Florida's post-Surfside condo reforms hit their first hard deadline on December 31, 2025. Every qualifying condominium association that existed before July 1, 2022 was supposed to have completed its Structural Integrity Reserve Study by then, with no more votes to waive or delay the funding. That deadline has already passed. For a buyer looking at an older tower in Boca Raton, the practical question isn't whether this law exists anymore. It's whether the specific building you're considering is already in compliance, and if it isn't, what that tells you before you ever schedule a showing.
Most national coverage of these reforms repeats the same age threshold: buildings three stories or taller must complete a milestone inspection at 30 years old. That's true as a baseline. It is also the wrong number for most of Boca Raton. Because the city falls within the state's three-mile coastal zone, the trigger here is 25 years, not 30, for any qualifying building along that stretch. The City of Boca Raton confirms this directly on its own building recertification program page, which sets the age threshold at 25 years for condominium or cooperative property located within three miles of a coastline. A building that a buyer assumes has five more years before this paperwork becomes mandatory may have already crossed that line five years ago.
That five-year gap matters because of when Boca Raton actually got built. The city's condominium boom ran through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, which means a large share of the coastal and near-coastal inventory is now somewhere between 30 and 55 years old. Under the 25-year coastal rule, a building with a Certificate of Occupancy from 2001 is already inside the compliance window today, in 2026. That's not a distant future date. It's a document that either exists in the association's files right now or doesn't.
Two Reports, One Signature Building
Buyers researching this topic online often run into two terms that sound interchangeable and aren't. A milestone inspection asks a narrow, structural question: is this building safe right now. A licensed engineer walks the property, checks load-bearing components, columns, foundations and other structural elements, and looks specifically for concrete spalling and corrosion, the leading cause of structural deterioration in South Florida's older concrete towers.
A Structural Integrity Reserve Study asks a different question: how will the association pay to keep the building that way. It covers eight specific components, roof, load-bearing structure, fire protection, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing, windows and exterior doors, plus any other item whose failure would cost more than roughly $25,675 in 2026 dollars and affect one of those seven categories. The SIRS assigns each component a remaining useful life, a replacement cost, and a required funding schedule. You need both documents, not one or the other, and a building can pass its milestone inspection while still carrying a badly underfunded SIRS.
The deadlines for these two documents also don't run on the same clock. Milestone inspections are due at 25 or 30 years and then every 10 years after that, depending on the building's location. SIRS completion had its own general deadline of December 31, 2025 for associations that existed before July 1, 2022, with one narrow exception: a building whose milestone inspection is due on or before December 31, 2026 can complete both studies together, but the law is explicit that no SIRS may be completed after that date under any circumstance. That backstop is now roughly three months away.
What the Inspection Itself Costs in Boca
Boca Raton's coastal exposure and construction inventory push these engagements toward the higher end of statewide ranges. Typical mid-rise buildings in the area run Phase 1 milestone inspections in the $3,000 to $8,000 range, while larger beachfront high-rises along A1A or near the Boca Raton Inlet, where salt exposure accelerates rebar corrosion, can run $10,000 to $20,000 or more. A full SIRS engagement for a mid-to-large building typically adds another several thousand dollars on top of that.
| Building Type | Typical Milestone Inspection Cost | Typical Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-rise, inland or Intracoastal | $3,000 – $8,000 | 4 to 6 weeks (Phase 1) |
| Oceanfront high-rise, A1A corridor | $10,000 – $20,000+ | 4 to 6 weeks Phase 1; 8 to 12 weeks if Phase 2 testing required |
These aren't fees a buyer pays directly. They matter because the association pays them, and how an association handles a $10,000 to $20,000 unplanned engineering bill is itself a small preview of how it will handle a much larger repair bill later.
The Percentage That Tells You More Than the List Price
Once you have the actual SIRS report in hand, the number worth calculating isn't the total reserve balance. It's the funding percentage for any component with a short remaining life. Take the current reserve balance allocated to a specific item, divide it by what the study says is needed to fully fund that component given its remaining useful life, and you get a percentage. A component funded above 70% with more than 10 years of life left is generally fine. A component funded below 70% with less than 10 years remaining is worth a direct question to the board. Below 50% funded on a short-life item is worth treating as a serious pricing conversation, not a footnote.
This is exactly the math that has gone wrong elsewhere in South Florida over the past two years, producing the kind of six-figure special assessments that made headlines at buildings like the Cricket Club in North Miami and Mediterranean Village in Aventura, where reserves had been waived for years before the law required otherwise. Those specific buildings sit outside Boca Raton, but the underlying mechanism isn't geography-specific. Any tower from the same construction era, waiving the same kind of reserve funding for the same number of years, carries the same exposure. A completed SIRS with a clean funding percentage is the closest thing a buyer has to proof that a given building isn't heading down that path.
What Just Changed at City Hall
This isn't a static, years-old law sitting quietly on the books. Boca Raton's City Council took up building recertification requirements directly at its meeting the week of September 4, 2026, considering an ordinance that aligns the city's local rules with the state statute, clarifies which building stories count toward recertification, and adjusts deadlines for submitting inspection reports and completing required repairs, while also allowing property owners to request extensions. The city is actively tuning the enforcement mechanics around this law right now, in the same month this article is being written, which is a good reminder that the rules a buyer reads about in a general guide may already be slightly out of date by the time an offer gets written.
Old Tower Versus New Construction
Part of what makes this diligence step confusing for buyers is that it doesn't apply evenly across Boca Raton's condo market. A newer luxury building, like Alina Residences or Glass House, isn't carrying decades of deferred structural reserve funding because its first SIRS obligation is years away. The Boca Raton Resort's newly approved 76-unit tower at 501 E. Camino Real, an eight-story, roughly 505,840-square-foot project designed by Hart Howerton that cleared City Council unanimously this spring, will be in the same position once it's built. Buyers comparing an established 1980s tower against something newer aren't just weighing amenities and finish level. They're weighing whether this entire category of diligence even applies yet, or whether it's still a decade off.
What to Request Before You Write an Offer
For an older building, the practical steps are straightforward. Ask for the completed SIRS and milestone inspection reports directly, not a summary of them. Ask for the last three years of board meeting minutes, since funding problems and pending special assessments tend to show up there before they show up in a monthly dues statement. Ask for the current insurance policy and premium history, since insurance cost is now one of the biggest drivers of both dues increases and special assessments across Florida's older condo stock.
As of January 1, 2026, associations with 25 or more units are required to make governing documents, budgets and reserve studies accessible through a dedicated website or app, and owners have a legal right to view a completed SIRS or milestone report within 30 days of its completion. If an association can't produce these documents quickly once you're under contract, that delay is itself informative.
Straight Answers to Three Questions That Come Up
Is a milestone inspection the same thing as a SIRS? No. The milestone inspection checks whether the building is currently safe. The SIRS checks whether the association has enough money set aside to keep it that way. A building can pass one and still be poorly positioned on the other.
What if the building I'm considering hasn't completed its SIRS yet? The general deadline of December 31, 2025 has passed for associations that existed before July 1, 2022. The only remaining exception applies to buildings whose milestone inspection is due on or before December 31, 2026, which allows the SIRS to be completed at the same time. Outside that narrow case, a building without a completed SIRS today is behind schedule, and that's worth asking about directly rather than assuming it will resolve itself before closing.
Does any of this apply to single-family homes or townhome HOAs? No. These requirements are specific to condominium associations under Chapter 718 and cooperative associations under Chapter 719, and only for buildings three or more habitable stories. Single-family and townhome associations governed by Chapter 720 are exempt.
If you're comparing an older Boca Raton tower against something newer and want a second set of eyes on what a SIRS report or milestone inspection actually says before you write an offer, that's exactly the kind of paperwork my title and closing background was built for. Kristen Reilly is happy to walk through it with you before it becomes a surprise instead of a plan. Let's Connect.