Architectural Review: Section 720.3035 From 2007 Through the New 2026 Permit Rule

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 26, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: HOAs · Condominiums

This page is current through the 2026 regular session and the amendments effective July 1, 2026. Architectural review is one of the few areas where the 2026 session produced a genuinely new client-facing rule. It is also an area where the governing law is scattered: the review power sits in § 720.3035, the items that cannot be restricted at all sit in § 720.3045, and flags, solar and landscaping sit in three other statutes that move on their own schedules.

Where architectural review law stands after the 2026 session

For a homeowners association, the authority to review plans and specifications for the location, size, type or appearance of a structure or improvement on a parcel, and to enforce external appearance standards, exists only to the extent it is specifically stated or reasonably inferred in the declaration or in published guidelines and standards authorized by the declaration. That has been the rule since 2007 and it is still the first question in every dispute: where in the documents does this committee get the power it is exercising?

Layered on top of that are five limits that have arrived since. The association must apply and enforce the standards reasonably and equitably on all owners. It may not restrict an owner's choice among options the guidelines themselves offer. It may not enforce setbacks inconsistent with the county or municipal standard. It must state specific reasons when it denies. And as of July 1, 2026, it may not make a building permit a condition of even looking at the application.

Our guide to running an architectural review committee sets out the process end to end; this page traces where each rule came from.

2026 session: the permit prerequisite is gone

CS/CS/HB 803, Chapter 2026-63, was a building permits and inspections bill. At section 11 it added § 720.3035(1)(c), effective July 1, 2026: an association or any architectural, construction improvement or other similar committee of the association may not require a building permit to have been issued by a governmental authority to a parcel owner as a prerequisite for review by the association or committee of proposed construction of structures or improvements on the parcel.

This is a sequencing rule, and the sequence it corrects was a real problem. Many communities required the owner to pull the permit first, which meant the owner spent permit fees and design money before learning the committee objected to the roof color. Reverse that and the owner gets the association's answer first.

Read the provision for what it says and not for more. It governs the prerequisite to review. It does not say the association must approve unpermitted work, and it does not stop the association from conditioning its approval on the owner obtaining the required permits and building to code. What it removes is the gate at the front of the process.

Nothing else in the 2026 session reached architectural review. HB 657, the community association omnibus, died in Senate Rules on March 13, 2026. Chapter 2026-14, the reviser's bill, and Chapter 2026-168, the Chapter 617 rewrite, made technical and conforming changes elsewhere.

2025 session: no amendment to either architectural statute

CS/CS/HB 913, Chapter 2025-175, did not amend § 720.3035 or § 720.3045. It did amend § 718.113, the condominium maintenance and alterations section, at section 9, which is where condominium hurricane protection specifications live. A condominium board that adopted hurricane protection specifications before July 2025 should have them reviewed against the current text.

For homeowners associations, 2025 is a year to state plainly as a year with no change. Boards that put off updating architectural guidelines because they were waiting for the dust to settle after 2024 had a full year in which nothing moved.

2024 session: two chapter laws hit the same statute

Section 720.3035 was amended twice in 2024, by Chapter 2024-205 at section 1 and by HB 1203, Chapter 2024-221, at section 5. Between them the section acquired three things it did not have before:

• A limit on interior and concealed items. Section 720.3035(1)(b) bars enforcement of covenants restricting interior spaces not visible from the property boundaries, and restricts what the association may do about heating and air conditioning systems that are concealed and substantially similar to approved systems.
• A specificity requirement on denials. Section 720.3035(4)(a) requires the association or committee, on denial, to give the owner written notice stating with specificity the rule or covenant relied on and the specific aspect or part of the proposed improvement that does not conform to it.
• Hurricane protection specifications. Section 720.3035(6) requires the board to adopt hurricane protection specifications and bars denial of an application that conforms to them. Hurricane protection for this purpose includes roof systems, shutters, impact-resistant windows and doors, polycarbonate panels and reinforced garage doors.

HB 1203 also amended § 720.3045 at section 6 and § 720.3075 at section 9. The same session's condominium bill, HB 1021, Chapter 2024-244, amended § 718.113 at section 10. For associations, 2024 was the year architectural review stopped being a matter of committee discretion and became a documented procedure with a written record at the denial step.

The specificity requirement is the one that changes committee meetings. A motion to deny that is recorded as "denied, not consistent with community character" does not produce a compliant notice. The minutes and the notice both need the covenant and the nonconforming feature named. Our page on unapproved owner improvements covers what happens when the association gets that step wrong and then tries to enforce.

2023 session: the not-visible items rule arrives

HB 437, Chapter 2023-64, created § 720.3045 at section 3. The section provides that regardless of any covenants, restrictions, bylaws, rules or requirements of an association, and unless prohibited by general law or local ordinance, an association may not restrict parcel owners or their tenants from installing, displaying or storing items on a parcel which are not visible from the parcel's frontage or an adjacent parcel, an adjacent common area or a community golf course, including but not limited to artificial turf, boats, flags, vegetable gardens, clotheslines and recreational vehicles.

Two points a board should hold onto. First, the operative test is visibility, not the item; the list is expressly not exhaustive, so an item nobody thought to name is covered if it cannot be seen from those four vantage points. Second, the statute was created in 2023 and amended in 2024, though it is widely credited to HB 1203. A policy memo that dates the rule to 2024 is probably also dating the association's exposure from the wrong year.

Chapter 2023-64 was a busy bill for this subject. The same act amended § 720.304 at section 2, which is the flag display provision, § 720.3075 at section 4, and § 718.113 at section 1.

2022 and 2021: nothing in the architectural statute

Section 720.3035 was not amended in 2021 or 2022. Its history line runs from Chapter 2007-173 directly to the two 2024 chapter laws. For seventeen years the scope of committee authority was governed by one sentence about what the declaration states or reasonably infers, and most of the case law boards rely on was decided under that version.

CS/CS/SB 630, Chapter 2021-99, did reach adjacent ground: it amended § 718.113 at section 5 and § 720.3075 at section 25. Nothing in 2022 touched either architectural provision; that session belonged to the milestone inspection and reserve study legislation.

The parts of architectural control that live elsewhere

A committee that reads only § 720.3035 will enforce several covenants it cannot enforce. The pieces are scattered, and they move on different schedules.

On flags, § 720.304(2) allows an owner to display up to two portable, removable flags no larger than four and a half by six feet, drawn from the United States flag, the Florida flag, military service flags, the POW-MIA flag and first responder flags, and to erect a freestanding flagpole no more than twenty feet high displaying one United States flag and one other permitted flag, subject to building codes and zoning. A covenant banning flagpoles outright is unenforceable to that extent.

On solar, § 163.04 provides that a deed restriction, covenant, declaration or similar binding agreement may not prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting solar collectors, clotheslines or other energy devices based on renewable resources. The association may determine where on the roof a collector goes, but only within an orientation to the south or within forty-five degrees east or west of due south, and only if that determination does not impair effective operation. The prevailing party in litigation under that section recovers costs and reasonable attorney fees. The section has not been amended since 2008, which is worth saying out loud in a year when everything else has.

On landscaping, § 720.3075(4)(b) provides that association documents may not prohibit, or be enforced so as to prohibit, an owner from implementing Florida-friendly landscaping as defined in § 373.185. A turf requirement enforced against a drought-tolerant replanting is the kind of covenant that fails here. See our discussion of landscaping restrictions and what survives.

Condominiums: what does and does not carry over

Chapter 718 has no counterpart to § 720.3035. The new 2026 permit rule is written into Chapter 720 and reaches homeowners associations and their committees, not condominium boards reviewing unit alterations. A condominium board should not assume it inherited the rule, and should not assume it did not: the fairness of requiring a permit before review is the same, and the association's own documents may already address the sequence.

What Chapter 718 does have is § 718.113. Material alterations or substantial additions to the common elements require approval of 75 percent of the total voting interests unless the declaration provides otherwise, under § 718.113(2). Hurricane protection specifications and the rules on who approves an installation are at § 718.113(5), and the flag provision is at § 718.113(4). For owner alterations inside the unit, the controlling document is the declaration, not the statute. Our guide to material alterations in a condominium works through the difference.

What a board should do with this

1. Pull the architectural application form today and remove any requirement that a permit issue before the committee will review. Keep the permit as a condition of commencing work, not of being heard.
2. Give the committee a denial template that names the covenant or rule and the specific nonconforming feature, and record the same two items in the minutes.
3. Confirm the board has adopted hurricane protection specifications, and that the committee knows it may not deny an application that conforms to them.
4. Audit the guidelines for covenants that § 720.3045 has made unenforceable where the item is not visible from the frontage, an adjacent parcel, an adjacent common area or a community golf course.
5. Check the flag, flagpole, solar, clothesline and landscaping provisions against §§ 720.304(2), 163.04 and 720.3075(4)(b) before the next violation letter goes out on any of them.
6. Date each guideline revision. A committee that cannot show when it adopted a standard has a harder time showing it applied that standard equitably to everyone.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes rewrites architectural guidelines, application forms and denial procedures for homeowners association and condominium boards in Lee, Collier and Charlotte Counties, and defends committee decisions when an owner challenges them. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Architectural Review page.