Florida condo law changed. The deadlines are real.
Post-Surfside, Florida rewrote the rules for condominium and cooperative buildings: mandatory milestone inspections, structural integrity reserve studies, real reserve funding, and real records obligations. Truestead Law counsels boards trying to comply, owners facing the assessments, and buyers deciding whether a building's paperwork says "safe" or "walk away."
Serving Florida associations, unit owners & buyers statewide.
Four steps every 3-story-plus building must get right.
Know your dates
Milestone inspections at 30 years (25 near the coast) and every 10 years after — F.S. § 553.899. Miss the trigger and everything downstream slips.
Inspect
Phase one visual inspection by a licensed engineer or architect; substantial deterioration triggers phase two. Reports go in the official records — and stay there 15 years.
Fund
The structural integrity reserve study (SIRS) under F.S. § 718.112(2)(g) prices the building's structural future — and reserve funding is no longer optional the way it used to be.
Disclose & comply
DBPR reporting, owner records rights, and lender and insurer scrutiny. Compliance is now a marketability issue, not just a legal one.
Florida HOA & condo matters we take on.
Counsel for boards on inspection obligations, engineer engagement, phase-two fallout, reserve funding decisions, and the DBPR reporting trail. The 2026 deadlines explained →
Director duties, meeting and voting requirements, conflicts of interest, and keeping board action defensible when the assessments get contentious.
Violations, fines, and selective-enforcement fights — for associations that need order and owners who need fairness (we run conflict checks; we don't play both sides of the same street).
Records inspection requests under Chapters 718 and 720, and what to do when a board stonewalls — or when an owner's requests cross into harassment.
Special assessments done correctly, association liens, and payment disputes on both sides of the ledger.
Before you buy into a 3-story-plus building: milestone report, SIRS, reserves, and budget review — the documents that now decide whether a unit is financeable. Pairs with our real estate practice.
Compliance counsel that speaks engineer, banker, and statute.
Deadline triage first. We start every association engagement by mapping the building's actual statutory dates — milestone trigger, SIRS status, reporting obligations — so the board knows exactly what is late, what is due, and what it costs to wait.
Flat fees where the work is defined. Records-request responses, covenant notices, document reviews, and buyer-side diligence are quoted flat. Litigation and contested matters are scoped honestly before we start.
Real estate is our home field. The same firm handles closings, deeds, and titles across Florida — so condo advice comes from people who see what lenders and title companies actually do with these buildings every week.
Whether a particular association, board, or owner position is viable depends on the governing documents and facts, which only an attorney can evaluate after review. This page is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Association and owner representations are conflict-checked; we do not represent adverse parties in the same dispute.
Your unit is an asset. The building's paperwork is its title.
A Florida condo without a clean milestone report and funded SIRS is getting harder to sell, harder to finance, and more expensive to insure. We treat association compliance the way we treat title work: get the record right, and the property stays marketable. And when a building's numbers say "special assessment coming," our estate and elder-law side helps owners plan for it instead of being blindsided.
Common Florida HOA & condo questions.
A mandatory structural inspection under F.S. § 553.899 for condo and co-op buildings three or more habitable stories tall — generally at 30 years of age (25 near the coast, subject to local determination) and every 10 years after. Phase one is visual; substantial deterioration triggers a deeper phase two. Reports are official records the association must keep for at least 15 years.
Under the 2025 amendments, most covered associations had to complete the structural integrity reserve study by the end of 2025 — with one exception: if your milestone inspection is due on or before December 31, 2026, you may complete the SIRS with it. Either way, December 31, 2026 is the wall. If your board hasn't engaged an engineer yet, start now.
Demand the records (you have statutory inspection rights), put the board on written notice, and escalate: directors who ignore statutory safety obligations face fiduciary-duty exposure, and non-compliance shows up fast in insurance quotes and unit resales. An attorney letter citing the exact statutory obligations often moves a stalled board more than a year of angry meetings.
The milestone inspection report (and any phase two), the SIRS, current reserve funding, recent budgets and meeting minutes, and any pending or discussed special assessments. Lenders increasingly decline units in non-compliant buildings — which makes this diligence about your resale value, not just your safety.
The milestone/SIRS regime targets condominium and cooperative buildings three or more habitable stories. Traditional single-family HOAs under Chapter 720 have their own governance, records, and enforcement rules — different statute, same kinds of disputes, and we handle those too.
Get ahead of the deadline — or the dispute.
Board, owner, or buyer — a focused consultation maps your exact obligations, rights, and dates under the current statutes.