MIAMI — Nearly five years after the Surfside condo collapse killed 98 people, the safety laws Florida passed in response are now producing their most consequential effects — and Miami’s condo market is absorbing the full financial impact in real time.
The Laws Behind the Crisis
Florida enacted two central pieces of legislation following the June 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse: SB 4-D and SB 154, which established mandatory Milestone Inspections and Structural Integrity Reserve Studies (SIRS), and the more recent HB 1021, focused on governance and financial transparency.
The Milestone Inspection requirement is narrow but consequential: it applies specifically to condominium and cooperative buildings three or more habitable stories tall, is state law uniform across every Florida county, and requires structural inspections once buildings reach a set age threshold.
The SIRS requirement sits alongside it, forcing condo and co-op associations to study — and, critically, fully fund — reserves for major structural components. The core change from pre-Surfside practice: associations can no longer vote to waive or underfund those reserves.
This is distinct from Miami-Dade’s older building recertification ordinance, which predates the Milestone law and covers a broader universe of structures — rental buildings, offices, warehouses, and mixed-use towers — once they hit their own age threshold, administered locally rather than by the state.
2026: Bill Comes Due
The laws themselves passed years ago, but their financial consequences were phased in on a delay, and that delay has now expired for a large share of Miami’s older housing stock.
The combined effect of mandatory reserve funding, Milestone compliance costs, and an already-hardened property insurance market has produced a wave of special assessments now landing on unit owners, with figures ranging from $10,000 to well over $100,000 per unit depending on the building’s age and condition.