Can You Put Solar Panels on a Florida Townhouse?

Updated October 10, 2026

Two rows of houses can look the same from the street and be opposite legal things. One owner can hire an installer. The owner next door cannot, because the roof is not theirs. This page is how to tell which house you have. The association rules, once you know you own the roof, are the HOA page. Permits and the utility are the laws page.

Find the chapter, not the sign

The sign at the entrance can say townhomes, villas, or patio homes and still be wrong about the deed. Florida puts these communities in two different chapters.

• Chapter 720 is a homeowners association. You typically own your lot and the building on it, including the roof. The association enforces rules. It does not own the roof.
• Chapter 718 is a condominium. You own the unit. Everything that is not a unit is a common element, owned by the owners together. In most condo declarations the roof is a common element. Sometimes the roof over your unit is a limited common element: reserved for your use, and sometimes yours to maintain, but still not a piece of the unit you can rebuild at will.

The document that says which one you are is the recorded declaration. A “Declaration of Condominium” is Chapter 718. A “Declaration of Covenants” for a homeowners association is Chapter 720. The deed should match. The county property appraiser’s page for the parcel often says condominium as well. If you would rather ask than read, ask the management company one question: are we 718 or 720? Do not accept “it’s a townhouse” as the answer. That is the question, not the reply.

If the roof is yours

You are in the same statute as a detached house. People call Florida Statute 163.04 the Solar Rights Act. Its own title is “Energy devices based on renewable resources.” A deed restriction cannot prohibit solar collectors, or have the effect of prohibiting them. The association may steer the panels to a south-facing part of the roof, within 45 degrees east or west of due south, and only if that spot does not impair the system. You still file their architectural application. None of that is a ban. The details, including the fact that Florida does not set a statewide number of days for the board to answer, are on the HOA page. Do not relearn them here.

Owning the roof does not mean every roof can hold the array. Shared walls do not change shingles, tile, or a roof that is already due for replacement. That is the roof page. The license of the company is the installer guide.

If the roof is shared

Section 163.04 protects a condominium owner within the boundaries of the unit. It does not hand you the common roof. Florida Statute 718.103 says the common elements are the parts of the condominium property that are not the units. If the declaration puts the roof there, an individual owner does not get to penetrate it for a private system. The association insures that roof, warrants the last replacement, and maintains it for every unit. One owner’s pipes through it are everyone else’s leak.

The board can still put solar on that roof. Florida Statute 718.113(7) says the board may, without any requirement for approval by the unit owners, install solar collectors or other renewable-energy devices on the common elements or association property, for the benefit of the unit owners. The governing documents cannot take that power away. Read the limit in the same sentence. It is the board’s installation, for the owners as a group. It is how a building offsets the meter that serves the lights, the elevator, or the pool, or how the association decides a shared system is worth doing. It is not a statute that lets you claim the south slope for your own electric bill and send the neighbors the holes.

A unit owner can still use 163.04 inside the unit. A patio or court that the declaration puts inside the unit boundaries is a different conversation from the roof, and it still has to be a place a system can actually work. Patio railings are excluded. Section 163.04 does not apply to patio railings in condominiums, cooperatives, or apartments. Clamping a panel to the balcony rail is the case the statute steps away from.

So the realistic paths, if the declaration says the roof is common, are these. Ask the board whether it will install under 718.113(7), and accept that the power serves the building, not your private meter. Read the declaration for any limited common element that is actually inside your maintenance duty and still not a free pass to drill. Or decide that a private rooftop array is not available in this building. A salesperson who says “townhouse law is the same as a house” has not read the declaration.

The three-story line is the old statute

You will still see, including on older explainers, a sentence that the protection applies only to dwellings of three stories or less. That limit is not in the 2026 text of section 163.04. It was removed when the statute was amended in 2008. The current sentence covers residential dwellings and the interior of a condominium unit. It does not count floors. A taller building is not automatically legal for a private array either. Height never fixed the ownership problem. If the roof is common, it is common on a two-story building and on a four-story building.

What to do before you take a quote

Get the declaration, or the management company’s answer on 718 versus 720, before you sit through a sales appointment. A quote for a roof you do not own is a quote the board can ignore, and the installer may still want a deposit. If you are buying the townhouse rather than improving one you already own, the same question belongs in the contract. The buying page is the rest of what to ask when the listing already has panels. Who owns the roof decides whether those panels were even the seller’s to promise.

If you do own the roof, the association’s approval is one wait, and the city’s permit is another. The permission-to-operate page is that sequence. Do not let the association’s “we’ll get to it” stand in for a permit number.

This page is general information, not legal advice. The declaration decides what the roof is. A Florida association lawyer is the person to read it if the management company and the document disagree.