Application requirements

Your declaration sets the list, not the committee

An architectural review committee cannot decide, on its own, what it wants to see in an application. Its power to require anything, a site plan, a materials list, a deposit, a signed waiver, comes from the same place its power to approve or deny comes from: the declaration and any published guidelines the declaration authorizes. If a requirement is not stated there, or reasonably implied by what is, it is at minimum contestable.

"The authority of an association or any architectural, construction improvement, or other such similar committee of an association to review and approve plans and specifications for the location, size, type, or appearance of any structure or other improvement on a parcel... shall be permitted only to the extent that the authority is specifically stated or reasonably inferred as to such location, size, type, or appearance in the declaration of covenants or other published guidelines and standards authorized by the declaration of covenants."

Source: Florida Statutes Section 720.3035, State of Florida

That is Florida's wording, but the underlying principle, authority flows down from the declaration, not up from committee preference, holds wherever architectural review exists. How each state expresses that limit, and what remedy an owner has if a committee exceeds it, varies. Check your own state's statute and your declaration.

What most applications end up asking for

There is no single national checklist for HOA architectural applications, and this course's research did not find one. But because a committee's own authority is generally limited to reviewing location, size, type, and appearance, a complete application usually needs to give the committee enough to judge exactly those four things: where the change sits on the lot, its dimensions, what it is, and what it will look like. In practice that often means a site or plot plan, dimensions or a scaled drawing, materials and colors, and sometimes a photo or elevation.

Your own declaration or architectural guidelines are the only place the specific, binding list lives. If your association has not written one down, the Community Associations Institute publishes architectural review resources worth reviewing as a starting point for building one.

An incomplete application can legitimately pause the clock

Where a review deadline exists, silence past it sometimes favors the owner, but a legitimate request for missing information can pause that clock rather than run it out. California's solar statute is the clearest documented example of this pattern:

"If an application is not denied in writing within 45 days from the date of receipt... the application shall be deemed approved, unless that delay is the result of a reasonable request for additional information."

Source: California Civil Code Section 714, State of California

That 45-day number and the deemed-approved consequence are specific to California solar applications, not a general rule. Whether your state or your declaration has an equivalent deadline, and whether an incomplete submission pauses it, is worth confirming before you rely on silence in either direction. See this course's lessons on approval timelines and on complete versus incomplete applications for more.