Due North · the fake-lease felony

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The Florida Landlord Brief — a weekly read on Florida rentals, from True North Managed · Orlando & Tampa.

Hi again — one thing this week, and it's a rare bit of good news for landlords.

Florida just made it a third-degree felony to move into a rental on forged documents or a stolen identity. The governor signed HB 1293 on June 12, and it takes effect October 1. If someone hands you fake paystubs or a fake ID to get the keys, that's now a crime — and the law also lets you treat it as a lease violation you don't have to give them a chance to cure. That's a real shift: the forged-lease version of the squatter problem used to be a slow, expensive civil fight, and now there's a criminal lever behind it.

But the law is the backstop, not the fix — and the fix is at screening, before anyone gets keys. Here's what's changed there: AI now generates convincing fake paystubs, bank statements, even "verification" letters, so a glance at an uploaded PDF doesn't prove much anymore. The move that holds up is to verify income at the source — call the employer directly, or use a bank-linked income check — instead of trusting documents the applicant uploaded. It's one extra step, and it's the one that keeps a forged application from becoming a forged tenancy. If you do nothing else before October, tighten that.

And the foundation under it is consistency: run the same written criteria on every applicant, every time. That's what makes a forged or thin application stand out — and it doubles as fair-housing protection, since even-handed standards are the best defense if a rejected applicant ever claims discrimination. If your process isn't written down yet, our tenant-screening guide lays out one you can copy.

Two quick follow-ups. Citizens' insurance changes take effect tomorrow, July 1 — and a correction from last week: if you own a single rental house, the cut is almost certainly yours, not the increase (I wasn't precise calling it a "homestead" thing). One line to your agent confirms which bucket you're in; the full breakdown by policy type has the numbers. And the 30-year mortgage drifted back to about 6.49%, so financing's flat and demand holds.

For the rest of what actually changed in Florida law this year, our 2026 landlord-law roundup is the one-stop version.

That's it. If you'd like a second set of eyes on your screening before October, just hit reply.

— The True North Team

General info for Florida rental owners — not legal, tax, or insurance advice.