Your SIRS number is not fixed.
Reserving is mandatory. The amount is not — it is set by the study, and the law ties your budget to your most recent one. Change the findings, change the funding.
Five ways a new study lowers the number.
Under a straight-line (component) method, the association maintains a separate reserve line for every required item. Each line has to reach its own replacement cost by its own date, so a building with one short-life component — a roof at year 6, say — carries a punishing contribution from day one, even while other accounts sit idle with money they will not need for twenty years.
Under a pooled (cash-flow) method, the required structural components are funded as a single group. The test is no longer "is each bucket full?" but "does the pool have the cash when each project falls due?" Idle money in the long-life components is available to the near-term ones, so the same building can be fully funded on a materially lower contribution — one that starts low and escalates gradually rather than spiking.
What the law says
An association's reserve accounts may be pooled for two or more required components. Reserve funding for the paragraph (g) SIRS components may only be pooled with other paragraph (g) SIRS components — so SIRS reserves and ordinary reserves sit in two separate pools. The reserve funding in the proposed annual budget must be sufficient to ensure available funds meet or exceed projected expenses for all components in the pool, based on the funding plan of the most recent SIRS.
HB 913 (2025) added the provision that matters most to a board: a vote of the members is not required for the board to change the accounting method for reserves to a pooling method or a straight-line method.
The limits
- The plan cannot fall below the baseline — the SIRS must recommend a funding schedule that keeps the reserve cash balance above zero across the study period.
- SIRS components pool only with SIRS components. Two pools, not one.
- Changing the method going forward is clearly a board decision. Whether existing straight-line balances can be moved into the pool without an owner vote is not directly addressed by the statute and is debated among Florida community association attorneys. Ask yours.
This is the lever most boards have never had explained to them, and it is the one where the engineer's judgment does the most work.
The 25-year rule
Florida law draws a line at twenty-five years. For items whose useful life is not readily ascertainable, or whose estimated remaining useful life is greater than 25 years, an association is not required to reserve replacement costs for those items. What it must reserve instead is the deferred maintenance expense, if any, that the SIRS recommends.
The study itself carries the same permission: a SIRS may recommend that replacement-cost reserves need not be maintained for an item with more than 25 years of remaining life, while recommending a deferred maintenance amount for it instead.
The practical consequence is large. A building's primary electrical service, its plumbing risers and its fire protection systems are long-lived. In a well-maintained coastal building they are not going to be replaced inside the study window — they are going to be maintained, and some components may be replaced. A study that reserves the full replacement cost, when likely not required within the study time window, is reserving for events that will likely not happen, and the condo owners pay for that over-budgeting every month. A study that treats them as deferred maintenance, when appropriate, reserves what the building will actually spend. This can be determined case by case, based on site-specific existing conditions.
Costs, honestly estimated
The second half of this lever is simpler and just as consequential: replacement costs and deferred maintenance expenses in a reserve study are estimates. Overly conservative estimates compound with inflation over the term of the study. We price the work the way we price a restoration project we would have to stand behind — from the condition of the building without unnecessary extra costs.
The limit
This is not a license to make numbers smaller. Remaining useful life is a professional determination that has to be defensible. Where a component genuinely needs replacing, it gets reserved for. The point is that a great many components in a great many studies are overly reserved for, and the condo unit owners are the ones paying for it every month.
This lever is not a statutory mechanism. It is possible because of our engineering expertise, our experience, our focus on client goals, and we say so plainly.
A Milestone inspection identifies conditions. Turning those conditions into a repair project is a separate act of judgment — and it is where the money is decided. Two engineers can look at the same Phase 1 findings and write scopes that differ by a factor of two. Full-façade restoration where targeted repair would serve. Blanket coating where the pathology is local. Quantities overestimated rather than budgeted.
What we look for
- Scope that outruns the findings. Repairs and procedures that are not necessary.
- Quantities that are inflated guesstimates. This is often done to cover the engineer, not the condo unit owners.
- Sequencing. Work that could be phased across budget years, brought forward in a single project.
A repair project scope can be structured to lower the cost — and lower the SIRS contributions that go along with it.
Most buildings arrive at their first SIRS with reserves well below where the study says they should be (the fully funded balance). What happens next is a design choice. Closing the gap immediately means a large catch-up contribution, or a special assessment, in the early budget years.
What the law actually requires
The statute requires a baseline funding plan: reserve funding in each budget year sufficient to keep the reserve cash balance above zero. It does not require the balance to be brought to "fully funded" in year one — or in any year. A schedule that starts near today's contribution and rises on a planned path satisfies the law, provided every projected expense is funded when it falls due.
How we build the schedule
We bring the funded balance up gently over time. Contributions begin as low as possible and build up on a published schedule, so the balance climbs across the study window instead of spiking at the start — and large special assessments are avoided wherever possible. Owners see a predictable line item, not a shock.
The limit
Gentle is not underfunded. The schedule is set so the balance never drops below the baseline and every project is paid on the date it is needed. The building is exactly as safe; what changes is when the money is collected.
This is the relief valve for the association that has been handed two bills at once: a Milestone repair project it must pay for now, and a reserve contribution it must also fund now. The legislature recognized that a building cannot always do both, and that spending the money on the repair the inspection actually called for is the better outcome for safety.
The conditions
- Approval by a majority of the total voting interests of the association — not merely a majority of those present at the meeting.
- The pause runs for no more than two years.
- It is available for budgets adopted on or before 31 December 2028. This is a sunset, not a permanent feature.
- The association must have received its Milestone inspection within the two years preceding the pause.
- A SIRS must be obtained before reserve funding recommences.
Note the shape of it: the pause exists to fund the repairs the inspection required. A building that inspected clean has nothing to pause for.
Better yet — reduce your project cost
Ask your engineer what items in the repair project cost are strictly necessary, and which are not. Or let us look at it for a second opinion.
Estimate what the repairs should cost →
There is also a separate provision worth knowing: where a local building official determines a condominium is uninhabitable because of a natural emergency, the board may pause reserve contributions without any member approval.
What the study is, and what the law actually requires.
The reference a board needs before it can argue about a number: what must be in a SIRS, who has to have one, what can and cannot be waived, and what happens if you do not.
The eight components
At a minimum, the study must cover:
- Roof
- Structure, including load-bearing walls and other primary structural members and systems
- Fireproofing and fire protection systems
- Plumbing
- Electrical systems
- Waterproofing and exterior painting
- Windows and exterior doors
- Any other item whose deferred maintenance expense or replacement cost exceeds the threshold, and whose failure to be replaced or maintained would negatively affect the items above — as determined by the visual inspection portion of the study
The threshold
That catch-all threshold was raised from $10,000 to $25,000 by HB 913, effective 2025. It does not stay at $25,000: the Division of Florida Condominiums adjusts it annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, and must post the current figure on its website by 1 February each year. So the number that applies to your budget is the one the Division has published for that year — not the $25,000 in the statute text. Check it before you rely on it.
The funding plan
The study must include a recommended reserve funding schedule based on a baseline funding plan — one in which the reserve funding for each budget year is sufficient to keep the reserve cash balance above zero. The study may recommend other funding schedules as well, provided each is sufficient to meet the association's maintenance obligation.
This is a lower bar than it sounds, and it is widely misunderstood. The law does not require the reserves to be "100% funded" in the sense a straight-line study means it. It requires a plan that does not run out of money. Those are very different numbers.
Mandatory versus recommended
If a study recommends reserves for an item that is not required by the statute, the recommended amount for that item must be separately identified in the SIRS as an item for which reserves are not required. This matters: non-required items can still be waived or reduced by the members. Required ones cannot. A study that blurs the two costs the association money and takes away a choice it is entitled to make. We bring the funded balance up gently over time, avoiding large special assessments whenever possible.
A SIRS is required for condominium and cooperative buildings that are three or more habitable stories in height, and must be repeated at least every ten years. HB 913 (2025) added the word habitable — and it matters. A three-story building with two residential floors over ground-level parking may have only two habitable stories.
Homeowners' associations under Chapter 720 are not subject to SIRS at all. Four-family dwellings with three or fewer habitable stories are exempt.
There are associations in South Florida funding a SIRS that they are not required to fund.
Is your building actually exempt?
Four questions, 30 seconds →Straight-line: one bucket per component
Each required item gets its own reserve account. The amount to be reserved is computed from the item's estimated remaining useful life and its estimated replacement cost or deferred maintenance expense. Take three components:
| Component | Cost | Years left | Annual reserve |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roof | $150,000 | 2 | $75,000 |
| Painting | $50,000 | 9 | $5,556 |
| Repairs | $50,000 | 9 | $5,556 |
| Required annual contribution | $86,112 | ||
Illustrative figures, straight-line arithmetic: annual reserve = cost ÷ years of useful life remaining.
You do not have to pay this. A pooled plan — legal, no owner vote — funds the same work with a materially lower contribution.
Note what is happening here. The painting and repair accounts will accumulate money for nine years before it is spent. The roof account is desperate. The association is simultaneously hoarding cash it cannot touch and straining to fund a roof — because under straight-line accounting, money in one bucket cannot answer for another.
Pooled: one pool, one cash-flow test
Under a pooled method the required components are funded as a group. The statutory test becomes: is the funding in the proposed budget sufficient to ensure available funds meet or exceed projected expenses for all components in the pool, based on the funding plan of the most recent SIRS?
That is a cash-flow question, not a bucket-filling question. The pool has to have the money when each project falls due — and the nine years of painting and repair contributions are available to help pay for the roof in year two, then rebuilt afterwards. The contribution is set so the pool balance never drops below the baseline. In a building with a spread of component ages, the set contribution starts materially lower and escalates gradually, instead of spiking to satisfy the most urgent bucket.
The building is exactly as safe. Every project is still funded on the date it is needed. What changes is that the association stops pre-funding work that is nine years away while it struggles to pay for a roof that is due in two.
And the board can make this change on its own. HB 913 provides that a vote of the members is not required to change the accounting method for reserves.
For decades Florida associations kept assessments artificially low by voting each year to waive or reduce reserves. The post-Surfside reforms ended that practice — but only for the components that matter to structural integrity, and other SIRS components.
Cannot be waived
For a budget adopted on or after 31 December 2024, the members of a unit-owner-controlled association that must obtain a SIRS may not vote to provide no reserves, or less reserves than required, for the paragraph (g) components. They also may not vote to use those reserve funds for any purpose other than the replacement or deferred maintenance of those components.
There are two narrow exceptions: an association terminating the condominium under s. 718.117 may waive them, and a multicondominium association may use an alternative funding method approved by the Division.
Can still be waived
Reserves for items that are not SIRS components — clubhouse renovation, pool resurfacing, tennis courts, amenity items — remain waivable or reducible by a majority vote of the members.
This is exactly why the statute requires a SIRS to separately identify any item for which it recommends reserves that the law does not require. A study that quietly folds optional items into the mandatory schedule has taken a decision away from the owners — and it costs them real money every month. If your SIRS has items that don't belong, let us review it — we'll tell you what you can or can't remove.
Insurance and lending
Carriers increasingly require evidence of a current SIRS. Buildings without one face higher premiums, non-renewal, or refusal of coverage. Lenders and prospective buyers ask for the study as a matter of course, and its absence depresses values across every unit in the building.
The public database
The Division maintains a searchable public record of associations that have completed their studies. Absence from it is visible to anyone who looks — including insurers and buyers.
Fiduciary exposure
Failure to obtain a SIRS is a breach of the officers' and directors' fiduciary duty to the unit owners. HB 913 sharpened the point considerably: officers and directors must now acknowledge receipt of the completed SIRS by affidavit, and that affidavit becomes part of the association's official records. Owners must be notified of the completed study, and the study and the milestone report are subject to a 15-year retention requirement.
The legislature has, in short, made it personal. That is the point of an affidavit.
Statute
Question it answers
Trigger
Produces
They are connected in one direction that matters enormously: the condition of the building determines what has to be reserved for. A Milestone inspection that finds significant deterioration shortens remaining useful lives, and shortened lives drive the reserve contribution up. A study written without a real understanding of the building's condition is guessing — usually upward, because guessing high is the safe thing to do when it is not your money.
The full compliance guide covers both, plus county recertification →
Remaining useful life
How many years a component has left before it must be replaced or substantially rebuilt. This is an engineering judgment, not a table lookup, and it is the single most powerful number in the study. Halve it and you double the contribution.
Deferred maintenance expense
The cost of maintaining a component rather than replacing it. Where an item's useful life cannot readily be ascertained, or exceeds 25 years, the association is not required to reserve the replacement cost — it reserves the deferred maintenance amount the study recommends. Applied correctly, this is where a great deal of money is saved. Applied lazily, it is where a great deal is wasted.
Baseline funding
A funding plan whose goal is that the reserve cash balance never drops below zero. This is the statutory minimum the study must recommend. It is not the same as "100% funded."
Fully funded
A reserve-industry convention meaning the reserve balance equals the accumulated depreciation of the components. It is a comfortable target and it is not what Florida law requires. Boards are routinely told the two are the same thing. They are not, and the difference is money. We bring the fully funded balance up gently over time, softening the blow to the pocketbook.
Are you even required to have one?
A SIRS is required for condominium and cooperative buildings of three or more habitable stories. HB 913 (2025) added the word "habitable", and it matters more than almost anything else on this page. A three-story building with two living floors over a ground-level non-habitable floor — parking, typically — may fall outside the requirement altogether.
There are associations in South Florida paying for studies they are not required to have. Nobody selling reserve studies is going to tell them so. Ask us first.
What a SIRS must cover
Eight components, at minimum — FS 718.112(2)(g):
- Roof
- Structure, including load-bearing walls
- Fireproofing and fire protection systems
- Plumbing
- Electrical systems
- Waterproofing and exterior painting
- Windows and exterior doors
- Any other item over the threshold whose failure would affect the above
The threshold is $25,000 (2025), adjusted annually for inflation by the Division — check the current year's published figure.
If the number is wrong, it is worth finding out.
Run your own building through the calculator, or send us the study you already have. We will tell you whether the contribution it demands is what your building actually needs — and if it is not, what a properly built study would say instead.
General information, not legal advice. Statutory references are to FS 718.112 and FS 553.899 as amended by HB 913 (2025). Which of these routes your association can use — and on what vote — is a question for your association’s attorney.