Home Builders’ Heads Up: New Mandatory Transferable Warranties in Florida

If you build new homes in Florida, the rules just changed. As of July 1, 2025, every builder of a newly constructed home must provide a one-year warranty against construction defects, and that warranty follows the home to the next owner if it sells during the first year. The requirement comes from a new statute, section 553.837, Florida Statutes, enacted through HB 623 and signed into law in April 2024.

For many builders, this is less of an earthquake than a formalization of something they already do. Plenty of reputable builders in the construction industry already hand buyers a written warranty. But the new law turns a voluntary practice into a statutory baseline, and it adds a transferability feature that did not exist before. Builders who ignore it expose themselves to a private lawsuit. Here is what you need to know, in plain terms.

What the New Law Requires

The core obligation is straightforward. A builder must warrant a newly constructed home against all construction defects in equipment, material, or workmanship furnished by the builder or any subcontractor or supplier that result in a “material violation” of the Florida Building Code.

The warranty lasts one year. The clock starts on the earlier of two dates: the date title is first conveyed to the initial owner, or the date the buyer first occupies the home. Whichever happens first is your trigger date.

A few definitions do real work here, so it pays to know them:

• “Material violation” is not just any code issue. It means a Florida Building Code violation in a completed structure that may reasonably result, or has resulted, in physical harm to a person or significant damage to the performance of a building or its systems. The definition is borrowed from section 553.84, Florida Statutes.

• “Builder” means the primary contractor responsible for supervising, directing, managing, and controlling the construction, and who pulled the building permit. That definition comes from section 553.993, Florida Statutes. The obligation sits with the primary contractor, not the subs or suppliers, even though the warranty covers their defective work.

• “Newly constructed home” covers a single-family dwelling, duplex, triplex, or quadruplex that has not been previously occupied. It also reaches certain manufactured, modular, and factory-built buildings. Used homes and resales are not covered.

If a covered defect appears, the builder has to fix it at the builder’s expense and repair any work damaged in the process.

The Transferable Part: Why It Matters

This is the headline change. Under the new law, the one-year warranty stays in force even if the home is sold or transferred and the original buyer is gone. A buyer who purchases the home eight months after closing inherits the remaining four months of warranty coverage.

That is a meaningful shift. In the past, a builder’s warranty was typically a contract between the builder and the first buyer, and it often died on resale. Now the protection runs with the home for that first year, regardless of who owns it. For builders, that means your exposure no longer ends when your original customer hands over the keys to someone else.

This matters most in fast-moving markets where new homes change hands quickly, including investor purchases and the kind of real estate development and construction activity common across Florida. It also has implications for community associations, where early unit turnover is routine.

You Can Use Your Own Warranty Instead

Here is the practical relief valve. The statute does not force you to scrap your existing warranty program and adopt a state form. If you already provide an express written warranty to the initial owner, that warranty can satisfy the law, as long as it does two things:

1. Its scope, coverage, and duration are equal to or greater than what the statute requires.
2. It automatically transfers to a new owner for at least the first year of coverage.

If your warranty runs longer than one year, the statute imposes a disclosure duty. The written warranty must state that it exceeds the statutory minimum, state how long it lasts, and spell out whether it is transferable beyond the one-year period and on what terms.

There is also a financing option built in. A builder may purchase a warranty from a home warranty association regulated under chapter 634, Florida Statutes, to cover the obligations the new law creates. That can be a useful tool for managing risk, but it does not remove your duty to make sure the coverage actually meets the statutory floor.

The takeaway: review your existing warranty documents now. The fastest way to comply is usually to confirm that your current warranty meets or beats the statutory minimum and adds the automatic transfer language. Getting that drafting right is worth a careful look from counsel who handles construction law in real estate litigation.

What the Warranty Does Not Cover

The law is not a guarantee against everything that can go wrong with a house. The statute carves out several categories that fall outside the required coverage:

• Normal wear and tear on the home.
• Normal house settling within generally accepted trade practices.
• Damage caused by someone other than the builder, its employees, agents, or contractors. This includes work or materials supplied by the initial purchaser, a later purchaser, or anyone acting on their behalf.
• Acts of God and similar events beyond the builder’s control, such as a natural disaster or a fire caused by lightning.

Appliances and equipment already covered by a manufacturer’s warranty are also excluded. In other words, the builder is not on the hook for the dishwasher the manufacturer warranties.

These exclusions will matter in real disputes. Expect builders and owners to argue over whether a problem is a covered “material violation” or excluded “normal settling,” and whether storm-related damage was truly beyond the builder’s control. Those are fact-intensive fights, and they are the kind that companies in disaster and crisis response situations often confront after a major weather event.

How the Law Is Enforced

The statute creates a private cause of action. A purchaser can sue a builder who fails to comply. There is no new state agency, no licensing penalty, and no administrative complaint process built into this law. Enforcement happens in court, between the buyer and the builder.

Importantly, the statute says it does not extend Florida’s statute of repose. The repose period for construction defect claims, found in section 95.11, Florida Statutes, was shortened to seven years in 2023, and the new warranty law does not push that outer deadline back. We covered that repose change in our earlier post on Florida construction and design defect filing changes.

Because enforcement runs through the courts, a warranty dispute can travel down several legal paths at once. A homeowner might frame a claim as a statutory warranty violation, breach of contract, negligence, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, or even fraud in the inducement, depending on the facts. Builders, in turn, often look to indemnification from the subcontractors and suppliers whose work created the defect in the first place.

Practical Steps for Builders

If you build covered homes in Florida, here is a short to-do list:

1. First, audit your current warranty. Confirm in writing that its scope, coverage, and duration meet or exceed the one-year statutory minimum and that it transfers automatically for at least the first year.
   
2. Second, fix your disclosure language. If you offer longer coverage, make sure the document states the duration and the exact terms of transferability. Vague language invites disputes.
   
3. Third, tighten your subcontractor agreements. Because the law makes the primary contractor responsible for defective work by subs and suppliers, your downstream contracts and indemnity provisions are your main protection. This is a good time to review them alongside your complex real property improvement documentation.
   
4. Fourth, plan for resale scenarios. Build a process for handling warranty claims from second owners, who now have standing to demand repairs during that first year.
   
5. Finally, decide whether a third-party warranty product makes sense for your risk profile, and confirm the coverage genuinely satisfies the statute.

The Bottom Line

Florida’s mandatory transferable warranty law sets a clear, enforceable minimum for new home construction and extends protection to early-resale buyers for the first time. For builders who already run a solid warranty program, compliance is largely a matter of confirming coverage levels and adding transfer language. For builders who have relied on handshake assurances or thin paperwork, this is a wake-up call. The cost of getting it wrong is a lawsuit, and warranty fights have a way of expanding into broader construction and contract disputes.
If you are a builder, developer, or supplier and you want your warranty documents and subcontracts reviewed before a claim lands on your desk, our business litigation team can help you get ahead of the new requirements. We regularly counsel clients on contract remedies, reformation and rescission, and the full range of real estate transactions and disputes that touch the construction industry.