Florida · self-storage lien guide
This is informational, not legal advice. Florida Statutes Chapter 83, Part III can be amended and reinterpreted; verify every requirement below against the current official statute and confirm with your own attorney before you act on it.
Not attorney-reviewed. We wrote this guide directly from the statute text and secondary compilations of Chapter 83, Part III; it has not been reviewed by a licensed Florida attorney.
Statutes change. A 2025 attempt to amend this chapter (SB 386 / HB 587) did not become law — see the gotchas below — and a future session could change these rules. This page reflects our reading of the statute as written on 10 August 2026.
The lien lives in Florida Statutes Fla. Stat. Ch. 83, Part III (§§ 83.801–83.809) — Self-Service Storage Space. Note the part number: these sections sit in Part III, not Part IV. Enforcement is Fla. Stat. § 83.806; the lien itself is created by § 83.805. Unlike Texas, Florida doesn't split a Notice of Claim from a separate Notice of Sale — one written notice to the tenant covers both, because it's required to already state the sale's specified time and place.
The tenant must be notified by written notice delivered in person, by e-mail, or by first-class mail with a certificate of mailing to the tenant's last known address. § 83.806(1) A certificate of mailing is not certified mail — see the gotchas below for why that distinction matters. The statute also references the notice being conspicuously posted at the facility or on the storage unit itself. Whether that posting is a required step on top of delivery, or just describes the self-contained-unit scenario, isn't clearly resolved in the compiled statutory text we worked from — we treat posting at the facility as a required belt-and-suspenders step rather than assert it's mandatory, and recommend confirming with counsel.
"Last known address" means the street or P.O. box address the tenant gave in the latest rental agreement, or in a later written change-of-address notice.
The notice must contain:
| Required element | Cite |
|---|---|
| An itemized statement of the claim — the sum due at the time of notice and the date it became due | § 83.806(2)(a) |
| A description of the personal property, matching (or reasonably similar to) the description in the rental agreement | § 83.806(2)(b) |
| A demand for payment within a specified time, not less than 14 days after delivery | § 83.806(2)(c) |
| A conspicuous statement that unless the claim is paid in time, the property will be advertised and sold at a specified time and place | § 83.806(2)(d) |
| The owner's name, street address, and telephone number | § 83.806(2)(e) |
Note: the official Florida Statutes full text wasn't cleanly retrievable when we researched this page, so the letters (a) through (e) above come from secondary compilations, not one clean official pull. Confirm them against the current official code — the same caveat applies to the (4)(c) posting-fallback citation below.
If the owner sends the notice to the tenant's last known e-mail address and gets no response, no return receipt, and no delivery confirmation, the owner must also send notice by first-class mail with a certificate of mailing to the last known address before proceeding with the sale. § 83.806(1) In practice, an unanswered e-mail can turn one notice into two.
Once the demand period expires unpaid, the sale has to be advertised once a week for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the area where the sale will be held. § 83.806(4) The sale can also be conducted on a public website that customarily runs personal-property auctions, without the owner needing a separate license. If there's no newspaper of general circulation in the area, the advertisement is instead posted at least 10 days before the sale in not fewer than three conspicuous places in the neighborhood where the facility sits. § 83.806(4)(c)
Florida's statute doesn't itemize what the advertisement has to contain the way Texas's does — there's no five-field statutory checklist here, just "advertisement of the sale or other disposition." Anything you see describing required ad fields (description, tenant name, facility address, sale time and place) is best practice, not a statutory requirement.
Day 0 is the date the tenant notice is delivered. Florida sets no statutory minimum number of days a tenant has to be behind before that notice can go out for ordinary goods — the rental agreement decides what counts as default.
Day ~30 is a floor, not a target date. It's the arithmetic of a 14-day demand plus a first publication around day 15 plus the 15-days-after-first-publication rule. That 15-day rule is written around the newspaper route; whether it also binds the no-newspaper posting route, on top of that route's own 10-day floor, isn't clearly spelled out in the statutory text we worked from. Build in a buffer on either route rather than scheduling a sale for the theoretical earliest day, and have counsel confirm the exact day count.
Florida's mail option is first-class mail plus a USPS certificate of mailing — a cheaper product that proves you sent something, not that anyone received it. § 83.806(1) Certified mail likely also satisfies the statute as a superset, but the statutory floor is the certificate of mailing. Don't assume the two are interchangeable.
SB 386 and companion HB 587 would have expanded the "last known address" definition and added a mandatory alternate-contact option for newer rental agreements. Both died in committee in June 2025 — current law is unchanged from what's described here. Worth watching the 2026 session if you saw either bill reported.
Unlike Texas, § 83.806 doesn't require a bold-print servicemember notice in the tenant notice. That doesn't mean military tenants are unprotected — the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act still applies substantively to selling an active servicemember's property; that protection just lives outside Florida's notice statute.
If the property is a motor vehicle or watercraft, the ordinary-goods timeline doesn't apply. The owner has to wait 60 days after the obligation matures before acting, and can then either sell under § 83.806 or have the property towed by a licensed wrecker — which forks into a separate statute, Fla. Stat. § 713.78, with its own notice-and-title machinery.
Outside the 60-day floor for titled vehicles and watercraft, Fla. Stat. § 83.808 leaves "default" to the rental agreement — there's no fixed number of days-past-due written into the lien statute itself for ordinary stored goods.
Secondary sources describe surplus proceeds as held by the owner for delivery to the tenant on demand, with roughly a two-year unclaimed period before some other disposition — but we couldn't cleanly verify the exact mechanics this session. Don't rely on this page for surplus-proceeds handling; confirm the exact subsection and timeline with counsel.
LienFlow tracks these deadlines and generates the notice for you to review and file — $49/mo when your state launches.
Reserve your spotThis guide is built from Florida Statutes Chapter 83, Part III — Self-Service Storage Space, primarily § 83.806 for enforcement, § 83.805 for the lien itself, § 83.803 for definitions, and § 83.808 for default, plus § 713.78 for the titled-property fork. We read the statute through secondary compilations rather than a single clean official pull — leg.state.fl.us text wasn't fully retrievable when we researched this — so a few subsection letters and mechanics are reconstructed rather than confirmed. This page has not been reviewed by a licensed Florida attorney. The statute is the authority, not this page — confirm every date and requirement against the current official code and your own counsel. Written 10 August 2026.