Trust This. 

Starting October 1, 2026, a person who lies about who they are to get into a Florida rental unit commits a third-degree felony, and the landlord can end the lease with a seven-day notice and no opportunity to cure.

CS/HB 1293 (Chapter 2026-143) creates the crime of fraudulent entry of a residential dwelling unit. It passed the House 110-0 and the Senate 34-0 and was approved by the Governor on June 12 (Florida Senate bill history). The conduct it reaches is narrow and specific: entering and taking possession of a dwelling by knowingly making a materially false written statement about your identity on a rental application, presenting forged or counterfeit documents to the landlord, or impersonating the person whose name is on the application. Third-degree felony, up to five years and a $5,000 fine. Florida is the first state to criminalize residential rental application fraud (Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles).

Why this reshapes the landlord side, and where it stops

The real machinery is in the amendment to Fla. Stat. § 83.56. Fraudulent entry is now the kind of noncompliance a tenant does not get to cure. The landlord terminates, and the tenant has seven days from delivery of the notice to vacate. That is a genuine change from the ordinary seven-day cure cycle, where a tenant fixes the problem and stays.

Yes but: The statute shortens the notice. It does not give you self-help. If they do not leave on day eight, the answer is still an eviction action under chapter 83, and the county judge still sets the calendar. What you have gained is a cleaner, faster case and a criminal referral you did not have before, not a shortcut around the courthouse.

What to execute before October

For real estate investors and property managers — get the application form in front of counsel now. The felony attaches to a materially false written statement about identity, which means your application has to actually ask, in writing, in a way that makes a lie provable. A verbal misrepresentation and a vague form do not build this record.

For private and hard-money lenders — an occupancy fraud discovery on collateral you hold now runs on a compressed timeline. Update your default-servicing checklist so the seven-day path gets used instead of missed.

For licensed professionals renting out a former residence or a second property — this is the year to stop reusing the form you downloaded in 2019.

Watch for: how the first county courts treat the seven-day notice when the tenant contests the identity finding, and whether screening vendors update their verification products before October 1.

Sources: CS/HB 1293, Florida Senate; Chapter 2026-143, Laws of Florida; Fla. Stat. § 83.56; Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles summary.

Marina Bolotnikova's Vox piece asks what American housing looks like at the country's 300th birthday. Strip out the futurism, and it is a decent underwriting memo.

The big picture: The single-family suburb was not a preference. It was a legal mandate, written into zoning codes after World War II and reinforced by midcentury lending standards. The demographics that produced it have reversed. If immigration stays low, the Census Bureau projects that by 2076 the country has fewer families with children and working-age adults, and far more seniors (the same trajectory China is on).

What the sources actually predict

M. Nolan Gray of California YIMBY told Vox that "detached single-family zoning is dead" and that the typical non-HOA suburban lot in 2076 will hold at least a second unit. Arthur Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, has argued that senior households are already growing faster than younger ones, which strands older owners in big houses they cannot easily maintain or subdivide. Arpit Gupta of NYU takes the other side and predicts a dramatic increase in sprawl, on the theory that people will tolerate much longer commutes in a car they do not have to drive.

Yes, but

None of this is fast. National housing starts have barely moved, mortgage rates have sat above 6% since 2022, and local governments have proven skilled at slow-walking the state laws that were supposed to override them. Anyone underwriting to a 2076 thesis on a 2026 loan is underwriting to a story.

The Florida takeaway

Florida is already running both futures at once. The Sunbelt keeps sprawling outward while the Infill Redevelopment Act (SB 1434, signed May 21, 2026, codified at Fla. Stat. § 163.2525) forces administrative approval of up to 25 units per acre on qualifying infill parcels, closed golf courses included, in the state's largest counties (Florida Senate bill summary). Two directions, same state.

For real estate investors — the lots worth owning are the ones where the second unit is already legal or about to be. Check the parcel's ADU and parking rules before the comps, not after.

For home services businesses — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing — a state converting garages, strip malls, and single-family lots into additional units is a retrofit market, not a new-construction market. Building smaller ADUs is an emerging market. That is a different sales motion and a different service-territory map.

For licensed professionals — the aging-in-place problem Nelson describes affects your clients before it shows up in the zoning code. A parent stuck in a five-bedroom house is a planning conversation, not a real estate one.

What's next: watch which Florida counties actually permit the ADUs their new rules allow. Permits issued, not ordinances passed, is the number that tells you whether any of this is real.

Source: Vox, Marina Bolotnikova, July 2026.

A fact pattern worth studying was reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader on July 27. An heir inherits a half-interest in a parent's estate. About a month after a federal appeals court affirms a money judgment against her, she deeds that half-interest to relatives and to a family trust for "love and affection" and no money. Later, under oath, she says she owns no property. The judgment creditors sue to void the transfers.

The big picture: Every one of those moves is something a planner might do on a good day. Deed to a trust. Consolidate family property. Answer only what was asked. One variable turns them from planning into evidence, and it is that the claim already existed.

Why it matters:

What most people don't know: intent is almost never admitted, so § 726.105(2) gives courts 11 badges of fraud to infer it from. Transfer to an insider. Debtor kept control. Concealment. Suit filed or threatened beforehand. Substantially all assets moved. No reasonably equivalent value. Insolvency. Timing near a substantial debt. No single badge decides anything, and a stack of them puts the burden on you.

Key takeaways:

The bottom line: Asset protection is architecture built in clear weather. This is Florida law, and every state's fraudulent transfer statute carries its own limitations periods and case law, so get counsel where the property sits.

Go deeper: Read the full long-form article on aspirelegal.com.

Source: Lexington Herald-Leader, Austin R. Ramsey, July 27, 2026. Statutory framework: Fla. Stat. ch. 726.

Every leadership program measures the same thing: action. Pivots, interventions, bold calls. Decisiveness stands in for competence, speed stands in for clarity, and motion stands in for progress. The unspoken rule is that a leader who waits is a leader who failed. Tony Martignetti, who writes on this as chief illumination officer at Inspired Purpose Partners, makes the case that this is not merely incomplete. It is backwards.

The idea has two old names

The poet John Keats called it negative capability, the capacity to stay "in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." The Taoists called it wu wei, usually mistranslated as nonaction. It is closer to action that comes from reading the situation accurately instead of from your own discomfort. The farmer in the old parable who pulls on the rice shoots to help them grow is not lazy. He is working too hard, and his effort is the problem.

Why organizations punish stillness

Inaction earns no credit. When you act and things improve, you get the credit. When you wait and things improve, the situation gets the credit. There is no line on a scorecard for the restructure you didn't do, the person you didn't fire six months before their breakthrough, the market panic you sat through. Worse, action feels better. Sending the email drops your cortisol. Waiting means holding the anxiety with nothing to discharge it.

Four tests before you move

Bottom Line: Action taken from a real capacity to wait is a different animal from action taken because waiting was never available. Both can produce the same decision. Only one is leadership.

This Week's Challenge: Open your Rocks list. Find the one item you keep intervening on. Write one sentence naming which of the four tests you have been skipping, then leave it alone for a full week and see which way it moves on its own.

Source: Tony Martignetti, Inspired Purpose Partners, on negative capability and responsive versus reactive action.