Fort Lauderdale, FL Auto Dealer Bond— $25,000 §320.27 Bond for Broward County Dealers

No. The bond amount is set by state statute, not by city or county. Fla. Stat. 320.27 fixes the motor vehicle dealer bond at $25,000 for VF, VI, VW, VA, and SD license classes statewide. Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, and every municipality within Broward (Pompano Beach, Hollywood, Deerfield Beach, Davie, Plantation, Sunrise, Tamarac) use the same $25,000 amount on the same Form HSMV 86020. Recreational vehicle (RV) dealers post $10,000 or $20,000 under Fla. Stat. 320.771 regardless of Broward location.

The bond amount itself does not change for export operations — it is still $25,000 on Form HSMV 86020. What changes is the underwriting profile. Surety underwriters review the VW (wholesale) export model with extra attention to title flow timing, AES export documentation discipline, and the dealer experience handling Caribbean / Latin America buyer paperwork. Title-delivery delays are the most frequent bond-claim trigger for export-oriented Fort Lauderdale dealers, so underwriters often ask for documented procedures or a track-record statement before binding higher-volume VW applicants.

The bond face amount is $25,000 per Fla. Stat. 320.27 regardless of vehicle price. A single Ferrari sale gone wrong can exceed the bond face. The bond is a consumer-protection floor — not a per-transaction insurance limit. High-end Fort Lauderdale dealers selling Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, or Ferrari inventory typically supplement the statutory bond with garage liability at higher limits ($500K–$1M CSL is common in the Las Olas luxury market) plus E&O coverage for title and disclosure errors. The bond cannot be voluntarily increased above $25,000 to extend coverage — additional protection is layered through other insurance products.

No. Yacht and boat brokerage in Florida is regulated separately under Fla. Stat. 326 (the Yacht and Ship Brokers Act) through the DBPR Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes — not FLHSMV. The yacht broker bond is a different instrument with a different obligee. If a Fort Lauderdale yacht broker also wants to sell RVs or marine trailers as a licensed motor vehicle dealer, they need a separate FLHSMV dealer credential (RV class on Form HSMV 86019 for recreational vehicles, or VI on Form 86020 for trailers titled as motor vehicles) with its own bond. The "yachting capital" overlap is operational, not regulatory — the licenses do not merge.

Broward County is in the FLHSMV Miami Regional Office territory. Dealer license applications, bond filings, and facility inspections for Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Hollywood, Deerfield Beach, Davie, Plantation, Sunrise, Tamarac, and every other Broward municipality are processed through the Miami Regional Office. Tallahassee handles statewide policy and rule promulgation but does not process individual Broward applications. Local Broward County Tax Collector tag agencies handle subsequent title and registration transactions — they do not issue or renew dealer licenses themselves.

Yes — salvage motor vehicle dealers (SD class) post the same $25,000 bond on Form HSMV 86020. Q3 and Q4 hurricane influx (the 2005 Wilma event and the 2017 Irma event both produced significant Broward flood-vehicle inventory) drives heightened scrutiny on title-branding disclosures. The bond covers title-fraud claims tied to undisclosed flood damage, undisclosed salvage history, and improper rebuilt-title disclosures. SD dealers are statutorily exempt from the garage liability requirement under Fla. Stat. 320.27(3) but are not exempt from the bond. Post-storm enforcement sweeps by FLHSMV historically focus on undisclosed flood-vehicle resale in the Broward / Miami-Dade markets.

One bond covers the licensed entity, not the location. A single $25,000 bond on Form HSMV 86020 covers the principal entity across all FLHSMV-approved locations under that license. Supplemental locations are added by filing a supplemental location request (one in Broward, one in Miami-Dade, for example) with a $50 supplemental location fee per FLHSMV. Each supplemental location must still pass facility inspection and carry appropriate local business tax receipts (Fort Lauderdale and Miami are separate cities in separate counties, each requiring its own city receipt). The bond does not duplicate; the local licensure does.

FLHSMV maintains the current list of approved pre-licensing course providers on its Bureau of Dealer Services page. Several providers serve the Broward market with classroom sessions in Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach, and several others offer FLHSMV-approved online formats accepted from anywhere in Florida. We strongly recommend confirming the provider is on the current FLHSMV-approved list before paying tuition — certificates from unapproved providers are rejected regardless of curriculum content, and rejected applications must be resubmitted with the $300 fee at risk.

The bond itself can be issued the same business day for applicants with strong credit (FICO 700+). Substandard credit submissions typically take 1-2 business days. Once the full application package — bond, application, pre-licensing certificate, garage liability, business tax receipts, facility documentation, fingerprints — is filed with the FLHSMV Miami Regional Office, the license review and facility inspection cycle typically runs 30 to 60 days. Broward applications in peak season (December and the spring weeks before the April 30 VI/VW/VA/SD renewal cycle) may run on the longer end due to Miami Regional Office workload.

No. There is no Broward County or City of Fort Lauderdale dealer surety bond stacked on top of the state $25,000 bond. Local requirements are limited to business tax receipts, zoning verification, and standard occupational licensing — none of which involve an additional surety bond. The single state bond on Form HSMV 86020 satisfies the dealer-bonding requirement for Broward operations. (A small handful of large-fleet wholesale or auction operators occasionally carry voluntary excess bonds at the request of floor-plan lenders, but those are private commercial requirements, not government-mandated obligations.)