Can exterior cleaning help with an HOA fine?

Here is the whole of it, from the statute that governs a Florida homeowners association: “If a violation has been cured before the hearing or in the manner specified in the written notice required in paragraph (b) or paragraph (d), a fine or suspension may not be imposed.”

That sentence holds two separate routes, joined by “or.”

• Cured before the hearing. The timing condition. If the violation has been cured by the time of the hearing, the sentence says the fine or suspension may not be imposed.
• Cured in the manner the written notice specifies. The method condition. Paragraph (b) requires the board's notice to include “the specific action required to cure such violation, if applicable,” and paragraph (d) requires the committee's written findings to say how the parcel owner may cure the violation, if applicable.

An exterior cleaning can matter to an HOA fine only by fitting one of those routes. The violation has to be one that a cleaning actually addresses, and the notice's own cure instruction is the measure. If the violation notice names a stained roof and says the cure is to clean it, a cleaning is aimed at the stated cure. If it names something a cleaning does not touch, a cleaning is beside the point. Whether a given cleaning has cured a given violation is the association's and its committee's decision; neither the statute nor a cleaner makes it.

The phrase cure period is an everyday one rather than the statute's. The 14 days in paragraph (b) is written notice of the owner's right to a hearing, not a set window to fix the problem.

When the violation is not cured, the statute's sequence runs on. It is laid out from the owner's side on how to respond to an HOA roof cleaning notice, so only the points that bear on the fine itself are listed here.

The hearing committee, in other words, confirms or rejects what the board levied. The statute also caps HOA fines: 720.305(2) sets a per-violation cap and an aggregate cap for a continuing violation, in each case “unless otherwise provided in the governing documents,” and it bars a fine below the threshold it sets from becoming a lien against a parcel. The community's governing documents may set different caps, so the caps that apply to a given parcel depend on those documents as well as the section.

Disputes that go further are an attorney's territory. The statute's own line on that, in 720.305(1), is that the prevailing party in litigation over compliance “is entitled to recover reasonable attorney fees and costs.”

Everything above is Chapter 720, the homeowners' association statute. A condominium association is governed by Chapter 718, and its fine rules in 718.303(3) differ in ways that matter:

• the fine caps in 718.303(3) carry no clause letting the governing documents set different caps;
• a condominium fine may not become a lien against a unit;
• a fine may be levied for each day of a continuing violation, with a single notice and hearing;
• under 718.303(3)(b), the board gives at least 14 days' written notice and an opportunity for a hearing before a committee; and
• if the committee approves, “the fine payment is due 5 days after notice of the approved fine is provided to the unit owner.”

Section 718.303 carries no sentence worded like the cure rule in 720.305(2)(e), so nothing here says a condominium cure works the same way. That is a question for the declaration, the association and, if needed, an attorney.

An association fine and an insurance letter are also different documents with different rules. What a cleaning does and does not change for an insurer is covered in the Florida rules that touch a roof cleaning in Naples.