The bigger number in 2009 was a filing deadline. This one is people starting companies.
Florida has licensed community association management firms since 1 January 2009. Registrations averaged 68 a year through the 2010s, then went 118, 163, 207. Only the register's own first year is larger, and that year is not comparable.
firms first licensed, the highest figure that is not a compliance deadline
a year on average, the decade-long baseline this is measured against
the founding cohort, arriving on the register the year the licence began
licensed firms today, of which 17% first registered in 2009
Before 2009 a management firm in Florida needed no licence of its own. Individual managers were licensed; the businesses employing them were not. That changed on 1 January 2009, when Chapter 468, Part VIII began requiring a firm licence to manage an association of more than ten units or with a budget over $100,000.
So the 346 firms recorded in 2009 are not 346 companies that started that year. They are the firms already operating when the requirement took effect, arriving on the register together. ⭐ A chart of this series without that sentence invites the exact wrong reading, that firm formation has been falling from a 2009 high for seventeen years. The truth is that the series has no comparable first data point.
The honest baseline is the decade that follows it. From 2011 to 2020 the register added 68 firms a year, never fewer than 49 and never more than 85. Against that flat decade, 207 is roughly three times the run rate.
Not every new licence is a Florida company: 9 association-management firms licensed since 2024 registered from another state, part of the 71 out-of-state firm licences on the register.
We have already counted the individual side: new manager licences roughly doubled between 2019 and 2025. Set the two against each other over the same window and the firm side moves faster.
Both are rising, so this is not one side gaining at the other's expense. What it says is narrower: the rate at which new management businesses are being formed is outpacing the rate at which new managers are being licensed to staff them. Whether that resolves as smaller firms, as firms competing for a slower-growing pool of licensed managers, or as something else, this register cannot say, and neither will we.
Searchable, with licence number, city and licence dates, from the state extract rather than a directory that charges a firm to appear.
2,066 firms FindingAfter the September 2026 renewal date13,514 licences were due on 30 September 2026. In the 2026-10-29 extract, 5,005 still carried that date.
5,005 licences FindingNew licences have roughly doubled since 2019The profession managing Florida associations is being re-staffed, and the register shows it a year at a time.
2,179 in 2025 ComparisonHOA software pricing, read from each vendorTwo of five publish a rate card, and the band edges do not line up, so the cheapest product changes with association size.
$45 to $275Counted from the Florida DBPR bulk extract lic38cam.csv, refreshed weekly by the state and retrieved 2026-10-29, grouped by the original licensure date on rows typed CAB. Recomputed on every rebuild, and the same rows are on the data page.
This is entry seen from the present, and it is not survivorship. It counts the original licensure date of firms on the register today. A firm that licensed in 2014 and closed in 2016 is not in the file at all, so no figure here is a survival rate and none should be read as one. The register publishes who holds a licence now, never who has held one.
And nothing here infers a firm's age from its licence date. The register begins in 2008, so a 2009 licence marks when the requirement arrived, not when the business was founded. Several of these firms are considerably older than their licence.
Dwellory. "207 new Florida management firms in 2025, the most since the law that created the licence." Computed from the Florida DBPR weekly licensure extracts, retrieved 2026-10-29. https://dwellory.org/florida-management-firm-formation
Quote the retrieval date with any figure. The source refreshes weekly and these counts move with it.
The same method, applied to registers in other professions. FreightProbe, the ELD and carrier-compliance register, read the same way. GrantProbe, public grant programmes, enumerated from the awarding bodies.