Most Florida home shoppers now meet a homeowners or condominium association before they meet a seller. Realtor.com research reported by iHeartMedia's BIG 105.9 (March 12, 2026) found about 64% of Florida listings in 2025 carried an HOA fee, against about 44% nationally, and the national median fee for listings with dues was $135 a month (Realtor.com, January 27, 2026, as reported by News4JAX on July 23, 2026). The pressure is now political too: on October 14, 2026, Hoodline reported on a West Palm Beach panel convened by U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel on rising HOA fees and condo assessments.
National medians do not help much when you are comparing a Duval subdivision to a Palm Beach condo. So we went to our own MLS records. This article shows what association fees actually run in each Florida county, how condo dues differ from HOA dues, and the number most buyers never calculate: how much house a monthly fee quietly costs you at today's mortgage rates.
How we measured Florida HOA fees
Momentum Realty's community fee file is built from the AssociationFee and AssociationFeeFrequency fields in MLS listing records across our Florida feeds. Every fee is normalized to a monthly amount (a $900 quarterly fee becomes $300 a month), and each community gets the median of its own listings. The file used here was refreshed on October 24, 2026.
For this article we kept only communities with at least three listing records reporting a fee greater than zero, which leaves 10,116 Florida communities built from 92,961 listing records. Two limits matter. First, these are communities that charge a fee; homes with no association are not in the medians (our analysis of no-HOA listings covers that side). Second, the figures are regular dues only. Special assessments and Community Development District (CDD) bond assessments are billed separately and are not included. MLS data is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
The statewide picture: $265 a month, with a long tail
Across those communities, the median association fee is $265 a month. The middle half of communities sit between $84 and $562. That spread is the story: 28% of fee-charging communities charge under $100 a month, while 29% charge $500 or more and 9% charge $1,000 or more.
The single biggest driver is whether the association is a condominium. Condo associations carry the building itself: roofs, elevators, structural reserves and, increasingly, the master insurance policy. HOAs in single-family subdivisions mostly carry common areas.
| Association type | Communities | Median fee / mo | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Condominium | 1,643 | $685 | $492 to $1,049 |
| HOA and other (non-condo) | 8,473 | $200 | $68 to $437 |
| All fee-charging communities | 10,116 | $265 | $84 to $562 |
A condo median of $685 against an HOA median of $200 means the same monthly budget buys very different things. A condo owner's fee often replaces part of what a house owner pays separately for exterior insurance and maintenance, so the fee is not pure overhead. But it is a fixed monthly obligation that rises with the association's insurance and reserve costs, and the owner does not control it.
HOA fees by Florida county
The table below covers every Florida county with at least 25 fee-charging communities in our file, sorted by median monthly fee. "Middle half" is the 25th to 75th percentile of community medians. The last column converts the county's median fee into its mortgage equivalent, explained in the next section.
| County | Communities | Median fee / mo | Middle half | Share $500+ | Mortgage equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade | 1,053 | $698 | $350 to $1,296 | 63% | $101,611 |
| Broward | 770 | $550 | $291 to $818 | 54% | $80,066 |
| Palm Beach | 1,226 | $547 | $368 to $796 | 58% | $79,630 |
| St. Lucie | 208 | $431 | $251 to $524 | 29% | $62,743 |
| Bay | 164 | $428 | $113 to $893 | 46% | $62,233 |
| Pinellas | 677 | $420 | $170 to $681 | 43% | $61,142 |
| Lee | 331 | $363 | $218 to $531 | 27% | $52,844 |
| Volusia | 198 | $362 | $86 to $740 | 38% | $52,771 |
| Collier | 252 | $349 | $168 to $641 | 35% | $50,806 |
| Martin | 128 | $339 | $199 to $578 | 35% | $49,350 |
| Sarasota | 159 | $273 | $114 to $437 | 20% | $39,742 |
| Manatee | 61 | $180 | $76 to $332 | 10% | $26,204 |
| Brevard | 458 | $150 | $55 to $485 | 24% | $21,836 |
| Orange | 928 | $146 | $58 to $292 | 8% | $21,327 |
| Osceola | 398 | $131 | $76 to $305 | 10% | $19,070 |
| Seminole | 333 | $130 | $62 to $258 | 4% | $18,925 |
| Hillsborough | 654 | $130 | $50 to $334 | 11% | $18,925 |
| St. Johns | 228 | $120 | $65 to $254 | 13% | $17,542 |
| Alachua | 140 | $112 | $47 to $290 | 1% | $16,232 |
| Marion | 37 | $110 | $48 to $187 | 0% | $16,013 |
| Pasco | 374 | $100 | $42 to $232 | 4% | $14,558 |
| Lake | 427 | $100 | $48 to $180 | 2% | $14,558 |
| Nassau | 53 | $76 | $39 to $205 | 8% | $11,064 |
| Hernando | 62 | $68 | $25 to $121 | 3% | $9,972 |
| Duval | 406 | $66 | $31 to $271 | 8% | $9,535 |
| Polk | 25 | $50 | $32 to $91 | 0% | $7,279 |
| Clay | 106 | $45 | $16 to $132 | 1% | $6,551 |
| Santa Rosa | 100 | $29 | $16 to $50 | 3% | $4,222 |
| Escambia | 98 | $28 | $17 to $78 | 6% | $4,149 |
The pattern is geographic and structural rather than about price alone. Southeast Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach) leads because a large share of its association housing is high-rise and mid-rise condominium stock. Bay County ranks high because coastal condominiums make up a large share of its fee-charging communities. At the other end, Escambia, Santa Rosa, Clay and Duval medians are low because their association housing is mostly single-family subdivisions with modest common areas. St. Johns sits in between: higher median prices than Duval, with amenity-heavy master-planned communities pushing its median to $120.
For community-level detail, our county league tables rank every community we track: see Miami-Dade HOA fees by community, Palm Beach, Broward and Pinellas, or the Jacksonville HOA and CDD database for Duval.
What an HOA fee costs you in buying power
Lenders count association dues in your debt-to-income ratio exactly like your mortgage payment. That means every dollar of monthly dues is a dollar of payment you cannot spend on principal and interest. To put that in house terms, we converted fees into the loan amount the same monthly payment would carry on a 30-year fixed mortgage at 7.32%, the Freddie Mac weekly average for October 22, 2026.
| Monthly association fee | Same payment as this much mortgage |
|---|---|
| $50 | $7,279 |
| $100 | $14,558 |
| $250 | $36,394 |
| $500 | $72,788 |
| $750 | $109,181 |
| $1,000 | $145,575 |
| $1,500 | $218,363 |
At that rate, each $100 a month of dues uses the same payment as about $14,558 of mortgage. The statewide median fee of $265 is the payment on roughly $38,577 of loan. The Miami-Dade median of $698 is the payment on roughly $101,611. Put another way: a buyer approved for a fixed monthly payment who chooses a condo with $700 dues instead of a house with $65 dues gives up close to $92,000 of purchase price, before insurance and taxes are counted.
This does not make association housing a bad buy. The fee may cover insurance, water, cable, exterior maintenance or amenities you would otherwise pay for. It does mean you should compare homes on their total monthly cost, not on price. Our true cost of ownership calculator puts tax, insurance and dues side by side, and the Florida home affordability calculator shows what your income supports.
Northeast Florida close-up
Northeast Florida is one of the lower-fee regions in the state on regular dues, which surprises buyers relocating from South Florida:
- Duval: median $66 a month across 406 fee-charging communities; 8% charge $500 or more, mostly oceanfront and riverfront condominiums.
- St. Johns: median $120 across 228 communities; 13% charge $500 or more.
- Nassau: median $76 across 53 communities.
- Clay: median $45 across 106 communities; only 1% charge $500 or more.
The catch in Northeast Florida is not the HOA line, it is the second line on the tax bill. Many newer master-planned communities in St. Johns, Clay, Nassau and outer Duval sit inside a CDD that repays infrastructure bonds through a non-ad valorem assessment, often more than the HOA fee itself. Read how CDD fees work in Florida new construction and run the numbers in the CDD carrying cost calculator. For St. Johns communities, the St. Augustine HOA and CDD database lists both fees where we have them.
What the monthly fee does not tell you
A low fee is not automatically a cheap association. Three costs sit outside the number in the listing:
- Special assessments. When reserves fall short, the association bills owners directly. After the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida added condo inspection and reserve requirements, and the Hoodline report of October 14, 2026 links those reforms to higher owner costs. Before buying a condo, ask for the budget, the most recent reserve study and any milestone inspection report, and check the building with our condo assessment risk checker.
- Fee growth. Hoodline, citing a Yahoo Finance report on Redfin data, reported a median 6% rise in HOA dues across 43 U.S. metros in the three months ending July 31, with West Palm Beach condo fees up 12.8%. Insurance and reserve costs drive most of it.
- CDD assessments. As above, billed on the property tax bill rather than by the HOA, and not counted in any HOA fee figure.
Association costs you will see at closing
Associations also show up on the settlement statement. The estoppel certificate, which confirms what the seller owes the association, is capped under Florida Statutes 718.116 (condominiums) and 720.30851 (HOAs). After the Department of Business and Professional Regulation's 2022 inflation adjustment (National Law Review, September 16, 2022), the caps are $299 for standard delivery, an additional $119 for delivery within three business days, and up to $179 more if the account is delinquent. The caps are adjusted every five years. Your purchase contract decides whether buyer or seller pays it.
Buyers commonly also pay their prorated share of the current period's dues, an application or transfer fee, and in many communities a one-time capital contribution set by the governing documents. Our Florida buyer closing costs calculator now has an optional association section that adds these lines to your cash-to-close estimate and shows what your dues mean in mortgage terms.
How to check a specific community's fee
- Start with the listing's association fee and frequency, then confirm the figure with the association or management company; listing fields can be stale.
- Ask whether the fee includes insurance, water, cable or exterior maintenance, so you compare like with like.
- Request the current budget, reserve study and the last 12 months of board minutes; look for any special assessment that has been discussed or approved.
- Check the property tax bill for a CDD or other non-ad valorem line.
- Convert the total into a monthly figure and add it to principal, interest, tax and insurance before you decide what you can pay.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average HOA fee in Florida?
Across 10,116 Florida communities that charge an association fee in our MLS records (October 24, 2026), the median is $265 a month, with the middle half between $84 and $562. Condominium associations run much higher, at a median of $685, than single-family HOAs at $200.
Which Florida counties have the highest HOA fees?
Among counties with at least 25 fee-charging communities in our data, Miami-Dade has the highest median at $698 a month, followed by Broward ($550) and Palm Beach ($547). The high medians reflect large shares of condominium housing.
Which Florida counties have the lowest HOA fees?
Escambia ($28), Santa Rosa ($29), Clay ($45), Polk ($50) and Duval ($66) have the lowest medians among counties with at least 25 fee-charging communities in our data, because most of their association housing is single-family subdivisions.
Do HOA fees count when I apply for a mortgage?
Yes. Lenders include association dues in your monthly housing expense and debt-to-income ratio. At the 7.32% Freddie Mac average for October 22, 2026, each $100 a month of dues uses the same payment as about $14,558 of mortgage on a 30-year fixed loan.
Is a CDD fee the same as an HOA fee?
No. A Community Development District is a local special district that repays infrastructure bonds and maintains some facilities, and its assessment appears on your property tax bill. An HOA fee is billed by the association. Many newer Florida communities have both, and the HOA figures in this article do not include CDD assessments.
How much is an estoppel certificate in Florida?
Florida law caps the fee. After the 2022 inflation adjustment the cap is $299 for standard delivery, plus up to $119 for delivery within three business days and up to $179 if the account is delinquent. The purchase contract decides whether buyer or seller pays it.
The takeaway
Florida association fees range from a few dollars a month in a subdivision with a retention pond to well over $1,000 in an older oceanfront condominium. The county you shop in, and whether you buy a condo or a house, matter more than the statewide average. At a 7.32% mortgage rate, every $100 of monthly dues is roughly $14,558 of house you are not buying, so put the fee into the payment, not beside it.
Sources
- Momentum Realty community fee file: MLS AssociationFee and AssociationFeeFrequency fields, community medians normalized to monthly, refreshed October 24, 2026. Communities joined to counties through our community index. Deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
- Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed average of 7.32% for the week of October 22, 2026, as listed by Mortgage News Daily, read October 25, 2026.
- News4JAX, "HOA dues rise nationwide; Northeast Florida homeowners feel the squeeze," July 23, 2026 (citing Realtor.com, January 27, 2026): news4jax.com
- BIG 105.9 (iHeartMedia), "Florida HOA Fees Rising As Most Homes Now Include Monthly Dues," March 12, 2026 (citing Realtor.com): big1059.iheart.com
- Hoodline, report on a West Palm Beach panel on HOA fees and condo assessments, October 14, 2026 (citing WPTV, Yahoo Finance and Redfin): hoodline.com
- National Law Review, "Increase in the Fees Charged for Estoppel Certificates," September 16, 2022: natlawreview.com
How this article was prepared: county figures are medians of community-level medians from our MLS fee file, limited to communities with at least three listing records reporting a fee. They describe association dues, not any specific property, and they exclude special and CDD assessments. Mortgage equivalents are arithmetic at one published average rate and are not a loan offer or a prediction of your rate. Nothing here is legal, tax or lending advice. Figures are deemed reliable but not guaranteed.