The Condo Reckoning: What Florida's Building Safety Law Is Still Doing to South Florida's Market

The Condo Reckoning: What SB 4-D Is Still Doing to South Florida's Market in 2026

Special assessments. Soaring HOA fees. An 11-month inventory overhang. Three years after Florida passed its landmark building safety law, the condo market in Broward and Palm Beach County is still working through the consequences — and buyers have more leverage than they've had in years.

In June 2021, the Champlain Towers South in Surfside collapsed, killing 98 people and triggering the most significant overhaul of Florida's condominium laws in the state's history. The legislation that followed — Senate Bill 4-D, signed into law in May 2022 — was designed to ensure that nothing like it ever happened again. Three years later, the law is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It's also reshaping the condo market across Broward and Palm Beach County in ways that buyers, sellers, and owners are still reckoning with in 2026.

The short version: if you own a condo in an older South Florida building, your costs have almost certainly gone up — in some cases dramatically. If you're looking to buy one, you now have more negotiating leverage than the market has offered in years. And if you're trying to sell one, understanding how buyers are evaluating your building's compliance status has become as important as pricing the unit itself.

What SB 4-D Actually Requires

Strip away the legislative language and SB 4-D comes down to three obligations for any Florida condominium building three stories or taller.

Milestone Structural Inspections. Buildings that are 30 years old or older — or 25 years old in coastal jurisdictions that have adopted the earlier trigger, including parts of Broward and Palm Beach County — must undergo a two-phase structural inspection. Phase one is a visual examination by a Florida-licensed engineer or architect covering load-bearing walls, foundations, floor and ceiling systems, columns, beams, and the building envelope. If Phase one identifies concerns, Phase two requires a more detailed investigation and engineering analysis.

Buildings reaching their 25 or 30-year milestone in 2025 or 2026 must complete their inspections by December 31st of that year. Structural Integrity Reserve Studies (SIRS) — detailed financial assessments of what it will cost to maintain and repair structural components — must be completed no later than December 31, 2026.

Mandatory Reserve Funding. This is where the financial impact has been most acute. As of January 1, 2025, condominium associations are required to fully fund reserves based on their SIRS recommendations. The previous practice — which was extremely common in Florida — of allowing owners to vote to waive or reduce reserve contributions is no longer permitted for buildings three stories or taller. Associations that spent decades operating with underfunded reserves must now collect significantly higher monthly fees, levy special assessments to catch up, or both.

Full Financial Disclosure. Associations must now provide buyers with detailed documentation of their inspection results, reserve funding status, and any outstanding structural concerns. The seven-day window buyers receive to review condo documents has become genuinely important — and any buyer not using it fully is taking on risk they may not fully understand.

The Financial Hit: Special Assessments Are Real and They Are Large

The reserve funding mandate is not a theoretical future cost. It is landing on owners right now, and in some South Florida buildings, the numbers are staggering.

Forty percent of Florida condo owners have faced special assessments in the last three years, according to analysis published in early 2026. In Miami-Dade high-rises, monthly HOA fees jumped nearly $500 per month in 2025, with insurance components alone averaging $377 per month and professional management fees rising more than 40%. Some buildings now charge over $2,000 per month in total fees.

The examples from Broward County alone illustrate the scale of what's happening. At The Summit in Hollywood Beach — a pair of 25-story towers built in 1982 — owners were hit with a $56 million special assessment. That worked out to nearly $99,000 per unit on average, on top of existing maintenance fees already running above $0.80 per square foot monthly. In percentage terms, the assessment represented roughly 16% of each unit's average sales price.

These are not outlier cases. Buildings across Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, Boca Raton, and Delray Beach are working through similar situations — some more orderly than others. The combination of years of deferred maintenance, the end of reserve waiver voting, and sharply higher insurance premiums has created a financial reckoning that is being absorbed unit by unit, building by building, across the two-county region.

What It's Doing to the Market: An 11-Month Inventory Overhang

The financial pressure on condo owners is translating directly into market dynamics. Condo inventory in Broward County stood at 11 months of supply in April 2026 — firmly a buyer's market, and a striking contrast to the 4.6-month supply on the single-family side. In Palm Beach County, condo inventory has declined to 8.2 months but remains elevated compared to single-family homes.

Condo median prices in Broward declined 7.86% year-over-year in April 2026, from $280,000 to $258,000. Statewide, condo prices were down approximately 10.8% from their 2023 highs, with 92% of major condo markets in Florida showing year-over-year price declines.

The market has split sharply along age lines. According to Miami Realtors Association data, sales of condos in buildings less than 25 years old were actually up 2% last year. But sales of condos in buildings more than 25 years old — the ones squarely in the SB 4-D crosshairs — fell 6%. Buyers have become sophisticated about the distinction, and they're pricing older inventory accordingly.

The bifurcation makes sense when you consider the total cost of ownership. A condo listed at $300,000 in a 1985 building with $1,800 in monthly HOA fees, a pending special assessment, and unresolved inspection findings is a materially different financial proposition from a $375,000 unit in a 2010 building with $600 in monthly fees and fully funded reserves. Buyers who understand this — and increasingly, they do — are making offers that reflect the full picture.

The Opportunity Hidden in the Dislocation

For buyers who have the patience and the diligence to navigate SB 4-D properly, the current condo market in Broward and Palm Beach County offers something that hasn't been available for years: genuine negotiating leverage.

With 11 months of inventory in Broward, sellers of older condos are competing hard for a smaller pool of buyers. Days on market are elevated. Price reductions are common. And for buyers who do their homework — reading the milestone inspection report, reviewing the SIRS, understanding the reserve funding status, and factoring in the real total cost of ownership — there are transactions to be made at prices that reflect the uncertainty, not just the list price.

The key discipline is understanding what you're buying. An older building that has completed its milestone inspection with a clean Phase 1 report, has a fully funded SIRS, and carries a reasonable HOA fee is a very different asset from one that has passed its inspection deadline, has an outstanding Phase 2 investigation, and is still determining how it will fund deferred repairs. Both might be listed at similar prices. They are not similar purchases.

New construction, meanwhile, is the cleanest play for avoiding compliance uncertainty entirely. Buildings under 25 years old don't require milestone inspections yet, and while they are still required to have SIRS within the first year of unit conveyance, they haven't accumulated decades of deferred maintenance. Newer buildings in Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and the Fort Lauderdale market are holding their value better precisely because buyers can underwrite them with greater confidence.

HB 913: Some Relief, But Not a Reset

Recognizing the financial burden SB 4-D was placing on owners — particularly those on fixed incomes in buildings facing large assessments — the Florida Legislature passed House Bill 913 in 2025. The bill gave condo boards additional flexibility on certain deadlines and provided short-term reserve relief in specific circumstances.

It was a meaningful adjustment, but not a fundamental change to the law's core requirements. Milestone inspections are still mandatory. Reserve funding is still required. The 40-year recertification programs that Miami-Dade and Broward County had in place before SB 4-D remain on top of the statewide requirements for all building types. The direction of the law — toward greater transparency, funded reserves, and regular structural accountability — is not reversing.

For owners and buyers, HB 913 is best understood as a refinement, not a reprieve. The underlying compliance obligations remain in place, and the financial reckoning for buildings that deferred maintenance for decades is still working its way through the system.

What This Means for Buyers

If you are considering a condo purchase in Broward or Palm Beach County, the single most important thing you can do is treat the seven-day document review window as the serious due diligence opportunity it is. The documents you are entitled to receive — including the milestone inspection report, the SIRS, the current reserve funding level, and any outstanding special assessments — tell the financial story of the building you are considering joining.

Ask specifically: Has the building completed its milestone inspection? If so, what did Phase 1 find? Was a Phase 2 required? What is the current reserve funding percentage relative to the SIRS recommendation? Are there any pending or anticipated special assessments? What are the current monthly HOA fees, and have they increased significantly in the past two years?

A building that answers those questions with clean, fully funded, no-surprises documentation is worth paying more for. A building that can't — or won't — answer them clearly is telling you something important about what ownership there will actually cost.

For a detailed breakdown of what the current market looks like across Boca Raton, Coral Springs, and Parkland, see our 2026 South Florida market report.

What This Means for Sellers

Sellers of older condos in Broward and Palm Beach County are operating in a market where buyers are more informed and more skeptical than at any point in recent memory. Overpricing without accounting for a building's compliance status, HOA fee trajectory, or outstanding assessment exposure is a reliable way to sit on the market.

The most effective approach is transparency first. If your building has clean inspection results and funded reserves, make that part of your marketing — it is genuinely a competitive advantage over the buildings around you that can't say the same. If your building has challenges, pricing to reflect them honestly — rather than discovering them during contract negotiations — produces better outcomes for sellers and keeps deals from falling apart.

The buyers who are actively shopping older condo inventory in South Florida right now are largely sophisticated, often cash-heavy, and looking for value in the dislocation. Meeting them with accurate pricing and full disclosure is the path to a clean transaction.

Looking Ahead: Is the Worst Over?

The MIAMI Realtors chief economist noted in early 2026 that condo inventory is "tightening again" and that the trend is "likely to hold in 2026, resulting in increased buyer competition and stronger price appreciation" as the market absorbs the compliance shock and buyers adjust to the new ownership economics. The worst of the special assessment wave may be behind many buildings — those that have already completed inspections and funded their reserves are on stable footing going forward.

The buildings still ahead of their inspection deadlines, or still working to bring reserve funding into compliance, represent the remaining uncertainty in the market. As those situations resolve — one way or another — the condo market in Broward and Palm Beach should gradually stabilize and the gap between older and newer inventory should narrow.

For now, the law is doing exactly what it was intended to do: surfacing the real financial condition of South Florida's older condominium buildings, making that information available to buyers, and pushing associations to fund the maintenance their buildings actually require. The process is disruptive, and it is expensive for many owners. But for a region that watched 98 people die because a building's structural problems went unaddressed for too long, the disruption is the point.

Data sourced from MIAMI Realtors April 2026 market reports, Florida Realtors SunStats, Long Yield Substack February 2026 Florida housing analysis, WLRN January 2026 South Florida condo market coverage, Redfin HOA fee data, ResiClub Analytics, and Miami Condo Minute. Article prepared by The Friendly Scoop, powered by Homes by Cusi · Keller Williams Realty.