Limited common elements

Florida Statutes 718.103(22) defines limited common elements as "those common elements which are reserved for the use of a certain unit or units to the exclusion of all other units, as specified in the declaration." The last five words carry the weight. The statute creates the category, and the declaration of condominium decides what goes in it.

Two neighboring definitions in the same section explain why. Under 718.103(9), common elements are "the portions of the condominium property not included in the units," and under 718.103(31) a unit is the part of the condominium property subject to exclusive ownership, again as specified in the declaration. Because the declaration draws the units, whatever it leaves outside them is a common element, and a limited common element is one of those portions that the same document then reserves to one unit or a few. The wider category has its own entry under common elements.

The definitions of common elements, limited common elements and units name no building part. Section 718.103 does not call a balcony, a parking space or a roof a limited common element. Any such list belongs to a particular building's declaration, and two buildings can draw it differently.

Florida Statutes 718.113(1) opens with the general rule and its exception in a single sentence: "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." Quoting the rule without the exception misstates the statute.

The same subsection then gives a declaration three arrangements it may choose for certain limited common elements:

• Maintenance by those entitled to use them.
• Maintenance by the association as a common expense.
• Maintenance by the association with the cost shared only by those entitled to use them.

Whether a building's declaration adopts one of these arrangements, and which one, is found by reading that declaration. The association's own duty points back to the same document: it must provide for the maintenance, repair and replacement of the condominium property "for which it bears responsibility pursuant to the declaration of condominium." Read in either direction, the statute sends the question to the declaration.

On an exterior cleaning job the term can bear on who arranges the work, and nobody can tell by looking at a building. Whether a given roof, balcony or window is part of a unit, a common element or a limited common element is a question for the declaration.

For exterior glass, Florida Statutes 718.113(5)(a) speaks of exterior windows protected by hurricane protection whose maintenance is the association's responsibility under the declaration of condominium, so even there the statute ties the duty to the declaration, and the subsection says nothing about who cleans the glass. The window cleaning page's note on condominium glass cites 718.113(1), and the limited-common-element exception written into that subsection is why a declaration, and not the statute alone, settles a given pane. Glass reached only through one unit's balcony is its own question, taken up under whether windows can be cleaned on a condo balcony.

A roof follows the same reading. Who orders a condominium roof cleaning depends on how the declaration treats the roof, and that is answered at length under who is responsible for roof cleaning in a condo.