Florida Condominiums & HOAs
Florida condominiums and HOAs are communities where much of the home services work is bought by an association rather than a homeowner. The unit owner still books work inside their own home. But the roof, the structure and the shared systems are usually the association’s responsibility, so the decision is made by a board, often through a community association manager, paid for from a budget the owners share, and sometimes awarded by bid. At Riley Summers, we treat association work as its own audience, with separate campaigns, landing pages and messaging built for a group decision instead of a single homeowner.
On this page
- Who Buys the Work
- How Associations Buy
- Homeowner vs. Association Buyers
- The Approved Vendor Framework
- What It Means for the Business
- Related Resources
Who Buys the Work
In a Florida community association, who books the work depends on what needs doing and what kind of community it is. There are usually three buyers.
1. The unit owner or homeowner
In a condominium, the owner books work inside their own unit. In an HOA community of single-family homes, the owner usually owns the whole house, roof included, and books that work themselves. Where the community’s declaration provides for it, though, exterior changes need the association’s architectural approval first, so the homeowner may be waiting on the association before the job can start.
2. The association board
In a condominium, maintaining the common elements is the association’s responsibility. Depending on the declaration, that typically means the roof, the structure and the shared systems. Condo boards must also set hurricane protection specifications for each building, and a board can’t refuse an owner’s hurricane protection that meets them. In an HOA, the association looks after the common areas: shared landscaping, pools, clubhouses and gates. Either way, the decision belongs to a group of volunteer owners spending money they all share.
3. The community association manager
Many associations hire a manager or management company to run the day-to-day work, and in Florida that work needs a state license. The manager is often the first person to look for a vendor, gather quotes and bring them to the board, and many managers look after more than one community.
How Riley Summers helps: Association work is easy to miss if the marketing only speaks to homeowners. We build campaigns that reach each buyer for the work they control, so the business is in front of the manager and the board as well as the owner.
How Associations Buy
Association work rarely gets booked in a single phone call. The money, the approval and often the choice of vendor all go through a process set by Florida law and the community’s own documents.
It’s paid from a shared budget. Each year the board adopts a budget the owners fund together, including reserves for major repairs and replacements. Planned work, such as a roof replacement identified in a reserve study, is usually budgeted ahead. Work that wasn’t planned for may need a special assessment, where the owners are asked to pay more, which can slow the decision down.
It’s approved by the board. Contracts are approved at board meetings, which owners can usually attend. The manager often gathers the quotes, but the board makes the decision, sometimes over more than one meeting.
Larger contracts go to bid. Florida requires competitive bids once a contract passes a set share of the association’s annual budget, reserves included. As of 2026, that’s 5% for condominiums and 10% for HOAs. Associations aren’t required to accept the lowest bid, and emergencies are exempt.
For a home services business, that means a slower, more formal sale than a homeowner job. The business usually has to be found by the manager, make it onto the list of vendors asked to quote, and give the board a reason to choose it that isn’t only price.
How Riley Summers helps: Because boards don’t have to take the lowest bid, the business that looks most qualified has a real chance at the work. We build landing pages and messaging that give managers and boards that reason, and remarketing that keeps the business in front of them through a decision that can take months.
Homeowner vs. Association Buyers
Here’s how an association buyer compares with a homeowner.
| Homeowner | Association | |
|---|---|---|
| Is something wrong? | Usually. The owner has noticed a problem or wants an upgrade. | Often not yet. Much of the work comes from inspections, reserve studies and planned replacements. |
| Decision window | Set by how urgent the problem is | Set by the board’s meeting schedule and budget, often weeks or months |
| Main marketing challenge | Being found when the owner starts looking | Being found by the manager, and making it onto the list of vendors asked to quote |
| How they usually book | Phone or contact form, decided by the owner | Through the manager, approved by the board, sometimes by competitive bid |
| Key metric | Leads per campaign and in total | Leads per campaign and in total, with association inquiries tracked in their own campaigns |
The Approved Vendor Framework
We call our approach to association work the Approved Vendor Framework. The goal is to get the business onto the list of vendors a manager calls, and keep it there. The framework has four steps.
- Reach the Manager
- Speak to the Board
- Be Ready for the Bid
- Stay in Front Between Projects
1. Reach the Manager
The manager is usually the first person to look for a vendor, and they search differently from a homeowner. A homeowner searches for “roof repair near me”. A manager is more likely to search for “condo association roofing contractor”, “HOA pool maintenance company” or “property management plumber”. We build separate paid search campaigns for association work around that kind of term, with one campaign per association service the business wants to win. We keep them apart from the homeowner campaigns, so each has its own budget, ads and results, and homeowner searches don’t use up the association budget. We don’t usually use Local Services Ads for association work, because paid search lets us target the commercial terms managers use. Where we manage a client’s SEO, we can also publish content on their site that answers the questions managers and boards ask, such as what a reserve study means for roof planning or how a project is scheduled around residents.
2. Speak to the Board
A board is a group of owners deciding how to spend money they share, and they have to justify the choice to their neighbors. Ads written for a homeowner talk about speed and convenience. Ads written for a board talk about the things a board has to answer for. Depending on what the business can back up, that means:
- Licensed and insured for association work
- Experience with communities of a similar size
- Work scheduled around residents
- Itemized proposals the board can compare
We use only the claims the business can support, and we leave out anything we can’t verify, such as “best” or “most trusted”.
3. Be Ready for the Bid
Association work often goes to bid, and the manager needs to build a list of qualified vendors quickly. Each association campaign sends visitors to its own landing page, built to answer a manager’s checklist before they pick up the phone:
- The business’s license number
- Proof of insurance
- The kinds of communities it has worked for
- How it handles access, noise and scheduling around residents
- A clear way to request a quote or bid
Each item is included where the business supplies it. We can add form fields built for an association inquiry, such as the community’s name, the number of units, or whether the request is for a bid. Because every extra field can cost inquiries, we test the longer form against the shorter one and keep whichever brings in more qualified leads.
4. Stay in Front Between Projects
Association work comes back on a cycle. Reserve studies and milestone inspections repeat every 10 years, budgets come round every year, and managers often look after more than one community. Remarketing keeps the business in front of managers and board members who have visited its association pages, on Google and, where the client runs paid social, on Meta. Where the client provides a list of the managers and associations it has worked with, we can reach those contacts directly with customer-list audiences, so the business is already known when the next project comes up.
Where advertising stops. A lot of association work is also won through relationships: referrals between managers, a vendor the board has used before, or listings in association vendor directories. Those relationships belong to the business, and we don’t manage them. Our campaigns put the business in front of the managers and boards who are searching, so it makes the shortlist alongside the vendors they already know.
How Riley Summers helps: Association work is won by being known and trusted before the bid goes out. We build campaigns that put the business in front of managers and boards, give them a reason to invite a quote, and keep the business in mind for the next project.
Can community managers find your business?
Riley Summers will review your paid search campaigns and show you whether community association managers and boards searching for vendors are finding your business or your competitors’.
What It Means for the Business
Bigger contracts. A single association contract can cover a whole building’s roof, its exterior painting or a community’s full landscaping contract. One win can be worth many homeowner jobs.
Work that can be planned ahead. Much association work comes from budgets, reserve studies and inspection reports, so it’s known about months in advance. That gives a business more notice of what’s coming than breakdown-driven work does.
Relationships that repeat. Associations that are happy with a vendor can call them again, and a manager who looks after several communities can bring the business into each of them. The value is in the relationship, not just the first job.
A different kind of sale. Association work takes longer to win and needs its own campaigns, pages and measurement. It sits closer to commercial work than to a homeowner job, which we cover in Residential vs. Commercial Marketing. Businesses that treat it as a separate market from their homeowner work are better placed to win it.
How Riley Summers helps: We help Florida businesses market to the associations that buy work in bulk, so they’re on the vendor list when the next project comes up.
Related Resources
About The Author
Mark Riley is a marketing executive and the founder of Riley Summers Marketing Group, where he leads customer acquisition strategy for home services businesses across paid search, Google Local Services Ads, local SEO and paid social media. He rose to VP of Digital at a national legal-marketing agency, where the digital programs he led generated a significant share of its revenue. Over a 15+ year career, he has managed more than $70 million in digital advertising spend, much of it in one of the most expensive and competitive advertising categories in North America. He measures marketing by what it costs to win a booked job, not by traffic or lead volume.