This post uses hypothetical scenarios for illustrative purposes only. It does not describe any actual client, transaction, or representation, and is not legal advice.
A common Florida deal pattern looks like this. The owner of a mobile home park — a few hundred rented lots, a clubhouse, a water plant, decades of steady lot rent — negotiates a sale to an out-of-state buyer who consolidates parks for a living. The price is agreed, the purchase agreement is signed, due diligence is humming along, and everyone is treating the deal as a straightforward sale of commercial real estate that happens to come with a rent roll. Then someone reads the rental agreements, or the buyer’s title company raises it, and a question lands on the table that nobody priced into the timeline: did the seller give the homeowners’ association its statutory right of first refusal? Because in Florida, when you offer a mobile home park for sale, the residents — through their association — get a turn at buying it, and the statute that creates that right does not care that you already shook hands with someone else.
The statute hands the residents a seat at the table
Florida regulates the relationship between mobile home park owners and the residents who rent lots under Chapter 723, the Mobile Home Park Lot Tenancies law. Most of that chapter is about the lot tenancy — rent increases, the prospectus, eviction grounds, pass-through charges. But tucked inside it is Section 723.071, which governs the sale of the park itself. When the park owner offers the park for sale, the statute requires the owner to notify the officers of the homeowners’ association of the offer, stating the price and the terms and conditions of the sale. The residents, acting through the association, then have the right to purchase the park if they meet that price and those terms — provided the association is organized and qualified the way the statute contemplates.
This is a right of first refusal, not an option, and the distinction matters to how a seller should think about it. The owner is not forced to sell to the residents, and the statute is explicit that the owner has no obligation to interrupt or delay its other negotiations — the park owner remains free to execute a contract with an outside buyer. What the statute does is give the association a defined window to step into the same deal on the same terms. If the association does not execute a contract within the statutory window — generally 45 days from the mailing of the notice unless the parties agree otherwise — and the owner does not later drop the price below what was noticed, the owner’s obligation under that subsection is satisfied and the sale to the outside buyer can proceed.
Why this is a closing problem, not a footnote
The reason this belongs at the top of the checklist rather than buried in a representation is that the right of first refusal sits upstream of the transaction the parties actually want to close. Picture a sale where the seller, eager to keep the deal confidential, never sends the association notice and goes straight to signing with the consolidator. Two risks open up at once. First, the buyer’s counsel, doing real diligence, flags the missing notice as a defect in the seller’s ability to deliver clean title and performance — which becomes either a closing condition the seller now has to satisfy on the buyer’s clock or a reason the buyer can walk or renegotiate. Second, the residents, who often learn of a pending sale through the rumor mill in a park where everyone knows everyone, can assert that their statutory right was cut off, and a dispute over a 723.071 right is exactly the kind of overhang that freezes a financing and a closing.
The cleaner path is to treat the notice as the first move, not an afterthought. The seller sends the association the statutory notice with the price and terms, the 45-day window runs, and the seller documents either that the association declined or let the window lapse, or — if the residents do want to buy — pivots into negotiating with the association on the noticed terms. Either way the seller ends up with a clean record that the right was honored, which is precisely what an institutional buyer’s lawyer will demand to see before funding.
The terms you notice are the terms you are stuck with
There is a drafting trap inside the notice itself that sellers underrate. The right of first refusal is a right to match the price and the terms and conditions stated in the notice, so the notice effectively fixes the deal the residents get to take. Two consequences follow. First, if the seller later cuts the price below the noticed number to close with the outside buyer, the statute can require going back to the association, because the residents are entitled to the benefit of the lower price they were never offered — a renegotiation with the outside buyer can reopen the resident right the seller thought it had closed out. Second, the structure of the deal interacts with the notice. A sale of the entity that owns the park, rather than a sale of the park’s assets, raises the question of whether the transaction is an offer to sell “the park” that triggers the section at all, and how the terms get expressed to the association. The structure choice that drives so much of a Florida deal — the same asset-versus-stock decision that belongs at the letter-of-intent stage — carries straight into how, and whether, the 723.071 right is engaged. That is a question to answer deliberately at the front of the deal, not to back into after signing.
What a buyer should be diligencing
From the buyer’s side, the right of first refusal is a diligence item with real teeth, because a buyer that funds into a park where the resident right was not honored inherits the dispute. A buyer should confirm three things. First, that the seller sent a statutory notice stating the actual price and terms, and that the window has run or been validly waived. Second, that nothing in the deal’s evolution — a price reduction, a material change in terms — quietly reopened the right after the original notice. Third, that the association’s status and any prior dealings with it do not leave a live claim that the residents were shortchanged. This is the same instinct that runs through a disciplined Florida M&A diligence process: the buyer is not just valuing the rent roll, it is confirming that the seller can actually deliver the park free of a statutory right that could otherwise unwind the sale or hand the residents leverage after closing.
The takeaway
A Florida mobile home park is not an ordinary piece of commercial real estate, because Section 723.071 gives the residents, through their association, a statutory right of first refusal when the park is offered for sale. The right does not force a sale to the residents and does not require the owner to pause its other negotiations, but it does require a notice stating the real price and terms, it runs on a defined window of roughly 45 days, and it can reopen if the seller later cuts the price for an outside buyer. Send the notice early, document the result, watch how a price change or an entity-level structure interacts with the right, and — on the buy side — confirm the right was honored before you fund. Handle it as the opening move and it is a clean procedural step; ignore it and it becomes the thing that holds up your closing or hands the residents a claim after you have already wired the money.
Our Fernandina Beach office works with buyers and sellers of Florida mobile home parks and other Chapter 723 communities on the 723.071 notice mechanics, deal structure, and the diligence a Florida park acquisition requires.
If you are buying or selling a Florida mobile home park and want the right-of-first-refusal and notice mechanics handled before you sign, feel free to reach out to my firm manager, Magda, at Magda@montague.law, or fill out our contact form. Mention you read this post.
