How do we hire a drone pilot to inspect HOA roofs or help with a reserve study?

By OurHOA · General information · Revised October 19, 2026

How an HOA board hires a drone pilot for roof or reserve inspections: FAA Part 107 checks, TX and FL drone privacy consent, flying over residents, and owner notice.

Part of the HOA board handbook: vendors, projects and upkeep.

The short answer

A drone is a good way to see roofs, gutters, chimneys and flat roof membranes without putting a person on a ladder, and it gives the reserve specialist dated photos to compare next time. Hire a pilot who holds an FAA remote pilot certificate, check it yourself, and get written permission from any owner whose home or yard will be photographed. Treat the footage as a screening tool. It tells you where to send a roofer, not whether the decking is soft or the flashing leaks. Drone privacy rules differ by state and your governing documents decide who maintains which roofs, so use this as education, not legal advice.

What drone photos can and cannot replace

Good uses: a roof condition survey before the reserve study visit, storm damage photos for an insurance claim, a look at a clubhouse roof the board has never seen, and a record of gutters and downspouts before a paint project. What a drone cannot do is touch anything. It will not find a soft spot under shingles, test a membrane seam, read moisture in the deck, or look under the edge of a tile. Ask the pilot to mark suspect areas on a site map so a roofer can check them on foot. Some inspections must be done by a licensed person whatever tools they use. In Florida, a condominium's structural integrity reserve study under Statute 718.112(2)(g) rests on a visual inspection performed or verified by a licensed engineer or architect, or a certified reserve specialist, and the milestone inspection under 553.899 is done by a licensed architect or engineer. Drone images can feed those reports, but they do not count as the inspection. Our guide on preparing for a reserve study site visit covers what the provider needs from the board.

What the pilot must hold under FAA rules

Any paid drone job falls under 14 CFR Part 107. Under 107.12, the person flying must hold a remote pilot certificate with a small unmanned aircraft rating, and under 107.65 they must have passed the test or finished recurrent training within the previous 24 calendar months. Ask for a copy of the certificate and the date of the last training, then look the pilot up on the FAA Airmen Inquiry site by last name. The drone itself must be registered: the FAA charges $5 per drone, the registration lasts three years, the registration number must be marked on the aircraft, and the drone must meet the Remote ID rule. If your community sits near an airport in controlled airspace, the pilot needs FAA authorization under 107.41, which most get through the LAANC system in near real time. Ask the pilot to confirm the airspace before you book a date. Height is rarely an issue for roof work: 107.51(b) caps flights at 400 feet above ground, with an allowance near tall structures. Night flights require extra training and anti-collision lighting under 107.29, so schedule daylight.

Privacy consent in Texas, Florida and Colorado

Texas Government Code 423.003 makes it a Class C misdemeanor to capture an image of a person or privately owned real property with a drone with intent to conduct surveillance, and 423.006 lets the owner sue for $5,000 per episode, or $10,000 if the image is disclosed. Section 423.002 lists lawful uses. The ones that fit HOA work are (a)(6), when the property owner or lawful occupant consents, and (a)(20), images captured by a licensed professional engineer in the practice of engineering, with no individual identifiable. There is no general exception for a commercial pilot. Florida Statute 934.50(3)(b) bars using a drone to record privately owned property or its occupants in violation of a reasonable expectation of privacy without written consent, and people are presumed to have that expectation where they cannot be seen from ground level, such as a fenced backyard. None of the exceptions in 934.50(4) covers roof inspections or reserve studies, and 934.50(5) lets the owner sue. Colorado has no general drone privacy statute in the 2026 Colorado Revised Statutes, but local ordinances and the declaration can still apply. The association can consent for common area it owns. For roofs on homes owners own, get each owner's signed consent, or have a licensed engineer capture the images and keep people out of frame.

Flying over residents and cars

Section 107.39 bars flying over a person who is not taking part in the operation unless that person is under a covered structure or inside a stationary vehicle, or the drone meets one of the over-people categories in subpart D of Part 107. Unless the pilot can show the drone meets one of those categories, plan to keep people out from under the flight. Pick a weekday morning, mark the work area with cones at each building, and tell owners to stay inside or away from that row while the drone is overhead. Ask the pilot whether a visual observer will help watch the sky and the ground. Under 107.31 the pilot or observer must keep the drone in sight with their own eyes, which means the pilot will move from building to building, and they need a parking spot near each one.

What the agreement should say

A one-page agreement is enough for most jobs. List the buildings and roofs to be flown, the date and a rain date, and the deliverables: labeled photos per building, an overview image, a site map marking problem areas, and the file format. Say who owns the images. The association should own them and may share them with its reserve specialist, roofer and insurer, and the pilot should not post them online or use them in advertising without written permission. Set a retention rule, such as the pilot deletes raw footage 90 days after delivery. Require the FAA certificate and drone registration as attachments, and a certificate of insurance naming the association as an additional insured. Confirm the liability policy covers drone work, since some business policies exclude aircraft. Sample clause: 'Contractor will capture only images needed to document roof and exterior conditions of the listed buildings, will avoid capturing identifiable people, and will deliver all images to the Association, which owns them.'

Owner notice and consent wording

Send notice at least three weeks ahead so consent forms come back in time. A notice paragraph: 'On [date] between 8 am and noon, a licensed drone pilot hired by the association will photograph the roofs of buildings 1 through 12 for the reserve study. The drone will not record backyards or windows, and photos go only to the board, the reserve specialist and our roofer. Please sign and return the attached consent by [date]. If you do not consent, the pilot will skip your roof and a roofer will inspect it from a ladder at a time that suits you.' The consent form needs the owner's name, address, signature and date, and the same limits on use. Keep the signed forms with the project file. A workable timeline: week 1, agree on scope and check the pilot's certificate; week 2, notice and consent forms; week 5, confirm airspace, count consents and build the flight list; week 6, fly; week 7, photos and site map delivered; week 8, roofer checks flagged areas and the board decides on repairs or reserve updates.

Mistakes boards make

Letting an owner's nephew fly the roofs for free is the most common. If no one is paid, the person may still be flying for the association's business, and without a certificate the board has no proof of training or insurance when the drone hits a car. Others: skipping consent because the association maintains the roofs, which does not make the association the owner; sharing roof photos in an owner email blast where backyards show; treating a clean drone survey as proof the roofs are sound; and booking the flight without checking airspace, so the pilot cancels on the day. If the photos point to a replacement, our guide on planning a major HOA project walks through bids, funding and owner communication.

Sources

These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.

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