Inspections & Building Safety

Four layers, in order

When a board asks what inspection it needs and how often, the answer comes from up to four layers, and they do not carry equal weight. First, state statute, if the state has one. Second, locally adopted building, fire, and property maintenance codes, including a city or county's own recertification or facade program. Third, standard-setter codes that a state or local law incorporates by reference, such as the fire protection and elevator standards behind most local rules. Fourth, the association's own governing documents, read against the state's general common-interest-ownership statute.

That fourth layer exists even when the first three are silent. California and Nevada, for example, place a maintenance duty for common elements directly on the association by statute; most states have a similar underlying duty even without a named inspection law. Check which layers actually apply to your building before assuming a rule does, or does not, exist.

Where a mandatory program actually exists

Only a handful of confirmed, named programs sit at the top of that hierarchy. Florida's milestone inspection law covers condominium and cooperative buildings three habitable stories or taller, and sets its first deadline by age and coastline distance.

"by December 31 of the year in which the building reaches 30 years of age...and every 10 years thereafter"

Source: Florida Statute 553.899, The Florida Senate

Coastal buildings in Florida move that trigger to age 25. California's exterior elevated element law reaches only one part of a building, balconies, decks, and similar structures, on a nine-year cycle for condominiums. New York City runs a five-year facade inspection cycle for buildings taller than six stories, and Miami-Dade County runs its own building recertification program with deadlines set by construction era and coastal proximity. Outside these four places, teach yourself to check, not to assume either way: most states have no equivalent statewide law at all.

What boards get wrong

The single most common mistake is assuming every state has a law like Florida's. It does not; only the four programs named above are confirmed. The second is assuming a mandatory inspection automatically means invasive testing. In Florida, the first phase of a milestone inspection is visual and qualitative; a second, potentially destructive phase only happens if the first finds substantial structural deterioration, and most buildings never reach it.

The third is assuming a finding of "unsafe" means demolition. A model unsafe-structures code treats repair, and vacating and securing the building, as valid alternatives to tearing it down.

"All conditions causing such structures to be classified as unsafe shall be remedied or as an alternative to correcting such conditions, the structure may be vacated and secured against public entry or razed and removed."

Source: Virginia Maintenance Code, 13VAC5-63-490, Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development