How do I respond to an HOA roof cleaning notice?

If a homeowners association roof cleaning notice is the one Florida requires before a fine, the statute lists what it has to contain.

Florida Statutes 720.305(2)(b) says the notice must include “a description of the alleged violation; the specific action required to cure such violation, if applicable; and the hearing date, location, and access information if held by telephone or other electronic means.” Read against a letter about a roof, that gives three questions to put to the page:

• Does it describe the alleged violation, which here would be the roof condition the association says breaks a rule?
• Does it state the specific action that would cure it, if a cure applies, in its own words?
• Does it give a hearing date, a location and, for a remote hearing, the access information?

The cure, and any timing attached to it, comes from the notice's wording rather than from the statute, which asks only that the action be stated. The document itself, and everything the statute lists for it, is described under violation notice.

The statute's first number is a notice period, and it is attached to the hearing right.

Under 720.305(2)(b), a fine or suspension may not be imposed unless the board first provides “at least 14 days' written notice of the parcel owner's right to a hearing”, sent to the owner's designated mailing or e-mail address in the association's official records. Those days are notice of a hearing right. They are not a statutory window to complete a cleaning, and the everyday phrase for that idea is taken apart under cure period.

Behind any roof notice sits a narrower question: whether the association's appearance authority reaches the roof at all. Section 720.3035(1)(a) limits it to what the declaration and its authorized guidelines state or reasonably infer, and the Florida rules for a roof cleaning quote that limit. Where a community reviews exterior appearance through an architectural review committee, that committee works inside the same documents.

If the association proposes a fine, the hearing is the next fixed point in the sequence.

Section 720.305(2)(b) requires the hearing to be held no later than 90 days after the notice, before a committee of at least three members appointed by the board. The committee may hold the hearing by telephone or other electronic means, and the parcel owner has the right to attend that way.

Who may and may not sit on that committee, and what it may decide, are covered under hearing. Whether to attend, what to bring and whether to contest are judgments about one notice, and they belong with the owner and an attorney.

The statute also fixes what comes out of the hearing, and in what order.

Under 720.305(2)(d), no later than 7 days after the hearing the committee must give the parcel owner written notice of its findings, including any fine it approved or rejected and how the owner may cure the violation, if applicable, or the date by which a fine must be paid. Under 720.305(2)(f), if the violation is not cured and the committee approves the fine by majority vote, it sets a payment date at least 30 days after delivery of those written findings.

One more paragraph of the section, 720.305(2)(e), bars a fine where a violation was cured before the hearing or in the manner the written notice specified. Whether a cleaning does that for a particular roof notice is the subject of whether exterior cleaning can help with an HOA fine.

The sequence tells you when things happen. It does not tell you whether a particular notice is sound or what will satisfy it.

Section 720.305(2) lets an association levy reasonable fines for violations of the declaration, bylaws or reasonable rules, sets per-violation and aggregate caps that apply unless the governing documents provide otherwise, and sets a threshold below which a fine may not become a lien against a parcel. Whether a notice is valid, what the association will accept as the cure and whether a fine fits those limits are questions for the association or its manager, and for an attorney. A cleaner is not the right person to answer them.

Section 720.305(1) adds that in litigation over compliance with Chapter 720, the governing documents or the rules, the prevailing party is entitled to reasonable attorney fees and costs. Condominiums follow a separate procedure in 718.303, described under Chapter 718.