The Reserve Study You Can No Longer Waive

For years many Florida associations voted annually to waive or reduce reserve funding, which kept assessments low and left the building underfunded. The reserve requirements for SIRS items removed that option, which is why so many associations are facing large assessments at the same time. The cost did not appear suddenly; the deferral did.

The change caught many associations at the same moment, which is why so many Florida condominiums are facing large assessments simultaneously. It is worth being clear with a membership that the money is not a new cost created by the law — it is an existing cost that the previous rules allowed to be postponed indefinitely.

A reserve study is only as good as the construction costs behind it. If the numbers came from a generic table rather than from someone who prices Florida work, the study will set an assessment that does not cover the work when it is actually tendered.

It is worth asking your reserve professional where their cost data comes from, and worth having a contractor sanity-check the largest line items. A study that understates the roof and the concrete restoration by a wide margin is worse than none, because it creates false confidence.

1. 01We do not perform reserve studies. A qualified provider does.
2. 02We can provide realistic construction cost input to a study.
3. 03We can price the work a study identifies as due.
4. 04We can help a board sequence work across multiple funding years.

A reserve study built on optimistic construction costs is worse than none, because it sets an assessment that will not cover the work. If your study's numbers were produced without recent Florida contractor input, they are probably low, and a board is better off knowing that now.

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