Mizner Village at Heron Bay: HOA rules, fees and closing points

The association's estoppel certificate, in recordable form, before the sale closes, and a clear answer on who collects the master's assessments.

• No sale until the estoppel certificate is received. "No Owner, other than Declarant, may sell or convey his interest in any Site unless all sums due the Association are paid in full and an estoppel certificate in recordable form to such effect shall have been received by the Owner." If everything is paid, the association must deliver it within ten (10) days of a written request, and it may charge "a reasonable sum" for it (Declaration Art. XI.P, pp. 20–21). Unlike Villa Sorrento, the declaration does not say a sale without it is void, does not treat the association's silence as approval, and sets no fee cap. Chapter 720's estoppel statute has its own deadline and fee limits (Fla. Stat. § 720.30851; see HOA approvals and estoppels).
• Who collects the master's assessments. The declaration makes the Mizner Village association "responsible for collecting assessments on a prepaid annual basis from all Owners and submitting to the Community Association a check for same" (Art. II.B, p. 4). Ask both estoppels how the master's assessments on the Site are billed, so the amount is neither paid twice nor missed. The master's resale Capital Payment applies as usual (master page).
• No resale contribution. The Working Capital Contribution, two months' share of Operating Expenses, is owed only by "Each Owner who purchases a Site from Declarant" (Art. V.E, p. 8).
• The Declarant's documents. The seller must hand the buyer "the documents originally received from Declarant" (Art. XI.P, p. 21).
• The buyer's own insurance on the home. The association insures only its own improvements on the Recreation Property and Common Areas (Art. VII.A, p. 9).

Yes. The declaration requires no approval and sets no minimum term or yearly cap. A lease must be of the whole Home, must let the association terminate it if the tenant defaults, and is subordinate to the association's lien (Declaration Art. X.E, p. 14).

The master's rules apply on top: one lease in any 12 months, tenants registered before they move in (master page).

These terms are in the 1997 declaration, and no amendment is in our set. A rental amendment adopted after 1 July 2021 would generally bind only owners who take title after it or consent to it (Fla. Stat. § 720.306(1)(h)). The exception is an amendment that limits leases shorter than six months, or bars more than three rentals in a calendar year; it binds every owner. After turnover an amendment takes two-thirds of the Site Owners (a later sentence says a majority) and a Board majority (Art. XI.I, pp. 18–19). For an investor buyer we search forward from 1997 first.

The association keeps up the shared land; the owner keeps up the home and yard, and the association's insurance does not cover the home.

• The association repairs, maintains and replaces the improvements on the Recreation Property, initially "a passive park" (Art. II.D, p. 4), and on the Common Areas (Art. IX.A, pp. 11–12). The Common Areas include the private roadways, walkways, primary access road, perimeter walls and fences, cluster mailboxes, sprinkler systems, street lights and lakes — Tracts A–E of the plat exemption drawings (Art. I.H, p. 2) — and "all Landscaping and Pedestrian Areas, if any", kept to the City of Coral Springs' code standard, which the City may enforce and charge to owners pro rata (Art. IX.D, p. 13).
• The owner. The declaration has no express clause putting roofs or walls on the owner, but it assumes the owner maintains his "Home or Site, including the yard and landscaping": if he does not, the association may do the work after five (5) days' written notice and charge the cost plus a $25.00 administrative charge, secured by its lien (Art. IX.B, p. 12).
• Party walls. Each wall or fence built on a dividing line is a party wall. Each owner owns the part on his Site, the owners who use it share repair costs equally, and an owner whose negligence exposes it bears the whole cost; disputes go to three arbitrators (Art. IX.C, p. 12).
• Easements between homes cover roof overhang, the strip "between the property line of the site and the adjoining zero lot line wall of the adjoining dwelling", and entry on the neighbor's yard to build, maintain and repair the walls on the common line (Art. VIII.B.6, .10, .11, p. 11).
• Insurance. The association carries property insurance on its own improvements on the Recreation Property and Common Areas, and liability cover of at least $1,000,000 (Art. VII.A–B, p. 9). Nothing in the declaration insures the homes.

• The school impact lien. The Heron Bay Four plat was recorded on 21 December 1995 with an Educational Impact Lien Agreement between Broward County and WCI (OR 24291/831, Instr 95564740). It imposes a County lien on all the plat's land for the school impact fees WCI agreed to pay before each home's building permit, allocating $169,356.00 to Parcel E and nothing to Parcel K, though Parcel K lies within the land it liens; the lien runs with the land and binds WCI's grantees, and mortgages are subordinate to it (¶¶ 1–2, pp. 1–2). It is released by a County satisfaction recorded when it is paid, or by a partial release the County may grant (¶ 2(d), p. 3). No satisfaction or release is in our set. The title search should turn up the County's release; if it does not, it goes to underwriting (master page).
• The 1996 deed at OR 25112/693 should be pulled. WCI sold other Heron Bay Three and Heron Bay Four parcels to builders by deeds carrying its own Declaration of Neighborhood Covenants as Exhibit "1" (Instr 96004140, for L'Hermitage; Instr 96317865, for The Pointe). Supplement No. 3 was recorded on 9 July 1996 at OR 25112/676 and an Ocean Bank mortgage the same day at OR 25112/708. For the common parcel and Parcel K, the Property Appraiser cites a multi-parcel warranty deed dated 1 June 1996 at OR 25112/693, between those two. The record names no grantor, and we have not read the deed, which may carry WCI covenants, with their own term and charges, that this page cannot report.
• Sites, not lots. The Sites and Common Area Tracts A–E are drawn on a City plat exemption (Art. I.H, I.T, pp. 2–3). Neither it nor the approved site plan is in our set, and neither is a deed of the Common Areas or Recreation Property to the association; the Property Appraiser's record shows no such deed. That record describes every home as a portion of Parcel E, numbered as Lots 1–56, so check the Site's metes-and-bounds description against Parcel E. Parcel K is a 0.61-acre buffer that the Property Appraiser records as the master association's, citing a warranty deed dated 28 May 1999 (OR 34434/615, recorded about 2003), which we have not read.
• The declaration's lien needs a recorded statement; the buyer's liability does not. The lien "shall be effective only from and after the time of the recordation … of a written, acknowledged statement by the Association" (Art. IV.B, p. 6). Chapter 720 makes an association's lien relate back to the recording of the original declaration, except against a first mortgage of record, where it runs from the recorded claim of lien (Fla. Stat. § 720.3085(1)). We ask underwriting how that sits with the declaration's clause. A late payment carries a Ten Dollar ($10.00) charge per installment after fifteen (15) days, and interest (Art. IV.C, p. 6). A Chapter 720 buyer is still jointly and severally liable for the seller's unpaid assessments (§ 720.3085(2)(b)), so the estoppel is what protects the buyer.
• Lien priority and bank-owned resales. The association's lien is subordinate "to real property tax liens and the lien of any first mortgage" (Art. IV.G, p. 7), and "A lien filed by the Community Association shall be superior to a lien filed by the Association" (Art. IV.B, p. 6). An Institutional Mortgagee taking title by foreclosure or deed in lieu is not liable for earlier assessments unless a claim of lien was recorded before its mortgage (Art. IV.B). Chapter 720 caps what a first mortgagee owes when it takes title by foreclosure or deed in lieu (§ 720.3085(2)(c)). The cap is the lesser of the unpaid common expenses and regular periodic or special assessments that came due in the 12 months before it took title, or 1% of the original mortgage debt. It applies "only if the first mortgagee filed suit against the parcel owner and initially joined the association as a defendant". Joinder is excused if the association was dissolved or had no office or agent the lender could find. Which rule governs a particular sale is for underwriting.
• Execution. The association joined the declaration, and its directors signed the by-laws, on 31 July 1997, four days before its articles were filed on 4 August 1997 (pp. 21, 24, 36). Its signature block leaves out "at Heron Bay" (p. 21); the declaration calls the Declarant "a Florida corporation" in one definition, though it is a limited partnership (Art. I.M, p. 2); and the notary was also a subscribing witness. Whether any of this matters is a question for underwriting.
• Ocean Bank's mortgage. Ocean Bank consented to the declaration and subordinated its mortgage to it (p. 22). The mortgage (OR 25112/708), its UCC filing (OR 25112/719) and a related assignment (OR 25112/721) are not in our set; confirm they have been released.
• Term and preservation. The declaration runs fifty (50) years from recording, then renews for ten-year periods unless, at least one year before a term ends, owners of two-thirds of the Sites and Institutional Mortgagees holding two-thirds of the first mortgages record an instrument to end it (Art. XI.K, p. 19). Counted from its stamp, it turns 30 on 6 September 2027. That is only the earliest date a Site could lose the covenants. Chapter 712's 30 years run from each Site's root of title, the most recent title transaction recorded at least 30 years before marketability is determined (Fla. Stat. § 712.01; § 712.04). A § 712.05 notice preserves the covenants. So does an amendment indexed under the association's legal name that cites the declaration's recording information (§ 712.05(2)(b)), or a deed in the Site's chain citing it by book and page or instrument number (§ 712.03(1)). No notice for Mizner Village is in our set, and the master's 2024 notice lists no Neighborhood declaration.
• Drafting slips that are harmless on their face: the drainage easement names "the South Broward Drainage District" (Art. VIII.B.7, p. 11), though Heron Bay is in the North Springs Improvement District, and Art. IX.B refers to the lien in "Article V" (it is Article IV).
• Not in our set: any turnover instrument, the "Heron Bay Residential Neighborhoods Site Development and Architectural Guidelines" the declaration cites (Art. IX.A, p. 12), which are unrecorded, and anything recorded for Mizner Village after the declaration.