Buying a Palm Beach condo? Read the SIRS before you fall in love

The unit can be perfect and the building can still be a financial trap. Since Surfside, Florida law requires older condo buildings to inspect their structure and fund their reserves — and the paperwork that proves it exists (or doesn't) is exactly what you should demand before you write an offer.

After the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida rewrote the rules for how condominium associations maintain and pay for aging buildings. Two documents came out of that: the milestone inspection and the Structural Integrity Reserve Study, or SIRS. If you're buying a condo in a mid- or high-rise building, these two documents tell you more about your future cost of ownership than the granite countertops ever will.

What the law actually requires

The framework started with Senate Bill 4-D in 2022 and was refined by House Bill 913, which took effect in July 2025. In broad strokes, for condominium buildings that are three or more habitable stories tall, Florida now requires:

• Milestone inspections — a structural inspection of the building performed by a licensed engineer or architect at defined age thresholds, and periodically thereafter, to confirm the building is structurally sound.
• A Structural Integrity Reserve Study (SIRS) — a study that inventories the building's major structural and long-life components (roof, load-bearing walls, foundation, waterproofing, and so on), estimates their remaining useful life and replacement cost, and lays out a baseline funding plan so the money is actually there when those components need work.

Crucially, HB 913 tightened how associations must fund reserves and narrowed the old workarounds that let boards vote to waive or underfund them. The point of the law is to stop associations from kicking structural maintenance down the road until it becomes an emergency.

What to demand before you offer

Florida gives condo buyers the right to review association records, and you should use it fully before you're emotionally committed. Ask the seller or listing agent for:

• The SIRS — the full study, not a summary. You want to see the component list, remaining useful life, and the funding plan.
• The most recent milestone inspection report — including any Phase 2 findings if a Phase 1 inspection flagged issues.
• The current budget and the last year or two of financials — so you can see how the association actually spends versus what it collects.
• The reserve funding percentage — how fully funded the reserves are against what the SIRS says they should be. A well-run building is trending toward fully funded; a building at a small fraction of its target has a bill coming from somewhere.
• Meeting minutes and any notice of upcoming special assessments — boards often discuss looming assessments long before they're formally levied.

Why this matters: the special assessment

When a building has deferred structural work and hasn't reserved for it, the money has to come from the owners — all at once — through a special assessment. In Palm Beach County and across South Florida, condo special assessments tied to structural repairs and reserve shortfalls have commonly landed in the range of $20,000 to $150,000 per unit, and larger figures aren't unheard of in the hardest-hit buildings. That's a bill that can arrive months after closing, and as the new owner, it's yours. A "great deal" on a unit in an underfunded building is frequently just a special assessment you haven't been told about yet.

Red flags in a reserve study

Once you have the documents, here's what should make you slow down:

• No completed SIRS at all, or a study that's conspicuously overdue with no clear explanation.
• Reserves funded at a small fraction of the SIRS target while major components are near the end of their useful life — the classic setup for a large near-term assessment.
• Major structural components (roof, waterproofing, concrete restoration) listed as at or past their useful life with no funding earmarked.
• A history of reserve waivers or repeated votes to reduce reserve contributions.
• Milestone findings that reference needed repairs that don't appear anywhere in the budget or funding plan.
• A recent, unexplained jump in monthly dues — sometimes the first sign a board is scrambling to catch up.

None of these automatically kills a deal. A building that just completed its SIRS, disclosed a needed repair, and is funding it on a clear schedule may be a perfectly sound buy — arguably safer than a quiet building that's done none of the homework. The goal isn't to avoid every building with a repair on the horizon; it's to make sure you know the number before you own it, not after.

The move: underwrite the building, not just the unit

Treat the SIRS, the milestone report, and the reserve funding percentage as due-diligence items on par with the inspection of the unit itself. If the association can't or won't produce them, that reluctance is information. Read the building's finances before you fall in love with the view.