In all suits for the foreclosure of mortgages heretofore or hereafter executed the entry of a deficiency decree for any portion of a deficiency, should one exist, shall be within the sound discretion of the court; however, in the case of an owner-occupied residential property, the amount of the deficiency may not exceed the difference between the judgment amount, or in the case of a short sale, the outstanding debt, and the fair market value of the property on the date of sale. For purposes of this section, there is a rebuttable presumption that a residential property for which a homestead exemption for taxation was granted according to the certified rolls of the latest assessment by the county property appraiser, before the filing of the foreclosure action, is an owner-occupied residential property. The complainant shall also have the right to sue at common law to recover such deficiency, unless the court in the foreclosure action has granted or denied a claim for a deficiency judgment.
Fla. Stat. § 702.06
Deficiency decree; common-law suit to recover deficiency
Applied in 13 court decisions — leading case 178 So. 3d 433 - Garcia v. Dyck-O'Neal, Inc. (2015)
Most recently applied in Dukes v. Suncoast Credit Union (In re Dukes) (December 2018)
History.--s. 1, ch. 11993, 1927; CGL 5751; s. 1, ch. 13625, 1929; s. 5, ch. 2013-137.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Online Sunshine (Florida Legislature). Reproduced from public-domain Florida statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.