What Boca Raton Condo Sellers Need to Know About the 2026 Reserve Law
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
A Boca Raton condo seller sits down to sign a listing agreement in 2026, and the first surprise isn't the suggested price. It's the size of the folder the listing agent hands over. Two years ago, a resale closing might have included a declaration, a budget, and a one-page rules sheet. Today's buyer gets a structural integrity reserve study, a milestone inspection summary if the building has completed one, and seven full business days to walk away after reading all of it. None of that existed for Florida condo sellers in this form before July 1, 2025.
That folder is not paperwork trivia. It has become the single biggest variable in how a Boca Raton condo actually sells this year, ahead of staging, ahead of the view, and in some buildings, ahead of price.
Florida's amended condominium disclosure statute, Fla. Stat. §718.503(2)(d), raised the resale buyer's cancellation window from three business days to seven, excluding weekends and legal holidays, for contracts signed on or after July 1, 2025. That change came through House Bill 913, the same law that rewrote how condo associations fund their reserves.
The documents a seller must now hand over under that statute include:
A seller who hands over a stale reserve study to answer a buyer's question is really handing that buyer a week to walk away the moment they find a number they don't like. Getting these documents current and complete before the sign goes in the yard, rather than scrambling for them after an offer arrives, is now part of pricing a Boca Raton condo correctly.
Boca Raton's headline numbers for the trailing three months through May 2026 look like a straightforward buyer's market. The median sale price sat at $831,000, down 3.1% from the same window a year earlier. At the same time, the median price per square foot climbed to $471, up 15.3% year over year, based on Redfin's June 2026 market data.
A median falling while price per square foot rises in the same city, over the same window, is not what a single, uniform market produces. It's what shows up when two different markets get reported as one number.
The split traces back to the reserve law. Boca Raton sits almost entirely inside Florida's coastal milestone-inspection zone, which means most of the city's condo towers hit their first mandatory structural inspection at 25 years old instead of the statewide default of 30. A large share of Boca's inventory went up during the 1970s through 1990s construction boom, so wide stretches of the city, particularly east of I-95 and along A1A near the Boca Raton Inlet, are hitting that 25-year window at the same moment the 2026 full reserve funding mandate took effect.
| Building location | Milestone inspection trigger | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Coastal zone (most of Boca Raton) | 25 years from certificate of occupancy | Most oceanfront and Intracoastal towers |
| Inland, outside the coastal zone | 30 years from certificate of occupancy | Buildings set back from the coast |
If your building's certificate of occupancy predates 2001, you're very likely already inside that compliance window. Owners in newer or already-compliant towers are selling close to full per-square-foot value. Owners in older buildings carrying looming inspections, unfinished reserve studies, or pending assessments are the ones absorbing both the price cuts and the extra days on market, which drags the citywide median down even while the healthy half of the market holds its price per square foot.
Senate Bill 4-D created milestone inspections and Structural Integrity Reserve Studies in 2022, in direct response to the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside. House Bill 913, effective July 1, 2025, refined how the funding side works. A few dates matter more than the rest right now.
Unit-owner-controlled associations that existed on or before July 1, 2022, were required to complete their first SIRS by December 31, 2025. That deadline has already passed. If a seller's association missed it, that gap is exactly the kind of thing a buyer's attorney flags during the review period the new disclosure statute now guarantees them.
As of January 1, 2026, associations can no longer waive or underfund reserves for the eight structural components the law identifies:
That eighth catch-all threshold is indexed to inflation now. For 2026, the Division of Condominiums set it at $25,675, according to a legal column in the Boca Raton Tribune this May. Associations still working through their first fully-funded budget under this rule are the ones most likely to be discussing a special assessment at their next board meeting, whether or not that discussion has reached the minutes yet.
One more date is still ahead of us this year. Any association with a milestone inspection due by December 31, 2026, is allowed to complete its SIRS at the same time as that inspection, but under no circumstances can the SIRS come after that date. A wave of Boca buildings still has this deadline in front of them before the year ends.
Citizens Property Insurance has stopped issuing or renewing policies for condos that lack a completed SIRS and milestone inspection, and private carriers are following the same pattern, according to insurance advisors tracking the rollout this year. That alone can knock a unit out of a buyer's price range before financing even enters the conversation.
Financing is its own separate wall. Roughly 5,000 Florida condo buildings are currently locked out of conventional Fannie Mae financing as of May 2026, according to reporting compiled by governance and compliance trackers following the rollout. Florida properties have made up a disproportionate share of that ineligible list for years. A Bisnow analysis citing Sun-Sentinel reporting found Florida buildings represented more than a third of the list as of an October 2023 count, and the number of flagged buildings nationwide has grown substantially since. A well-qualified buyer with excellent credit cannot get a conventional loan on a unit in a building that hasn't met the requirements, no matter how good the price looks on paper.
Confirming a building's current financing eligibility before listing, rather than discovering it after an accepted offer falls apart in underwriting, has become a real part of preparing a Boca Raton condo for the market.
Glass House Boca Raton, the nine-story tower rising at 280 E. Palmetto Park Road downtown, secured a $70 million construction loan this year to fund its vertical build-out, with completion expected in late 2027. The building's 28 residences, ranging from 2,504 to 3,865 square feet and priced between $2.7 million and $8 million, have already crossed the one-third sold mark since sales launched in 2024, per reporting from Multi-Housing News.
A few miles away, the city council approved an eight-story, 76-unit luxury condominium on the grounds of the Boca Raton Resort in March 2026, designed by Hart Howerton on a portion of the property currently used as a golf-course maintenance yard.
Neither project carries a legacy reserve shortfall or a deferred milestone inspection. Their SIRS obligations start compliant on day one. That's exactly why a certificate of occupancy date has quietly become a selling point builders lean on, not just a construction detail.
Does a completed milestone inspection also satisfy the SIRS requirement? No. A milestone inspection is a physical safety assessment of the building's condition. The SIRS is a financial planning document that uses those structural findings to set mandatory reserve funding. Florida law does allow a milestone inspection completed within the past five years to stand in for the visual portion of the SIRS, but the financial study itself is a separate report your association still has to produce.
If my building hasn't finished its SIRS, can I still sell? Yes, but the resale disclosure statute now requires you to tell the buyer that no SIRS has been completed. That single disclosure often becomes the opening line of a buyer's price negotiation, or the reason a lender declines to fund the loan at all.
Does any of this apply to my townhome or a garden-style HOA, not a high-rise? Only if the building is three or more habitable stories. Florida's SIRS and milestone inspection rules apply specifically to condominium and cooperative buildings at that height threshold. Single-family homes and most two- and three-story townhome associations fall outside the statute, though many still set aside informal reserves for large shared expenses.
If you're weighing whether to list a Boca Raton condo this year, the building's paperwork deserves the same scrutiny as its view. Tinka Ellington Group has spent years inside these disclosure packets and reserve studies across the Boca Raton to Pompano Beach corridor. Request a Private Consultation before you set a price, and find out what your building's compliance status is actually telling the market.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
We are committed to guiding you every step of the way—whether you're buying a home, selling a property, or securing a mortgage. Whatever your needs, we've got you covered.
Luxury Presence
101 N Federal Hwy 5th Flr Boca Raton FL 33432