Architectural review committee

Florida Statutes 720.3035(1)(a) never uses the words architectural review committee. It speaks of “any architectural, construction improvement, or other such similar committee of an association”, and it describes that body by what it does: the authority “to review and approve plans and specifications for the location, size, type, or appearance of any structure or other improvement on a parcel”, or “to enforce standards for the external appearance of any structure or improvement located on a parcel”.

Because the statute names the job rather than a title, it reaches the body whatever a given community calls it. The label a particular community uses, and the standards its committee applies, are in that community's own documents, and its manager, where it has one, keeps them.

Where the authority comes from matters as much as what it covers. The same subsection permits it “only to the extent that the authority is specifically stated or reasonably inferred” in “the declaration of covenants or other published guidelines and standards authorized by the declaration of covenants”. The declaration of covenants is the recorded instrument that places a community's land under an association's control, so the committee's reach is set by the declaration and the guidelines it authorizes, not by the committee itself.

A condominium committee is a different thing. Florida Statutes 718.103(8) defines a condominium committee as a group of board members, unit owners or both, appointed by the board or a board member “to make recommendations to the board regarding the proposed annual budget or to take action on behalf of the board”. It is a Chapter 718 body, and the limits in 720.3035 are written for homeowners' associations.

Beyond fixing where the authority comes from, 720.3035 tells the association and its committee how that authority may be used. Each line below is the statute's, kept to the scope it was written in.

• Grounded in the documents: under 720.3035(1)(a), review and appearance authority reaches only as far as the declaration or its authorized guidelines state it or reasonably infer it.
• Applied evenly: the same paragraph says the association or its committee “must reasonably and equitably apply and enforce on all parcel owners” the standards those documents authorize.
• Options stay open: where the declaration or its guidelines provide options for material, size, design or location, 720.3035(2) bars the association and its committee from restricting a parcel owner's right to select from them.
• Denials in writing: when the association or its committee denies a parcel owner's request or application for the construction of a structure or other improvement, 720.3035(4)(a) requires written notice stating “with specificity the rule or covenant” relied on and the specific part of the proposal that does not conform.
• The owner's documented rights hold: under 720.3035(5), neither may enforce a policy or restriction inconsistent with the rights and privileges the documents give a parcel owner, “whether uniformly applied or not”.

The fourth line has a scope worth reading closely. The written-denial duty attaches to a request or application for the construction of a structure or other improvement, and the subsection's words stop there. Subsection (4)(a) says nothing about any other kind of request.

Section 720.3035 does not name roof cleaning, paver sealing or window cleaning. What a committee can say about any of them comes from the appearance standards in its community's documents, which is why the same question can have one answer in one community and another next door.

Whether a sealer's change to a driveway's color or sheen needs sign-off is argued in whether a wet-look sealer needs HOA approval, and a sealed driveway's look against an association's standards is part of the paver cleaning rules that apply in Naples.

For roofs, the association passage in the Florida rules that touch roof cleaning quotes the same statute. Two neighboring questions have pages of their own: whether roof cleaning counts as maintenance for an HOA, and why HOAs require roof cleaning in the first place.

None of those pages can say what a particular committee requires. That is written in the community's declaration and published guidelines, and it is the committee's to apply.