Florida Condo Inspection Law in Plain English: A Guide for Boards and Property Managers

If you sit on a condo board or manage a building in Florida, two requirements now drive most of your structural compliance: the milestone inspection and the structural integrity reserve study, or SIRS. Between them they answer whether your building is structurally safe and whether you are setting aside enough money to keep it that way. This is the plain-English version, without the statute-by-statute detail, so you can tell what applies to your building and what you owe by when.

The Two Requirements, in One Paragraph

The milestone inspection is a physical inspection of the structure by a licensed engineer or architect. The SIRS is a funding study that projects the cost of maintaining and replacing your major structural components and sets a reserve schedule to pay for it. One asks whether the building is safe. The other asks whether the association can afford to keep it safe. Our Florida Milestone Inspections Explained article covers the inspection in depth, and the two requirements are meant to work together.

Which Buildings Are Covered

Both requirements apply to residential condominium and cooperative buildings that are three or more habitable stories tall. Four-family dwellings of three or fewer habitable stories are exempt. Mixed-ownership buildings, where only part of the building is condo or cooperative, are still covered, and all owners share responsibility for compliance. If you are not sure whether your building crosses the three-story line as the law counts it, that is worth confirming with an engineer before a deadline forces the question.

The Milestone Inspection, Plainly

Your building owes its first milestone inspection when it reaches 30 years of age, or 25 years if your local building department requires the earlier clock because of proximity to saltwater. After the first one, inspections repeat every 10 years. The inspection runs in two phases. Phase 1 is a visual assessment. If the inspector finds signs of substantial structural deterioration, Phase 2 goes deeper with the testing needed to evaluate it. Once the report is done, the association distributes a summary to owners. A building that has received a notice is already on the clock, so the practical move is to schedule the inspection early rather than near the deadline.

The SIRS, Plainly

The SIRS looks at your building's major structural components, the roof, structure and load-bearing walls, foundation, plumbing, waterproofing, and the rest, and estimates their remaining life and replacement cost. Those numbers become a reserve funding schedule. The key change for boards is that you can no longer vote to waive or underfund the reserves tied to these structural components. If a milestone inspection was done recently, it can feed the SIRS, which is why boards so often coordinate the two.

The Deadlines That Actually Matter

For most existing associations, the first SIRS was due by December 31, 2025. A building with a milestone inspection due on or before December 31, 2026 can coordinate the two, but the SIRS can be no later than that date. Milestone deadlines are keyed to your building's age and your local enforcement agency's rules. Miss either and you expose the association to code enforcement and to insurance problems, since Citizens will not cover an association that is out of compliance. The 40-year recertification comparison is worth a read if your building also falls under a county program.

How Boards Usually Handle Both

The efficient path is to run the milestone inspection and the SIRS structural assessment off a single engineering visit, so the condition findings and the reserve numbers come from the same read of the building. Hire a licensed engineer for the structural side, let a reserve professional build the funding schedule if you use one, and put the reserves in the budget. Associations in Broward and across the region handle it this way every year.

Where Boards Get Tripped Up

A few mistakes come up again and again. The first is treating the milestone inspection and the SIRS as one thing. They overlap, but they are separate filings with separate purposes, and doing one does not satisfy the other. The second is assuming a building is too small to be covered, when the three-habitable-stories line is measured in a way that can surprise you. The third is waiting for the county or state notice before scheduling anything. The notice starts a clock, and inspectors and engineers book up as deadlines cluster, so the associations that wait are the ones that scramble. The fourth is still budgeting as if the reserves can be waived. For the structural components a SIRS covers, they cannot. The last is hiring an inspector who is not a Florida-licensed engineer or architect, whose report the enforcement agency will not accept. None of these are hard to avoid, but each one costs time an association on a deadline does not have.

Common Questions About Florida's Condo Inspection Law

Need Help With a Milestone or SIRS in South Florida?

M&P Consulting Engineers handles the structural side of milestone inspections and reserve studies for condominium and cooperative associations across South Florida. If your board is facing a deadline or trying to coordinate both, call 866-531-7621.

Sources

Fla. Stat. 553.899, milestone inspections, Florida Legislature. Checked 18 September 2026.

Fla. Stat. 718.112(2)(g), structural integrity reserve studies, Florida Legislature. Checked 18 September 2026.

Florida DBPR condominium FAQ, Division of Florida Condominiums. Checked 18 September 2026.