Florida Condo Project Review
After Surfside, the building is underwritten as hard as the borrower. What lenders examine, what the state now requires, and how to read a building before you offer.
The post-Surfside framework, plainly
Florida rewrote condominium safety law after the 2021 Surfside collapse, and lending changed with it. Buildings three stories and taller now face milestone structural inspections (at 30 years, then every 10 — earlier schedules apply near the coast under the framework as enacted) and Structural Integrity Reserve Studies (SIRS) that force associations to fund reserves for structural components rather than waive them. Lenders and the agencies layered their own reviews on top: buildings with unfunded structural repairs, overdue inspections, or evasive answers to safety questions land on restricted lists and lose routine financing. The era of the $200 monthly maintenance fee sustained by deferred repairs is over — and the lending market is the enforcement mechanism.
What a lender's project review examines
- The condo questionnaire: the standardized building interrogation — occupancy mix, ownership concentration, litigation, insurance, budget, and the post-Surfside safety questions about known deficiencies.
- Milestone inspection status: completed and clean, completed with funded repairs underway, or overdue/adverse — three very different lending outcomes.
- SIRS and reserves: whether the reserve study exists and whether the budget actually funds it; special assessments on the horizon show up here first.
- Insurance adequacy: replacement-cost coverage, wind deductibles, and flood placement — Florida association premiums have moved enough to strain budgets, and lenders read the strain.
- Litigation: construction-defect and safety-related suits weigh heaviest; minor disputes are often workable.
- Financials: delinquency rates on association dues and budget realism.
Buyers can request most of this — questionnaire responses, budget, inspection reports, meeting minutes — during the condo-document review period Florida law provides. Read the minutes especially; boards discuss what budgets conceal.
Using the review to your advantage
A building with clean inspections, a funded SIRS, and honest reserves is a stronger asset — safer to own, easier to finance, easier to resell — and worth paying for. A building mid-remediation can be a rational purchase at the right price with the right loan, provided the special-assessment exposure is quantified before you sign, not after. Our practice screens the building alongside your pre-qualification: one call gets the project file requested, and within days you know whether you are financing conventionally, through a portfolio program, or negotiating price against a known assessment. That sequencing turns Florida's condo rules from a hazard into your due-diligence checklist. NMLS# 1967971.
Quick answers
Who pays for the milestone inspection — me or the association?
The association funds building-level inspections and studies from dues and reserves; your exposure arrives as special assessments if repairs outrun reserves. Reading the SIRS tells you how likely that is.
Can I buy in a building with a pending special assessment?
Yes, knowingly: the assessment is quantifiable, negotiable against price, and often payable in installments. What you cannot do safely is buy without asking — the estoppel letter and minutes disclose it.
Do these rules apply to townhomes?
The structural inspection regime targets buildings three stories and taller; low-rise townhome associations largely sit outside it, though reserve and budget review still applies to lending.
