State Compliance
Florida is the state where reconciliation failures carry case numbers. Every rule below is paired with an actual FREC disciplinary outcome — fines, suspensions, and one revoked license.
Updated 2026-08-05 · TrustRecon research team
Florida property managers holding client money answer to two bodies of law: Chapter 475 and the FREC escrow rules in 61J2-14 (account setup, deposit deadlines, monthly reconciliation), and Florida Statute 83.49 (security deposits — timelines, notices, and the conflicting-demand procedure). Florida stands out among the states we researched for how consistently its enforcement decisions come with dollar figures attached, which makes the cost of each rule unusually concrete.
Rent, security deposits, and advance fees must reach the escrow account within three business days of receipt. FREC Case #2007-006179 (Fort Lauderdale) shows the enforcement pattern for violating it: a broker cited for "failure to deposit funds into escrow and failure to deliver funds" received a 30-day suspension, a $1,000 fine, and an order to prove restitution.
The bookkeeping signature of this violation is a payment recorded in the PMS — tenant ledger credited, owner ledger credited — with no matching bank entry. The books balance internally; the bank is short. Only a three-way reconciliation that includes the bank leg catches it.
Florida is unusually generous here: Rule 61J2-14.010 allows a broker to keep up to $5,000 of personal or brokerage funds in a property management escrow account. Two things still get firms cited:
Every month, the broker must prepare a written reconciliation comparing the bank balance against the escrow ledger and an itemized list of the broker's total trust liability — every tenant deposit, every owner balance, line by line. The worksheet must be signed and dated by the broker. Lump-sum bookkeeping makes this list impossible to produce, which is itself the violation.
Skipping the reconciliation has a price list:
Florida is explicit about something most states leave implicit: if the escrow account holds more than total known trust liability, the broker must identify the cause of the overage on the reconciliation worksheet. Florida Realtors' escrow guidance quotes the rule directly: "If the overage is not a legitimate overage (deposit carried forward), the broker may be fined up to $500." Larger unexplained overages escalate to suspension.
An unexplained overage is rarely free money. It is an unrecorded tenant deposit, an owner reserve never booked, or a posting error — each of which is a liability the books don't know about yet. Our detection engine treats overage and shortage as the same class of finding for exactly this reason.
FS 83.49 sets the timelines every Florida property manager inherits:
From the trust side, the deposit must sit in the escrow account for the life of the tenancy. The register-vs-bank test in our audit checklist — total deposits held per the register compared against the escrow bank balance — is precisely how examiners find deposits that were recorded but spent.
This rule is unique to Florida and widely missed. When both the owner and the tenant claim the same deposit, the broker must notify FREC within 15 business days of receiving the second conflicting demand, and then resolve the dispute through one of the sanctioned procedures. Disbursing unilaterally — even to the party who seems right — converts a civil dispute into a trust violation.
The case that defines the downside: a broker holding a $15,000 deposit under conflicting demands neither returned it to a valid claimant nor produced records for FREC. Outcome: license revoked, $5,500 in fines plus costs. The clock starts on receipt of the second demand, and "we were still sorting it out" is not a defense the commission recognizes.
The broader list of items examiners request across states is in the 24-point audit checklist; Florida's paperwork requirements are the strictest of the seven states in our research because the worksheet itself — signed, itemized, annotated — is the compliance artifact.
If your firm runs on Buildium or AppFolio, the software will produce a bank reconciliation — but not the itemized liability list Rule 61J2-14.012(2) demands, and it will not notice a deposit that was recorded but never banked. That cross-check between your PMS, QuickBooks, and the bank is what our Buildium and AppFolio bookkeeping services do every month, and what the free audit does once, on your actual exports.
Upload three exports. Within 48 hours you get a discrepancy report with every finding tied to a record ID. Built from the same failure patterns state auditors look for.
For property management companies on Buildium or AppFolio. No call required.