Palm Beach County Landlord Alert · New Florida Law · Effective October 1, 2026

Florida's New Rental Application Fraud Law: What Palm Beach County Landlords Must Know

By Jean Taveras, Broker-Owner, Atlis Property Management  ·  Updated September 2026

Application fraud has always been a landlord's problem to solve alone — catch it in screening, or deal with the fallout after a bad tenant is already in the unit. Starting October 1, 2026, Florida becomes the first state in the country to make the worst version of that fraud a criminal matter, not just a civil headache. For landlords across Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, Wellington, Riviera Beach, and the rest of Palm Beach County, this is a genuinely new tool worth understanding before it takes effect.

What HB 1293 Actually Does

The new law adds Florida Statute §817.537, titled fraudulent entry of a residential dwelling unit, to the criminal code. It makes it a third-degree felony for someone to knowingly and willfully take possession of a rental unit by providing materially false identity information, fabricated income or employment verification, or other knowingly false statements on a rental application. A third-degree felony in Florida can carry up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, which is a significant escalation from the purely civil remedies — eviction, a judgment for unpaid rent, a mark on a credit report — that were previously the landlord's only real recourse against a fraudulent applicant.

The law is narrowly aimed at knowing, willful fraud, not honest mistakes. An applicant who lists an outdated employer, makes a math error on stated income, or provides a document that turns out to be inaccurate through no intent to deceive is in a fundamentally different position than someone who fabricates pay stubs or uses a false identity specifically to get approved for a unit they otherwise wouldn't qualify for. Florida criminal law generally requires the state to prove intent, and this statute is no exception.

Why This Law Exists

Rental application fraud has become more sophisticated as more of the screening process has moved online. Fabricated pay stubs, doctored bank statements, and even AI-generated employment verification letters are increasingly available to anyone motivated to create them, and a landlord relying solely on applicant-submitted documents has historically had limited recourse once a fraudulent tenant is already occupying the unit and the fraud becomes clear. Florida's legislature specifically framed this law as a response to that shift — treating deliberate, sophisticated application fraud as the kind of conduct that deserves a criminal deterrent, not just a civil dispute.

What This Law Does Not Do

It's also worth being precise about what the law covers. It targets identity fraud and fabricated financial documentation used to obtain the unit — it is not a general-purpose tool for evicting a tenant a landlord simply regrets renting to, and it does not apply to disputes that arise after a legitimate tenancy begins, such as a tenant who later falls behind on rent for reasons unrelated to how they qualified for the lease. Those situations remain governed by Florida's existing eviction process under Chapter 83.

Why October 1 Matters for Timing, Not Just Compliance

Because the law is not retroactive, the exact date an application is submitted and a lease is signed matters. A tenancy that began under a fraudulent application submitted before October 1 falls outside the new statute entirely, even if the fraud is discovered later. For landlords with vacancies actively being marketed heading into fall, this creates a practical wrinkle worth being aware of: an application processed in the final days of September is evaluated under the old civil-only framework, while one processed just after October 1 falls under the new criminal statute if fraud is later discovered.

This isn't a reason to rush or slow down leasing activity around the effective date — screening standards should be the same in September as they are in October. But it is a reason to have documentation habits in place now rather than scrambling to reconstruct them later. If a dispute over a September-dated application surfaces after October 1, having a clear, dated record of when the application was submitted and verified will matter for determining which framework applies.

How to Prepare Before October 1

How This Compares to What Landlords Could Already Do

Before this law, a landlord who discovered application fraud after the fact had limited options: pursue eviction through the standard Chapter 83 process, sue for unpaid rent or damages in civil court, and report the fraud to credit bureaus and screening services so future landlords would see it. None of those remedies involved law enforcement or criminal consequences for the applicant, and all of them required the landlord to absorb the cost and time of the eviction process before recovering anything — often months of lost rent and legal fees before a fraudulent tenant was actually removed.

HB 1293 adds a criminal option alongside those existing civil remedies, not instead of them. A landlord who discovers clear evidence of knowing, willful fraud — a fabricated identity, forged pay stubs used to secure a unit the applicant couldn't otherwise qualify for — now has the option to report that conduct to law enforcement as a felony, in addition to pursuing eviction and civil recovery through the normal process. Whether a given case rises to the level of a criminal referral is a decision best made with an attorney, since the civil eviction process still moves faster in most situations and remains the primary tool for actually regaining possession of the unit.

How Atlis Approaches Application Verification

Every application Atlis processes for an owner-client goes through a 12-point screening process that includes independent income and employment verification, not just a review of applicant-submitted documents. This existing process is exactly the kind of diligence that both prevents fraudulent applications from being approved in the first place and creates the documentation trail that would matter if a fraud case arose under the new statute. The new law changes the consequences for the applicant; it doesn't change what a landlord should have been doing at the screening stage all along.

“The landlords who benefit most from this law are the ones who were already screening properly and just got a stronger deterrent added on top. The ones who were cutting corners on verification are the ones who need to fix that before October, not after — a felony statute doesn't help you if the fraud already got someone into your unit.”

— Jean Taveras, Broker-Owner, Atlis Property Management · FL Broker CQ1071712

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