Being Sued Over Unknown Missed Hoa Payment Lead To Lien And Foreclosure Pending Threats

Location: FL

Background story: I live in NY and have a rental property in FL. Originally we were going to move to FL , purchased a home , but our plans changed and we decided to rent out the property. We learned about the “HOA fees” set everything up on auto pay.

About a year or so later we ended up moving in NYS. We updated our address with the property management company via email. Thought that would be good enough. Turns out, there’s actually two management companies. The property management company we emailed and the master property management company we didn’t realize work completely separate from each other and have two separate HOA dues. About a year or so after we notified the property management of our address change, The master property management changed their HOA payments we site that we had on auto-pay. They were sending out mail, of which we never received because they never updated our address. Long story short, it wasn’t until this summer we were notified that they were taking legal action against us for an unpaid HOA bill of about $1,200. They mailed notice to our Fl property, that was never received and to our former address that was never received. It wasn’t until they needed proof of receipt that we finally received notice. We contacted the mast company of course confused because we had everything on auto pay and the property management said we were all paid up on bills and knew nothing about the law suit. We offered to pay in full the amount owed and they Master property management refused our payment. The lawyer fees literally add up to $4,000 plus the original bill. We have let them know of the situation and all they say is in Fl they don’t need proof of receipt and we should have updated our address with the county - which I didn’t even think to do until this. Is there anything I can do?!