Does roof cleaning count as maintenance for an HOA?

Read side by side, the four rows use one word for four different subjects. The first is a private recorded instrument, the second and third describe what an association looks after, and the fourth defines a trade. None of the statute sections names roof cleaning or pressure washing, so the question of whether a cleaning counts as maintenance for an HOA cannot be settled by reading Florida Statutes alone.

In a homeowners association the upkeep duty that reaches your roof, if there is one, is a private covenant, and the statute tells you where to find it.

Florida Statutes 720.3035(1)(a) permits an association, or its architectural or similar committee, to enforce standards for the external appearance of a structure on a parcel only to the extent that authority is “specifically stated or reasonably inferred” in “the declaration of covenants or other published guidelines and standards authorized by the declaration of covenants.” Section 720.301(4) describes that declaration of covenants as a recorded written instrument in the nature of covenants running with the land, and 720.301(8) groups it with the association's articles of incorporation and bylaws as the community's governing documents.

Section 720.305(1) then makes every member, and the member's tenants, guests and invitees, subject to Chapter 720, those governing documents and the association's rules. So whether a roof cleaning is maintenance an owner must do is a reading of one community's papers: the declaration, its amendments and the guidelines it authorizes. The manager who keeps those papers can point to the clause. Florida law does not itself require a clean roof, a point the Florida rules that touch a roof cleaning make in full, and why a community writes an appearance standard at all is answered under why HOAs require roof cleaning.

Chapter 489 is the other place the word turns up, and it is written for a different purpose.

Section 489.105(3)(e) defines a roofing contractor as one with the skill to “install, maintain, repair, alter, extend, or design” roofing, waterproofing and coating, “except when coating is not represented to protect, repair, waterproof, stop leaks, or extend the life of the roof.” That paragraph sorts licensed trades. It is silent on what a homeowners association may require on a parcel.

What that definition covers, and whether it reaches a roof cleaner, is taken up under Chapter 489. The boundary between the two trades is set out under where a cleaning stops and a roofing contractor starts.

The two chapters describe what an association itself looks after in different words, and the difference matters before the word maintenance is applied to a roof.

Chapter 720 speaks of “common area”: property within the community owned or leased by the association, or dedicated for use or maintenance by it or its members. Whether any part of a parcel is dedicated that way is written in the community's recorded documents. Chapter 718, for condominiums, speaks of common elements instead, and section 718.113(1) reads, “Maintenance of the common elements is the responsibility of the association, except for any maintenance responsibility for limited common elements assigned to the unit owner by the declaration.”

That condominium rule allocates a duty between an association and its unit owners through the declaration of condominium, and it still names no roof and no cleaning. Who maintains a condominium roof, and who pays, is answered under who is responsible for roof cleaning in a condo. In both kinds of community the recorded declaration is the document that decides what counts as maintenance and whose it is.