Homeowners association

Florida Statutes 720.301(9) packs the definition into a single sentence, and three parts of that sentence do most of the defining.

A Florida corporation

The association is “a Florida corporation responsible for the operation of a community or a mobile home subdivision”. Chapter 720's statement of purposes, in 720.302(1), speaks of giving statutory recognition to “corporations not for profit that operate residential communities in this state”.

Membership that comes with the parcel

Membership is “a mandatory condition of parcel ownership”, and the voting membership is made up of parcel owners or their agents. Under 720.301(12), a parcel owner is the record owner of legal title to a parcel. What ties the land to the association is the recorded declaration of covenants, which subjects the community's land to the association's jurisdiction and control.

Assessments that can become a lien

The definition closes with the association's power to fund itself: it is one “which is authorized to impose assessments that, if unpaid, may become a lien on the parcel”. The definition speaks of assessments only. How a particular community sets and collects them is not part of this sentence.

Chapter 720, titled Homeowners' Associations, sets out procedures for operating an association. Its purposes, in 720.302(1), include protecting “the rights of association members without unduly impairing the ability of such associations to perform their functions”. The statute as a whole is described under Chapter 720.

What the chapter does not do is create a state regulator. In 720.302(2) the Legislature says it is “not in the best interest of homeowners' associations or the individual association members thereof to create or impose a bureau or other agency of state government to regulate the affairs of homeowners' associations”.

The same subsection gives the department a narrower job: an expedited process for “election and recall disputes and presuit mediation of other disputes involving covenant enforcement”. Under 720.301(5), the department is the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

Day to day, then, an association acts through its own documents and the chapter's procedures. Before a fine, for example, Chapter 720 requires written notice of the owner's right to a hearing, and how to respond to an HOA roof cleaning notice sets out what the statute says that notice must contain.

The word association is used under more than one Florida chapter, so Chapter 720 marks its own edge. Section 720.302(4) says the chapter “does not apply to any association that is subject to regulation under chapter 718, chapter 719, or chapter 721”, except where a provision of those chapters is expressly incorporated into Chapter 720.

Chapter 718 is the condominium chapter, so a condominium association is defined and governed under different sections, and it even uses a different word for shared property. Chapter 720 speaks of common area; Chapter 718 speaks of common elements.

The definition says nothing about roofs or driveways either. An association's say over how a home looks comes from its declaration and published guidelines under 720.3035(1)(a), the statute quoted in the roof cleaning page's Florida rules, and why HOAs require roof cleaning takes that question up for roofs.