Property management in Miami: what each license actually covers

An owner who lives somewhere else hires one person and assumes that person handles everything. Florida does not work that way. Letting your property to a tenant for compensation is a real estate brokerage act under Chapter 475. Running the association that governs the building is a separate license under Chapter 468, with a separate regulator. And the person in the lobby who arranges rentals may hold neither, because there is an exemption written for exactly that role. Three different legal positions, three different sets of protection, and a management agreement rarely says which one you are buying.

Published September 9, 2026

This page is about the legal shape of property management in Florida, because that is the part that decides what recourse you have when something goes wrong, and it is the part no management brochure describes. Everything below is Florida statute, cited, and it applies whether the property is a tower unit on Collins Avenue or a house on an island.

1. Letting your unit is a brokerage act, and that has consequences

Section 475.01(1)(a) defines a broker by what the person does. The list includes appraising, auctioning, selling, exchanging, buying and renting — and offering, attempting or agreeing to negotiate the sale, exchange, purchase or rental — of real property for another, for compensation. Letting your condominium is not adjacent to real estate practice. It is inside the definition.

A sales associate is defined as a person who performs any act in that broker definition, but performs it under the direction, control or management of another person. That is a structural point rather than a rank: the license itself is conditional on operating through a registered broker.

Stefania Riverin is a licensed Florida sales associate, license SL3620067, with NB Elite Realty, brokerage license CQ1050383. Every leasing engagement she takes is held by the brokerage, and funds move in the brokerage's name. That is not a policy choice on her part; it is what the license is.

2. Managing the association is a different license entirely

Community association management is governed by Chapter 468, Part VIII, and administered by the Regulatory Council of Community Association Managers. Section 468.432 states that a person may not manage, or hold herself or himself out to the public as being able to manage, a community association in Florida unless licensed by the department. The threshold in the definitions section captures associations with more than ten units or an annual budget of one hundred thousand dollars or more.

Section 468.431 lists what counts, and the list is worth reading as an owner because it explains why your manager cannot answer certain questions:

• Controlling or disbursing association funds, and preparing budgets and financial documents
• Assisting in noticing or conducting association meetings, and determining the statutory notice periods
• Calculating amounts due to the association, and collecting amounts owed before litigation
• Computing quorum requirements and voting thresholds
• Preparing assessment and estoppel certificates, and responding to requests for them
• Drafting notices, agendas and pre-arbitration demands
• Negotiating contract terms subject to approval, and coordinating maintenance and routine operations

Two exemptions sit inside that definition: a person performing only clerical functions under direct supervision, and a person doing solely maintenance work without participating in the management services listed. Section 468.432(1) also preserves the general principle that nothing in the part prohibits a person licensed under another Florida law from engaging in the profession for which she or he is licensed — which is the point rather than a loophole. A real estate license authorizes real estate brokerage. It does not authorize association management, and the reverse is equally true.

3. The exemption almost nobody is told about

Section 475.011 lists thirteen exemptions from the real estate licensing requirement. Two of them explain why the person handling rentals in a building may hold no real estate license at all.

Subsection (4) exempts any salaried employee of an owner, or of a registered broker for an owner, of an apartment community who works in an on-site rental office in a leasing capacity. Subsection (5) exempts any person employed for a salary as a manager of a condominium or cooperative apartment complex, where the rentals that person arranges are for periods no greater than one year. There is also a narrow exemption for an apartment property manager paying a finder's fee capped at fifty dollars per transaction.

None of that is improper. It is a deliberate legislative carve-out and it works well for its intended case. But it changes what you are dealing with. An unlicensed salaried manager is not subject to the Chapter 475 escrow rules, is not disciplinable by the Florida Real Estate Commission, and does not owe you the duties a licensee owes. If your property is the largest asset you hold in the state and you live in another country, that distinction is worth establishing before it is tested.

4. What the absentee luxury owner is actually exposed to

The management question looks like a service question and is mostly a risk question. Five things reach an owner who is not here, and four of them arrive by mail to an address the association has on file.

• The tenant is approved by the association, not by you. The board screens separately, sets the minimum lease term in the recorded declaration, and can cap how many times a year the unit turns over. A signed lease is not a completed letting. How the approval actually runs · and the Chapter 83 deadlines once a tenant is in
• Withholding on the rent. A non-resident owner is subject to thirty percent of gross rent by default, before the association fee and before the interest, unless the section 871(d) election is made. Managers withhold correctly and do not advise on the election. The election, and what it commits you to
• Assessments voted while you are away. Milestone inspection and structural reserve obligations produce special assessments that are decided at meetings, on notice periods set by statute. What a special assessment is and how it lands · The reserve study behind it
• The declaration governs the letting, not the listing. Minimum term, guest rules, and whether short-stay is permitted at all are recorded facts. City rules sit on top and the stricter governs. Where short-stay is actually permitted
• A house has no association to fall back on. On a single-family waterfront parcel the seawall, the dock permits and the flood elevation are yours alone, and several of them run on municipal clocks with daily penalties. The seven authorities

5. What to ask before you sign a management agreement

Take the agreement as a document rather than a formality. Eight questions settle most of it, and every one of them has a checkable answer:

• Which license does the person performing each function hold, and what is the number? Both are public and searchable at the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
• If the property will be let, which registered brokerage holds the engagement, and in whose name is rent received?
• Where is the security deposit held, and under which statute is it held?
• Who signs the lease — you, or the manager under a power of attorney, and if so, how wide is that power?
• What is the fee on renewal, and is a renewal treated as a new letting?
• Who submits the association's tenant application, and who pays the application and transfer fees?
• What is the notice period to terminate, and does terminating mid-lease leave the manager owed anything?
• What happens to tax withholding, and who files what? A manager withholding correctly is not the same as an owner whose position is correct.

What this page does not claim

It does not tell you that one arrangement is better than another, because that depends on the property, on whether you are here, and on what you want the asset to do. It does not rate management companies. And it does not blur the line between the two licenses, because the whole value of understanding this is knowing which one you are relying on for which obligation.

• Property tax on a unit you do not live in — the cost a management agreement never mentions
• Investing in a Miami condo — yield, carrying cost, letting rules and assessment risk
• The tenant's side of the same rules — useful to read before you set terms
• If you are Canadian — the withholding on a sale, the tax on rent, and how long each province lets you stay
• The condominium record — 46 towers from the Miami-Dade county record