This is the single most consequential change to Florida condominium ownership in a generation, and most buyers meet it for the first time in a closing document.
This page describes the regime in general terms. Whether a specific building has complied, what its study found, and what follows from that are questions for the building’s own records and for a Florida attorney. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the current position on any building we cover.
Following the Surfside collapse in 2021, Florida legislated a structural safety regime for condominium buildings. It has three connected parts.
A milestone inspection, a structural inspection of the building by a licensed engineer or architect at defined building ages and at intervals thereafter, with earlier triggers for buildings close to the coast.
A structural integrity reserve study, an assessment of the building elements that carry structural and safety significance, establishing what they will cost to maintain or replace and over what horizon.
And reserve funding, with the ability of an association to waive or underfund reserves for those structural items now restricted rather than routine.
Together these convert deferred maintenance from something a building could postpone indefinitely into something it has to price, disclose and fund.
For decades, many Florida associations kept assessments low by waiving reserves. That was legal, it was popular with owners, and it worked until the building needed the money.
The current regime removes much of that flexibility for structural items. Buildings that had been deferring are now producing engineering reports that quantify what deferral cost, and funding schedules that put it on the assessment.
The practical consequence is that older buildings have been repricing their true cost of ownership, sometimes sharply, sometimes through special assessments running into significant sums per residence.
A buyer walking into that mid cycle inherits it. A buyer who reads the study first can see it coming.
The legislation has been revisited more than once since it was introduced, including adjustments to timing, to what may be included in a study, and to the flexibility associations have in funding. Further amendment is plausible.
For that reason this page describes the shape of the regime and not its current parameters. Deadlines, thresholds and the precise mechanics are exactly the sort of detail that changes, and a page that publishes them confidently ages into a liability.
What has not changed, and is unlikely to, is the direction: structural condition must be inspected, quantified and funded, and it is disclosed to buyers. Plan around the direction and confirm the parameters with a Florida attorney at the time you are buying.
The milestone inspection report. Whether one has been performed, when, and what it found. A report identifying required repairs is not by itself alarming, since buildings need work. A report that identifies substantial structural repair, or a building past its trigger with no report, is a different matter.
The structural integrity reserve study. What the building will need, when, and what it costs. This is the closest thing to an honest forecast of your assessment that exists.
The reserve funding position. What is actually in reserves against what the study says is needed. The gap between those two numbers is the part that eventually arrives as an assessment.
The assessment and special assessment history. What has already been levied, and what the board has discussed. Board minutes are frequently more candid than budgets.
A funded building with a completed study and identified work in progress is generally the reassuring case, even where the assessment is higher than a neighbour’s. The cost is known, disclosed and being paid.
A building with a completed study and a large unfunded gap has a known future cost that has not yet been allocated. It may still be the right building, but the gap belongs in your ownership budget rather than in the future.
A building past its trigger without a completed inspection is the one to ask hardest about. The absence of a report is not evidence of a sound building. It is an absence of information about a building, and that is a different thing.
None of these is a verdict. New construction, which is the bulk of what this desk covers, sits outside the near term inspection cycle entirely, but will enter it in due course, and the reserve discipline applies from the beginning.
We can tell you what documents exist, request them, and tell you what we have seen across the buildings we cover.
We cannot tell you what an engineering finding means for a structure, and we do not offer a view on whether a building is safe. That is an engineer’s judgment on the report and an attorney’s on the disclosure.
What we will do is make sure the documents are in front of you before you sign, and that somebody qualified has read them.
It is an engineer’s account of what a building will need and when, written without a sales purpose. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier and we will request the inspection report, the reserve study and the funding position on any building you are considering, and put you in front of counsel and an engineer to read them properly.
We hold no listings and we are not the developer. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier and we will go through the current position on any building we cover, including the parts a sales gallery would rather skip. Where a question is legal, tax or structuring, we introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.