed and acknowledged, lawn and pool passed to the tenant in writing under the single-family carve-out, deposit and last month in the manager's escrow.

The year produces three statutory moments. In November, an AC failure: the lease, not the statute, makes the landlord responsible, and the manager's 48-hour repair closes it; had the lease been silent, the argument would have been about implied terms, in August heat. In February, a barking-dog complaint from the neighbour: a s. 83.56 7-day cure notice, documented by e-mail under the consent clause, cures it. In April, Marc-André decides to reclaim the house for the following winter: the lease simply expires July 31, 2027 by its written term, no notice statutorily required for a fixed term, though the lease's own 60-day non-renewal clause, mirroring the year-to-year statutory rhythm, is honoured on May 25. Typical range: the rents and repair turnarounds here reflect June 2026 Lee County conditions; the statutory mechanics are the statute's and do not vary by county.

Had the same tenant instead held over into August while the manager banked the August rent, the file would have silently become a month-to-month tenancy requiring 30 days' notice before any monthly period's end to terminate: one accepted payment, one changed legal regime.

Common mistakes

The recurring chapter 83 errors in Canadian-owner files are almost all contract hygiene.

• Using an out-of-state or generic lease. Unenforceable waivers, wrong notice mechanics, missing Florida-specific clauses: the template's savings are spent tenfold at the first dispute.
• Relying on the old 15-day rule. Month-to-month termination has required 30 days' notice since 2023. Old blog posts and old habits both fail here.
• Leaving the AC out of the lease. The statute does not assign it; in Florida, silence on the air conditioner is a drafting failure with a humidity bill.
• Skipping the s. 83.505 e-mail consent. Every notice in the chapter, deposit claims included, becomes deliverable same-day from Canada with one clause.
• Accepting rent past the term without deciding. Holdover plus accepted rent equals a periodic tenancy on the statute's terms, not yours.
• Treating the single-family carve-out as automatic. The s. 83.51 reallocation works only in writing; the verbal understanding about the pool maintains itself right up to the hearing.
• Assuming a local ordinance can help or hurt. Since s. 83.425, landlord-tenant rules are state rules; verify on the statute, not at city hall.

Lease-signing checklist for the remote owner

1. Use the current Florida standard residential lease form, reviewed once by a Florida attorney for your specifics.
2. Write the term, rent, due date, grace period, and late fee (as additional rent) explicitly.
3. Include the s. 83.505 e-mail consent with both parties' addresses.
4. Allocate maintenance explicitly; for a single-family home or duplex, use the written carve-out for lawn, pool, and filters, and assign the AC.
5. Confirm smoke detectors installed and acknowledged at move-in.
6. Name the deposit and advance rent amounts and the Florida escrow holding them, per the deposit guide.
7. Attach the move-in inspection report and photo set.
8. Diarize the term's end, minus 60 days, for the renew-or-recover decision.
9. File the signed lease with your manager, your attorney, and your own records in Canada.

Frequently asked questions

How much notice ends a month-to-month tenancy in Florida now?

Not less than 30 days' written notice before the end of any monthly period, from either side, since the 2023 amendment of s. 83.57. Year-to-year periodic tenancies require 60 days; week-to-week, 7 days.

Is an oral lease valid?

Yes, as a periodic tenancy with full statutory rights on both sides, and with every gap filled by defaults you did not choose. For an owner managing from Canada it is an unforced error: write it down.

Can I raise the rent as much as I want at renewal?

Florida has no rent control and the 2023 preemption bars local versions of it. The constraint is the market and the notice mechanics, not a cap. The tenant's remedy is to decline and leave.

Am I legally required to provide air conditioning?

Chapter 83 does not list it: the statutory facilities are heat in winter, running water, and hot water, for multifamily units. AC is governed by your lease and by the market reality that no Florida unit rents without it. Say in the lease who maintains and repairs it.

Can my lease make the tenant responsible for the lawn and pool?

For a single-family home or duplex, yes, in writing: s. 83.51 allows the maintenance obligations to be altered or modified for those properties. For a condo or other multifamily unit, the building's regime and the statute's list apply.

Do city or county landlord rules still apply to me?

Not on landlord-tenant matters: s. 83.425 preempts the field to the state, superseding local rules on screening, deposits, applications, and lease terms. Zoning, building codes, and tax obligations remain local as always.

What happens if my tenant stays after the lease ends?

If you accept rent, you generally have a month-to-month tenancy on the old terms, now ending only on 30 days' notice. If you do not, the holdover is dealt with through the eviction process, where chapter 83 provides for double rent for the holdover period in the statute's terms. Decide fast and in writing either way.