The reserve study is the least glamorous document in the package and the one that tells you what the next ten years cost.
This page covers the document. Which building suits you is a different question. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the current position on any building we cover.
A reserve study inventories the major components a building will have to replace, estimates their remaining life and replacement cost, and sets out what should be set aside each year to meet them.
Florida now requires a structural integrity reserve study for the significant structural components, on a schedule tied to building age, and restricts the ability to waive funding for them. For anything not brand new, these are present obligations with present costs.
Read alongside the adopted budget, it tells you whether the monthly fee is honest or merely low.
The seawall or the dune interface. Expensive, long-lived, and catastrophic to defer. It rarely appears in marketing and it is one of the largest single line items a beachfront building carries.
Railings, glass and facade under salt exposure. Corrosion runs faster on the coast. Cycles are shorter and costs are higher than the same components on an inland building of the same age.
The pool deck. On an oceanfront building this is frequently a structural slab over parking or occupied space, and waterproofing failure there is a structural problem, not a cosmetic one.
Mechanical plant. Salt air shortens the life of everything exposed, including generators and air handling.
Compare the recommended annual contribution with what the budget actually contributes. A gap between those two numbers is a future assessment with a date on it.
Look at percent funded, not the balance. A large reserve balance against enormous near-term obligations is not a funded building.
Read the assessment history beside it. A building that has repeatedly assessed rather than funded is telling you how it intends to handle the next item.
When an expense exceeds reserves the association votes a special assessment divided across the units. In a forty home beachfront building, a seawall or a facade programme divided forty ways is a large personal number.
It also affects resale. An open or pending assessment is the most common reason a beachfront resale stalls, and a buyer’s lender will see it too.
A low monthly fee in an old beachfront building is not a saving. It is usually a deferral, and the reserve study is where the deferral is written down.
That one comparison tells you more about the next ten years than any brochure. Ask the desk at Miami Dossier and we will get the reserve study, the adopted budget and the assessment history.
We hold no inventory of our own and we are not the developer. Ask the desk at Miami Dossier and we will tell you what applies to your situation, what does not, and where we would not proceed. Here that starts with the recommended contribution against the budgeted one. Where the question is legal, tax or immigration, we will introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.