What is a Structural Integrity Reserve Study, and does our Florida condo need one?
A Structural Integrity Reserve Study, or SIRS, is a Florida-specific reserve study required for condominium and cooperative buildings three stories or higher. It must cover a defined list of structural and life-safety components, and it must be performed on a set interval. Its most consequential feature is what follows from it: for the components a SIRS covers, boards may no longer vote to waive or underfund reserves.
A note on sourcing. Florida has amended its structural safety and reserve statutes more than once since 2022, and the deadlines have moved. Every claim on this page is attributed to its source below and re-verified on the cadence shown in the update log. Where a question turns on facts specific to your building, this page says so rather than guessing. Nothing here is legal advice.
Why this law exists
The Surfside collapse in June 2021 killed 98 people. The investigation that followed found, among much else, a building with known and documented structural deterioration and a reserve fund nowhere near the cost of fixing it. The board had been discussing the repairs for years. The money was not there.
Florida's response was to remove the discretion that let that gap open. The SIRS requirement and the milestone inspection requirement were enacted together, and the reserve waiver ban is the part with teeth: a board can no longer vote away the funding for the components most likely to kill somebody.
What the statute requires
Florida Statutes chapter 718 requires associations controlling residential condominium buildings three stories or more in height to have a structural integrity reserve study performed on the interval the statute specifies, covering the enumerated components, and prohibits the waiver or reduction of reserve funding for those components. Florida Statutes chapter 718, structural integrity reserve study provisions. Verify the operative section, the current interval, and the cost threshold against current statute before relying on this summary.
In plain English
If your building is three stories or taller, somebody qualified has to look at the roof, the structure, the fireproofing, the plumbing, the electrical, the waterproofing, the windows, and the exterior doors, and put a number on what each will cost and when. Then you have to fund it. Not fund it if the membership votes to. Fund it.
The reserve waiver ban is the real change
Boards focus on the study because it is the thing they have to buy. The consequential part is what happens after.
Under the prior regime, a Florida association could put reserves in the budget and then hold a vote to waive or reduce them, and many did so every single year. Assessments stayed flat, owners were content, and the deferred cost compounded quietly until a roof or a riser stack forced the issue as a special assessment.
For SIRS components that path is closed. The practical consequence for a board that has been waiving reserves for years is a step change in assessments, sometimes a large one, and it is better to model that deliberately over a defined ramp than to discover it during budget season.
What this means for your budget
Three things worth understanding before the first SIRS lands on your table:
- The number may be much larger than your current reserve line. A building that has waived reserves for a decade is not starting from zero, it is starting from behind, because the components have aged the whole time.
- Structural components are expensive and long-lived. Waterproofing and concrete restoration on a coastal high rise are not roof-and-paving numbers. Salt air accelerates the deterioration that drives them.
- Your lending eligibility is entangled with this. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already scrutinize deferred maintenance and special assessments in condominium projects. A building with an unfunded SIRS and a pending structural assessment is exactly the profile that gets a project found ineligible, which affects every owner's ability to sell. See the Fannie and Freddie page.
What boards should do
- Confirm your building height under the Florida Building Code, not by counting floors from the parking lot. Mixed-height communities need this determined per building.
- Find out when your milestone inspection is due, and sequence it before the SIRS if you can. Inspection findings are real condition data, and a study built on them is better than one built on assumptions.
- Ask providers which portions they perform in house. The visual inspection and the funding analysis have different qualification requirements, and a firm that subcontracts one of them should say so upfront.
- Model the assessment ramp before the study is final. If the fully funded number is a large step up, the board needs a plan to present alongside it, not a number delivered cold at an owners meeting.
- Do not treat the SIRS as the end of the work. It covers the enumerated structural components. Your pool, your paving, your amenities, and your mechanical systems still need a conventional reserve study, and most Florida associations need both.
If your association is not in Florida
Nothing in chapter 718 reaches a community outside the state. What does reach it is the lender rule, which is national: the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reserve requirement applies to condominium projects everywhere. Colorado associations have their own regime under CCIOA, and a newer transition study requirement on top of it.
Sources
- Florida Statutes chapter 718 (Condominium Act), structural integrity reserve study and milestone inspection provisions
- Florida Statutes chapter 719 (Cooperative Act), corresponding provisions
- Florida Building Code, building height definitions
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, ongoing investigation of the Champlain Towers South collapse
- Community Associations Institute, National Reserve Study Standards
Common questions
Which buildings does a SIRS apply to?
Residential condominium and cooperative buildings three stories or more in height, measured under the Florida Building Code. Two-story buildings are outside the requirement, as are single family homeowners associations, which are governed by a different chapter of Florida law entirely. If your community mixes building heights, the requirement attaches building by building rather than to the association as a whole.
What components must the study cover?
The statute names them specifically rather than leaving it to professional judgment: roof, structure including load-bearing walls, fireproofing and fire protection systems, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing and exterior painting, windows and exterior doors, and any other item with a deferred maintenance or replacement cost above the statutory threshold. A general reserve study that does not address each named component does not satisfy the requirement.
Can our board still vote to waive reserves?
Not for the components a SIRS covers. This is the change that matters most and the one boards most often miss. Florida associations spent decades routinely waiving or partially funding reserves by member vote. For SIRS components that option is gone, which means the study does not merely inform the budget: it sets a floor under it.
How does a SIRS relate to the milestone inspection?
They are two separate requirements that arrived together and are frequently confused. A milestone inspection is a structural safety inspection performed by an engineer or architect on an age-based schedule. A SIRS is a reserve funding study. The milestone inspection tells you whether the building is safe; the SIRS tells you whether you have the money to keep it that way. A building can need both in the same year, and findings from the inspection properly feed the study.
Who is allowed to perform one?
The visual inspection portion must be performed by qualified personnel as the statute defines them, which includes engineers, architects, and reserve specialists depending on the component. The funding analysis itself does not carry the same restriction. Boards should ask any provider directly which portions they perform themselves and which they subcontract, and get that answer before signing rather than after.
We are a two-story building. Does any of this apply to us?
The SIRS requirement does not. Florida still requires reserve disclosure and still requires that budgets address reserves, and the general reasons for having a study are unchanged: your roof and your paving do not care how many stories the building has. What changes is that funding remains a board decision rather than a statutory floor.
Update log
- Aug 20, 2026 Page published. Under legal review.