Florida's Milestone Inspection and SIRS Rules: What Every Miami Condo Buyer Needs to Know (2026)

On June 24, 2021, Champlain Towers South in Surfside collapsed and killed 98 people. The building had a 2018 engineering report identifying "major structural damage" to the pool deck slab, a $15 million repair estimate the board had spent three years arguing about, and reserves that owners had voted to waive for years. Every element of that story was legal at the time.

None of it is legal now. Florida rewrote condominium law in 2022, amended it in 2023, and amended it again in 2025. The result is the most consequential change to Miami condo ownership in a generation -- not because of the inspections themselves, but because of what they did to the money. The single largest driver of HOA fee increases and special assessments in Miami since 2022 is this law, and it is still working its way through the market.

If you are buying a condo in Miami, this is the framework you're buying into. Here is how it actually works.

The Two Requirements

Florida's post-Surfside regime rests on two separate obligations, and buyers routinely confuse them.

1. The Milestone Inspection

A structural inspection by a licensed architect or engineer, required when a building reaches a certain age and every ten years afterward.

Who it applies to: condominium and cooperative buildings three habitable stories or taller.

When it triggers:

• 30 years after the certificate of occupancy for most of Florida
• 25 years if the building is within three miles of the coastline -- which in Miami-Dade describes most of the condo market. Nearly everything in Brickell, Edgewater, Downtown, and the entire barrier island from South of Fifth to Sunny Isles falls inside that line.

How it works: in two phases.

• Phase 1 is a visual examination. The engineer walks the building, reviews what's accessible, and reports whether there are signs of "substantial structural deterioration."
• Phase 2 is triggered only if Phase 1 finds a problem. It's a substantive investigation -- destructive testing, core samples, load analysis -- and the association has 180 days from the Phase 1 report to file a progress report with a timeline for completing it.

Findings must be filed with the local building department and distributed to every unit owner. If Phase 2 finds deterioration, repairs become mandatory.

Miami-Dade's wrinkle: the county already had a 40-year recertification program before Surfside. The state milestone rule now sits alongside it. A building can find itself managing both the county's recertification cycle and the state's milestone cycle, and the two don't always line up.

2. The Structural Integrity Reserve Study (SIRS)

This is the part with the money in it.

A SIRS is an engineering-based reserve study that does two things: inspects the condition of specific structural components, and produces a funding plan showing how the association will pay to maintain and replace them over 30 years.

Who it applies to: the same population -- residential condos and co-ops three habitable stories or taller. It must be updated at least every ten years.

What it must cover -- eight categories, by statute:

1. Roof
2. Load-bearing walls and other primary structural members
3. Fire protection systems
4. Plumbing
5. Electrical systems
6. Waterproofing and exterior painting
7. Windows and exterior doors
8. Any other item whose deferred maintenance or replacement would cost more than $25,000 and would negatively affect any of the above

The deadline: the initial SIRS was due December 31, 2025 for existing buildings. That date has already passed. A building that still hasn't completed one is out of compliance today, and that is a fact you can and should ask about.

The Rule That Changed Everything: You Can No Longer Waive Reserves

For decades, Florida condo owners could vote to waive or reduce reserve contributions. Boards did it routinely to keep monthly fees low, and buyers rewarded them for it. Champlain Towers South had done exactly this.

For any budget adopted on or after December 31, 2024, owners can no longer vote to waive or underfund reserves for the components a SIRS covers. The reserve line is now mandatory, and it must be based on the SIRS funding plan.

This is the mechanism behind the fee increases. A building that had been contributing nothing toward a $12 million roof-and-waterproofing horizon suddenly has to fund that horizon, on a schedule, starting now. In older buildings with decades of deferred reserves, the jump has been severe -- and where the SIRS found work that needed doing immediately, the answer has been a special assessment on top of the higher fee.

The buildings on our list of Miami condos that have lost value since 2022 skew heavily toward older, large, investor-heavy towers. This law is a significant part of why.

What Changed in 2025 (HB 913)

The 2022 law was blunt, and by 2024 associations were struggling to comply. Engineers were booked out, the December 2024 deadline was unrealistic, and some buildings faced reserve requirements they could not fund without triggering mass owner defaults. House Bill 913, effective mid-2025, made several substantive adjustments:

The SIRS deadline moved from December 31, 2024 to December 31, 2025, with further coordination allowed for buildings synchronizing their SIRS with a milestone inspection.

"Three habitable stories" replaced the vaguer "three or more stories," and small buildings -- four-family dwellings with three or fewer habitable stories above ground -- were exempted.

Associations can now borrow to fund reserves. Loans, lines of credit, and special assessments are explicitly permitted as reserve funding mechanisms, with the appropriate board or member approval. This matters because it lets a building spread a large structural bill over time instead of hitting owners with it in a single assessment.

A two-year pause after a milestone inspection. If a building has completed its milestone inspection, it may defer its SIRS for up to two consecutive budget years to concentrate on the structural repairs the inspection identified. After the pause, it must complete an updated SIRS before resuming reserve contributions.

The funding plan must show a positive balance. A SIRS now has to include a baseline funding plan demonstrating that the reserve balance for all covered components stays above zero across the entire study period. No more plans that quietly go negative in year fourteen.

Conflict-of-interest disclosure. Engineers and contractors who bid on a SIRS must disclose in writing if they also intend to bid on the repair work the study identifies. The concern was obvious: an engineer who profits from the repair has an incentive to find things to repair.

What This Means for Fees, by Building Type

The impact is not evenly distributed, and understanding the pattern tells you what to expect in a given tower.

Buildings delivered after roughly 2018 are mostly fine. They're years from their first milestone, modern construction, and their initial SIRS generally found little. Their fees have risen -- everyone's have, because insurance repriced -- but the structural reserve component is modest.

Buildings from the 2000s boom -- the huge Brickell, Edgewater, and Downtown towers delivered 2004 to 2010 -- are approaching or inside their first 25-year milestone window right now. Most have completed their SIRS. The good ones funded reserves reasonably and absorbed the change as a fee increase. The ones that had waived reserves for fifteen years are the ones issuing assessments.

Buildings from the 1970s through 1990s are where the pain concentrates. These have already been through one or two milestone cycles, they have real deferred maintenance, and many had never seriously reserved for it. Aventura, Bal Harbour's older towers, Brickell Key's first generation, and much of the mid-century barrier-island stock fall here. Some have handled it well; some are facing six-figure per-unit assessments.

We track fees per square foot across 212 buildings in our HOA fee ranking. A low fee in an older building is no longer a positive signal on its own -- it can mean the SIRS bill simply hasn't been folded into the budget yet.

The Documents to Demand Before You Buy

Florida requires sellers to provide certain association disclosures. Do not stop at what's required. Ask for all of the following, and treat a seller or association that can't produce them as having answered your question.

1. The Milestone Inspection report -- Phase 1, and Phase 2 if one was triggered. If the building is past 25 years (coastal) or 30 years (inland) and no inspection exists, that is a compliance failure and a red flag.
2. The SIRS -- the complete study, not a summary. Read the component condition assessments and the 30-year funding schedule.
3. Current reserve balances against the SIRS schedule. Is the building on plan, behind, or catching up? Behind means an assessment or a fee jump is coming.
4. The last three years of approved budgets. Watch the reserve contribution line. A sudden jump tells you when the building started complying.
5. Any special assessment levied, approved, or under discussion. Get the last twelve months of board meeting minutes. Assessments are discussed long before they are approved.
6. The master insurance policy and premium history. The other half of the fee-increase story.
7. The estoppel letter at contract -- it will disclose approved assessments, but not ones still being debated, which is why the minutes matter.
8. Engineering reports of any kind from the last ten years, whether or not they were called "milestone" reports.

If you're financing, understand that lenders read these too. A building with an open Phase 2 finding, an unfunded SIRS, or a pending assessment can be ineligible for conventional financing, which shrinks the buyer pool and hits resale value directly.

How to Read What You Find

A few interpretive rules that experienced Miami buyers use:

• A completed SIRS with a funded plan and a higher fee is the good outcome. The building did the work and priced it in. This is what you want to see.
• A completed SIRS with a low fee and no assessment deserves a hard second look. Either the building is genuinely in excellent shape, or the funding plan hasn't been adopted yet.
• No SIRS at all, in August 2026, is non-compliance. Walk away or price accordingly.
• A pending assessment is not automatically disqualifying. A known, quantified bill for identified work is a negotiating point. An unquantified problem -- Phase 2 underway, no estimate yet -- is the situation to avoid, because you can't price it.
• Ask who's on the board and how long they've served. Buildings that got ahead of this had boards that started early. Buildings that didn't often had turnover, disputes, or a culture of keeping fees low at any cost.

What Sellers Should Know

If you own in a building that has completed its SIRS, funded reserves, and finished its structural work -- say so, prominently, in the listing. It is now a genuine selling point, and buyers who understand the law will pay for the certainty.

If you own in a building with an assessment pending, disclose it early and completely. Buyers who discover it late walk, and buyers who discover it late and feel misled tell other agents. The assessment will be priced into your sale either way; the only variable is whether it also costs you the deal.

Related Reading

• Miami Condo HOA Fees: 212 Buildings Ranked
• Which Miami Condo Buildings Lost Value Since 2022
• Miami Condo Price Per Square Foot: 210 Buildings Ranked
• Miami Condos That Allow Short-Term Rentals

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This article describes Florida statute as amended through HB 913 (2025) and is general information, not legal advice. Statutory details, deadlines, and local enforcement vary; confirm specifics with a Florida real estate attorney and the association before relying on them.

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