For buyers, agents and transaction coordinators
The document-review window: when the clock starts, and how little of it there is
Florida gives a condominium buyer a defined period to read the association’s documents and get out of the contract. It is short, it is counted in a specific way, and almost everyone spends the first part of it waiting for the packet to arrive rather than reading it.
The short version
On a resale, F.S. §718.503(2) makes the contract voidable by the buyer for 3 days — excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays — running from the later of the date the buyer executes the contract and the date the buyer receives the documents the seller is required to deliver. On a purchase from a developer, §718.503(1) provides a longer period. Which one applies to you depends on who you are buying from.
What starts the clock
Receipt of the documents, not the request for them. That distinction is the whole practical point of the provision: a seller who delivers late has not shortened your window, they have moved it. The corollary is that you need a defensible record of the date the packet was actually received — the delivery email, the portal timestamp, the courier receipt. “Sometime that week” is not a date you can count from.
If the packet arrives incomplete, the sensible position is that the clock has not properly started on the missing items — but that is an argument, not a certainty, and it is the point at which to involve your attorney rather than to assume.
How the days are counted
Packet received: Thursday.
Saturday and Sunday do not count. Legal holidays do not count.
So the three business days are Friday, Monday and Tuesday — a window that looks like five calendar days on a calendar and like one working afternoon in practice, because the packet is usually several hundred pages and the reader usually has a job.
This is the honest case for having something read the packet the day it lands. Not because software is a better lawyer, but because the constraint is calendar time, and a first pass that tells you which four pages matter is worth more inside a three-day window than a perfect one delivered on day six.
What the window does not do
- It is not a general inspection contingency. It is tied to the association documents, not to the condition of the unit.
- It does not extend itself because you were busy, and it does not pause while you wait for an estoppel that was ordered late. The estoppel validity window runs on its own separate clock.
- It is not self-executing. Cancelling is an act — written notice, delivered the way the contract requires, inside the period. Deciding not to close is not the same thing as cancelling, and the difference is your deposit.
What to read first, if you only get one pass
- The estoppel — approved-but-not-yet-due special assessments, open violations, pending litigation.
- The reserve study and the current budget — whether the building is funding what its own study says it needs. See SIRS and reserve funding.
- The last twelve months of board minutes — assessments are discussed there before they appear anywhere else.
- The milestone inspection report, if the building is one that requires one.
Inside the window right now?
The free detector takes the documents you already have and reports what it found, with each finding tied to the statute and to the page it came from — and states plainly which domains your packet did not let it evaluate.
Related
- Estoppel certificates and the 30/35-day validity window
- Worked example: the reserve arithmetic
- The Florida condo document checklist
This page describes the structure of F.S. §718.503 as an aid to reading your own contract. It is not legal advice and CondoRiskFL is not a law firm. Whether the window is open, when it started, and what a valid cancellation requires all depend on your specific contract and on statutory text that has been amended repeatedly since 2022 — confirm both with a Florida attorney before relying on either.