FLORIDA – Florida construction law is changing, cutting the amount of time homeowners have to file construction defect claims by 30%.

Beginning Monday, July 1, the time frame to report construction defects in the state of Florida will shift from 10 years to seven years.

The change in the law affects anyone who owns a home that was recently built, but it especially impacts homeowners in that 7-to-10-year time frame.

The News4JAX I-TEAM receives complaints regularly about construction defects in newer-built homes. Most recently, we heard from a Middleburg homeowner dealing with mold, humidity, and improper ventilation issues.

“It’s a brand-new house. It’s unacceptable,” homeowner Erin LePage said last year. “If we could have been here for our walkthrough, it would have been different.”

RELATED | ‘It’s unacceptable’: Middleburg homeowner says new build troubled with mold, humidity, ventilation issues

Brian Crevasse, a board-certified construction attorney, said this change will impact hundreds of thousands of people in Florida — if not more.

Senate Bill 360 was signed into law last summer changing the time limit from 10 years to seven years.

Crevasse said this is a real concern because he deals with clients who are often past the seven-year threshold when reporting construction defects.

“Oftentimes, these defects are actually concealed. And you wouldn’t be able to necessarily see that you have water intrusion, just by taking a walk around the building and looking at it, you would have to actually remove some of the exterior facade to look for the types of issues that we typically see,” Crevasse said.

The new law also changes when the countdown starts for filing claims. Previously, the time frame started when you got possession of your home or when construction was finished.

MORE | Worried about construction fraud? Here are some ways you can protect yourself

“If you are a homeowner or association that was built, you know, seven to 10 years ago, you know, you’re going to want to run out and get counsel as soon as possible to see if there’s a way to file by Monday. And then, for everybody else that may have homes that are four or five, six years old, you know, you’re just going to want to be extremely diligent about pursuing any potential issues that you might see with your home going forward so that you don’t run out of time at that seven years,” Crevasse said.

The new law starts the countdown from the earliest of the following events:

• When the building gets a temporary or permanent certificate of occupancy

• At the completion of the building

• At the abandonment of construction, even without completion

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, fla — The Better Business Bureau is warning consumers about unlicensed workers in Florida. Operating without a license is illegal in the state, and the BBB wants homeowners to know what to look out for.

“This is very important as we’re heading into hurricane season,” said Bryan Oglesby of the BBB.

He explained that this is an issue that follows a big storm or hurricane. Each year, the BBB hears from consumers whose homes were damaged by a storm.

“They receive that knock on the door. They had damage to the home, the person was there to help. They paid money up front and the person never came back to finish the job and that is what we want to warn consumers of,” Oglesby said.

He explained that those workers flock to Florida after a big storm. Some come for the business opportunity to make money fixing up homes. In other cases, some unlicensed workers will take the money and not come back to do the work.

“These are usually storm chasers, out of town companies that come in knocking on doors offering to do work,” Oglesby said.

He said hiring any unlicensed worker is a risk for the homeowner. In Florida, operating without the proper license is illegal. During a state of emergency, the crime is bumped up from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony.

Oglesby wants consumers to be proactive and get a list of trusted and licensed professionals together so you have it on hand.

“As opposed to reactive to the unlicensed guy that knocks on your door, the scammer that’s trying to take advantage of you when you’re in an emotional state,” Oglesby said.

The BBB has an online toolto help find licensed professionals in your area.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A well-connected group of Florida business leaders thinks its members can help fill a void that opened last year when lawmakers broke up the business-recruitment agency Enterprise Florida.

The Florida Council of 100 on Wednesday released a report about types of businesses and industries that different areas of the state should work to attract, while offering its more than 150 members to help link businesses with regional economic-development organizations.

The report — “Beyond Sunshine: Advancing Florida’s World Class Economy for the Next Generation” — breaks Florida into six major regions and three rural areas of opportunity. Different industries are identified for each region based on issues such as existing economic clusters.

Council of 100 President and CEO Mike Simas said council members can help drive private-sector activity as they travel globally.

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“We’re not going to be an economic development organization, ever,” Simas said. “Our role is to convene leaders from around the state, particularly private-sector thought leadership, to help solve public-sector problems.”

The group’s board includes people such as Todd Jones, executive chairman of Publix Super Markets; Joe York, president of Florida and gulf states for AT&T; former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, chairman of the Gunster law firm; and former state House Speaker Will Weatherford, managing partner of Weatherford Capital. The board’s chairman is former Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy.

“Cost issues and job growth are areas where our members are experts,” Simas said. “They’re running the businesses in these regions that are driving a lot of this growth. And really, our goal is to help coordinate with the regional economic development organizations who have been doing this work remarkably well for a long time.”

The report includes some overlap in proposing what different regions of the state should focus on for business recruitment or expansion. The overlap occurs in industries such as distribution and e-commerce, aviation and defense, health services and information technologies.

But the report also calls for an emphasis on specific clusters, such as biopharmaceutical fields in South Florida and semiconductor manufacturing in Central Florida.

Simas said the report was already underway before state lawmakers in 2023 dismantled Enterprise Florida, which as a private-public organization helped guide Florida’s economic development. Lawmakers made the decision after years of debate about state business incentives.

About 20 Enterprise Florida employees and more than 20 business-recruitment responsibilities were shifted to the Department of Commerce. The agency’s overseas operations were revamped under the banner of the new non-profit Select Florida.

In a Council of 100 news release that accompanied the new report, Florida Department of Commerce Secretary Alex Kelly is quoted as saying he looks “forward to partnering with the council.”

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