HOA Fees in Brevard County: What Buyers Should Expect
Most buyers ask about the HOA within ten minutes of walking into a house they like. In Brevard County the answer runs from about fifty dollars a year for a voluntary civic association up to several hundred dollars a month in a maintenance included neighborhood or an oceanfront building. The number by itself tells you almost nothing. What matters is what the association owns, what it must maintain, and whether it has the money set aside to do it.
None of this is legal advice. An attorney should confirm anything specific to your contract or community.
What a Florida HOA actually is
An HOA is a nonprofit corporation created by the developer and governed by covenants recorded in the county public records. Buying a parcel in a mandatory community makes you a member automatically, because membership runs with the land. Florida Statutes chapter 720 governs homeowners associations. Chapter 718, the Condominium Act, governs condominiums, and the two are not interchangeable.
In a single family HOA you own your lot and everything on it. The association owns or controls the common areas: entry features, landscaping in common tracts, perimeter walls, stormwater ponds, private streets never dedicated to the county, gates, pools, and clubhouses. Your dues fund upkeep, insurance, and eventual replacement of those things. Before you sign, section 720.401 requires a disclosure summary telling you that membership is mandatory, that assessments can change, that special assessments are possible, and that failing to pay can put a lien on your property. If it is not delivered before you execute the contract, the contract is voidable within three days after you receive it or before closing, whichever comes first.
What dues actually run across Brevard
Older parts of Melbourne, Rockledge, and Cocoa have subdivisions with nothing recorded, or with a voluntary civic association you can join or ignore. Almost anything platted in the last thirty years has a mandatory one. The brackets below are the shape of the market, not quoted figures. The only number that counts is the current one in that community's adopted budget.
| Structure | What it usually covers | Typical shape of the number |
|---|---|---|
| Voluntary civic association | Entry sign, newsletter, a few events | Roughly fifty to one hundred dollars a year, paid by choice, no lien rights |
| Mandatory HOA, no gate or amenities | Common tract mowing, entry landscaping, ponds, lighting, liability insurance | A few hundred dollars a year |
| Mandatory HOA with pool, clubhouse, or gate | Adds amenity upkeep, pool service, gate repairs, sometimes staff | Commonly one hundred to two hundred dollars a month |
| Maintenance included home or villa | Adds mowing and irrigation on your own lot, sometimes paint or roofs | Frequently two hundred to four hundred dollars a month |
| Townhome association | Exterior structure, roofs, master policy on the shell | Tracks roof age and the insurance renewal |
| Condominium association | Building insurance, roof, elevators, exterior, grounds, often water and sewer | Highest of the group and most sensitive to insurance and reserve rules |
Maintenance included, and master plus sub associations
Maintenance included means the association contracts lawn service on individual lots, not just common tracts. It moves a cost you would pay anyway onto the monthly bill, so a higher number is not automatically worse. Read the scope. Some communities cut and edge only. Others cover irrigation, mulch, exterior painting on a cycle, or roofs.
The second structure that surprises buyers is master plus sub. Large planned communities, Viera being the clearest local example, layer a master association over individual neighborhood associations. The master bills annually for shared parkways, trails, and common landscaping. Your neighborhood association bills separately for what is inside your subdivision. Two invoices, and a listing quoting one of them understates your carrying cost. Ask for both in writing. The same caution applies in new construction, where the developer still controls the board and the first budget can be set before amenities are finished and real operating costs are known.
What dues cover, and what they do not
Dues generally cover common area maintenance, insurance on common property, common area utilities, management, legal and accounting, amenity operation, and reserve contributions where reserves exist. In condominiums and many townhome communities they also cover the building envelope.
Dues almost never cover your own homeowner or flood insurance, your utilities, your taxes, or repairs inside your walls. Dues and property taxes are separate obligations billed by separate entities. In a condominium, section 718.111(11)(f) draws the line: the association insures the property as originally installed but excludes floor, wall, and ceiling coverings, electrical fixtures, appliances, water heaters, water filters, built in cabinets and countertops, and window treatments inside the unit. Those are yours. Building coverage has been the fastest moving line in most association budgets, so read a community's renewal history alongside its storm and insurance exposure.
Condominiums are a different animal
If you are looking at a building in Cocoa Beach, Satellite Beach, or elsewhere on the barrier island, chapter 718 adds two requirements that do not exist for single family HOAs, and both move the monthly number.
Milestone inspections
Section 553.899 requires a milestone inspection for buildings three habitable stories or more that are subject in whole or in part to condominium or cooperative ownership. The first is due by December 31 of the year the building turns thirty, measured from the certificate of occupancy, and it repeats every ten years. A local enforcement agency may require it at twenty five years where local conditions, including proximity to salt water, justify it. A licensed architect or engineer performs it. Phase one is visual, and if substantial structural deterioration is found, phase two follows and can involve testing. Owners pay for whatever the report identifies.
Structural integrity reserve studies
Section 718.112 requires a structural integrity reserve study for each building three habitable stories or higher, repeated at least every ten years. It must cover the roof, the load bearing structure, fireproofing and fire protection, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing and exterior painting, windows and exterior doors, and any other item with deferred maintenance or replacement cost above twenty five thousand dollars. The part that reaches your wallet is the funding rule: for budgets adopted after December 31, 2024, members of a unit owner controlled association that must obtain the study can no longer vote to fund those listed items below the required amount. Buildings that spent years voting reserves down have had to correct that, and the correction arrives as higher monthly assessments, a special assessment, or both.
Florida builds this into resale. Under section 718.503(2) a seller must give you the declaration, articles, bylaws, rules, the most recent annual financial statement and budget, the frequently asked questions sheet, the governance form, the summary of the milestone inspection report where one applies, and the most recent structural integrity reserve study or a statement that none has been completed. You may cancel by written notice within seven days, excluding weekends and legal holidays, after you both execute the contract and receive everything required. That right ends at closing.
Reserves in a single family HOA
Chapter 720 is looser. Under section 720.303(6) an HOA is only treated as having reserves if the developer established them or a majority of the total voting interests approved them, and where they exist members can still vote to waive or reduce funding. That vote lasts one budget year and must be taken again. No statute requires an HOA to commission a reserve study, though reserve amounts must be computed from the estimated remaining useful life and replacement cost of each item. So a community with new roofs and no reserves can look inexpensive for a decade, then hand out a large special assessment.
Section 720.303(7) sets how much scrutiny the books get, from a simple report of cash receipts and expenditures under one hundred fifty thousand dollars in annual revenue up to audited statements at five hundred thousand dollars. Any association with at least one thousand parcels must have audited statements regardless of revenue.
The estoppel letter
An estoppel certificate is the association's written statement of exactly what is owed on a parcel as of a date: regular dues, unpaid balances, special assessments, transfer fees, capital contributions. It keeps you from inheriting someone else's balance. In a condominium, section 718.116(1) makes a new owner jointly and severally liable with the previous owner for assessments that came due before transfer, which is precisely why it matters.
Sections 720.30851 and 718.116(8) set the same terms. The association has ten business days to deliver after a written or electronic request. The certificate is effective thirty days if hand delivered or sent electronically, thirty five days by regular mail. The fee is capped at two hundred fifty dollars where nothing is delinquent, up to one hundred dollars more for expedited delivery within three business days, and up to one hundred fifty dollars more when a delinquent balance exists. Miss the ten business day deadline and the association cannot charge for it at all.
Rentals, pets, and how to verify the rules
Do not rely on a neighbor or a sales office. Rental and pet rules live in the recorded declaration and its amendments, and you want the current version. Section 720.306(1)(h) matters here: an amendment adopted after July 1, 2021 that prohibits or regulates rental agreements generally binds only owners who consent or who take title afterward. The exception is large, because an association may still prohibit rentals of less than six months or limit rentals to three times per calendar year, and that applies to everyone.
Pet rules commonly cap the number of animals or set weight and breed limits. Enforcement has limits too. Under section 720.305 a fine may not exceed one hundred dollars per violation or one thousand dollars in the aggregate unless the governing documents say otherwise, a committee of at least three members who are not officers, directors, or employees must approve any proposed fine, you get at least fourteen days written notice and a hearing, and a fine under one thousand dollars cannot become a lien.
What happens if dues go unpaid
Section 720.3085 allows simple interest at eighteen percent a year when the documents are silent, plus a late fee of the greater of twenty five dollars or five percent of the past due installment. Before recording a lien the association must send notice by certified and first class mail giving forty five days to pay. After recording, a second notice gives another forty five days before a foreclosure action may be filed. The association may then foreclose in the same manner as a mortgage and may recover interest, late charges, costs, and reasonable attorney fees. That is how a few hundred dollars of dues becomes a title problem.
Read the documents before your inspection period ends
Section 720.303 requires official records to be kept at least seven years and made available for inspection or copying within ten business days of a written request, with statutory damages of fifty dollars a day for up to ten days if the association refuses. Associations with one hundred or more parcels have had to post governing documents, budgets, financial reports, insurance policies, and meeting notices to a website or application since January 1, 2025. Work through this list while you can still walk:
- Declaration, articles, bylaws, and every amendment. The amendments are where rental and pet changes hide.
- The adopted budget. Check the reserve line, the insurance line, and whether it balances without pulling from savings.
- The reserve schedule. Compare the balance to the remaining life of roofs, pavement, and pool equipment.
- Two years of meeting minutes. Special assessments, litigation, and deferred repairs get discussed there long before they get billed.
- For a condominium, the milestone inspection summary and the reserve study, or the statement that none exists.
Board meetings must be noticed forty eight hours in advance or mailed seven days ahead, and a meeting to levy a special assessment or amend rules on parcel use requires fourteen days notice.
Questions to ask before you go under contract
- What is the current assessment, how often is it billed, and is there a master association bill on top of it?
- How much has it risen in each of the last three years, and why?
- Is a special assessment pending, approved, or under discussion?
- Is a capital contribution or transfer fee due at closing, and who pays it?
- Are reserves funded, partially funded, or waived, and when was the last waiver vote?
- Is the association in litigation, and does the developer still control the board?
Every statute cited here was checked against the 2025 Florida Statutes published by the Florida Legislature, chapters 718 and 720 and section 553.899. One last point before you count on the state as a backstop. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, through its Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes, regulates condominium associations, but its reach over homeowners associations is narrow. It arbitrates HOA election and recall disputes under chapter 720 and states plainly that it has no authority to investigate complaints under that chapter. Everything else goes to court, one more reason to read the documents first.
If you want a second set of eyes on a community's budget, reserve schedule, or minutes before your inspection period closes, Nichole and I are glad to go through them with you and tell you plainly what we see. Call or text (321) 212-7676.
