The Gulf-Front Condo Buying Checklist: 12 Things to Verify

Every Gulf-front condominium purchase is really two purchases: the unit you can see and the building you cannot. Florida rewrote its condominium statutes after the 2021 Surfside collapse and then amended them again in 2023, 2024 and 2025, which pushed structural condition out of the shadows and into a document package a buyer under contract is entitled to receive before closing. The difference between a sound purchase and a costly one now often comes down to whether anyone actually read it. Here are twelve items to verify on every building, and the law each one rests on.

Structure, milestones and reserves

1. Which milestone clock the building is on. Section 553.899 of the Florida Statutes requires a milestone inspection of any building three habitable stories or more in height that is subject, in whole or in part, to residential condominium or residential cooperative ownership, performed by December 31 of the year the building turns thirty, measured from the date the certificate of occupancy was issued, and every ten years after that. The widely repeated rule that any building within three miles of a coastline runs on a twenty-five year clock is no longer what the statute says. What survives is a local option: the local enforcement agency may determine that local circumstances, including proximity to salt water, require the first inspection at twenty-five years instead. So the answer for a specific building here depends on what its county and city have adopted, which makes this a question for the local building official, not for the listing.
2. The milestone report itself, and what phase it reached. Phase one is a visual examination by a licensed architect or engineer, due within one hundred eighty days after the owners receive written notice that an inspection is required. If phase one finds no sign of substantial structural deterioration, there is no phase two. If it does find such a sign, phase two follows, with testing as extensive or as limited as the inspector judges necessary, and a progress report goes to the local agency within one hundred eighty days of the phase one report. Either way, the association has forty-five days after receiving a report to send every owner the inspector-prepared summary. Ask which phase the building reached, then read the summary rather than a description of it.
3. The structural integrity reserve study. Section 718.112 requires a residential condominium association to complete this study at least every ten years for each building on the property that is three habitable stories or higher. Its required scope reaches well past roofs and fresh paint. At a minimum it must study the roof, the structure including load-bearing walls and primary structural members, fireproofing and fire protection systems, plumbing, electrical systems, waterproofing and exterior painting, and windows and exterior doors, and it must produce a funding schedule that keeps the reserve balance above zero. Owners get a copy, or notice that a copy is available, within forty-five days of the association receiving it.
4. Reserve funding, and what a waiver can still mean. Studies are plans; budgets are behavior. The old advice to scan for a pattern of waived reserves needs updating, because for budgets adopted on or after December 31, 2024, the members of a unit-owner-controlled association that must have a reserve study can no longer vote to fund nothing, or less than required, for the components that study covers, and the reserve amount has to follow the study findings. Narrow exceptions remain. A multicondominium association may use an alternative funding method approved by the state division. An association that completed a milestone inspection within the previous two calendar years may, by majority vote of the total voting interests and only for budgets adopted on or before December 31, 2028, pause or reduce reserve contributions for no more than two consecutive annual budgets in order to pay for the repairs that inspection recommended. Funding may also arrive as a special assessment, a line of credit, or a loan rather than as regular dues. So the question is no longer whether owners are waiving reserves. It is whether older waivers left a hole, which exception the board is standing on, and whether this year's budget lines up with the study.
5. Special assessments, past and pending. Ask for every assessment levied in recent years and what each one paid for. You are not relying on memory here: accounting records, board minutes, contracts for work to be performed, and the bids behind them are all official records of the association, so the paper trail exists whether or not a seller volunteers it. One disclosure is worth reading before anything else. For contracts entered into after December 31, 2024, a resale contract must state in conspicuous type when the association is required to have a milestone inspection or a reserve study and has not completed it, and it must say so just as plainly when the association is not required to have one at all.

Insurance, dues and the budget

6. The association property insurance, and where it stops. Every condominium association must carry adequate property insurance regardless of what the declaration requires, replacement cost must be determined at least once every three years, and the board sets deductibles that have to be consistent with industry standards and prevailing practice for communities of similar size, age, construction and location. The association policy provides primary coverage for the condominium property as originally installed. It expressly does not cover personal property, floor, wall and ceiling coverings, electrical fixtures, appliances, water heaters, water filters, built-in cabinets and countertops, or window treatments inside the unit. Those are yours, which makes that exclusion list your own inspection list: the appliances, the water heater and where it sits, and any evidence of past water intrusion. Whether the heating and cooling equipment is also yours depends on the maintenance provisions of the declaration or bylaws. Deductibles and losses beyond coverage are a common expense, except where a unit owner, or the owner's family, tenants or guests, caused the damage through intentional conduct, negligence, or failure to follow the declaration or rules, so ask what the association would do if a named storm loss ran past the policy.
7. Dues, and the budget underneath them. The proposed annual budget must be detailed and must show the amounts budgeted by accounts and expense classifications, and the board has to adopt it at least fourteen days before the association's fiscal year begins. That document, not the monthly figure quoted in a listing, tells you what your dues actually buy and which line items are exposed to repricing. A low fee on a building that defers maintenance is not a bargain; it is a bill with a delay on it.

Rules, litigation and lender review

8. Rental rules in the recorded documents. Whether a building permits the use you have in mind is a question its recorded declaration and rules answer for that building, and local rules for the parcel can limit it further. Read the declaration and the current rules yourself instead of relying on marketing copy, a neighbor arrangement, or what the seller has been doing. Both sit in the official records, as do the minutes, so a second question is checkable too: is an amendment touching use or occupancy currently in front of the board or the membership. An amendment that prohibits renting or limits rental duration or frequency binds owners who acquire title after it takes effect, so a pending one is worth knowing about before you sign.
9. Litigation, and how a lender reads it. Ask whether the association is a party to pending litigation, or in arbitration or mediation that looks likely to become litigation. This is not merely a nuisance question. Secondary-market guidance treats a project as ineligible when the association is named in pending litigation relating to the safety, structural soundness, habitability, or functional use of the project, while preserving eligibility for minor matters such as non-monetary neighbor disputes or a claim the insurance carrier has agreed to defend and cover within its limits. Get the caption and the subject matter, not a reassurance.
10. Lender project review. Some buildings clear a lender project review; others are flagged as unavailable, which makes loans on their units ineligible for purchase by Fannie Mae and can narrow the pool you will eventually sell into. A project in need of critical repairs stays ineligible until those repairs are completed, and critical is defined to include advanced physical deterioration, water intrusion or damaging leaks, and any project that failed to pass a state, county, or other jurisdictional mandatory structural inspection. Have a local lender screen the building early even if you are paying cash, because your eventual buyer may not be.

Hard systems and the document package

11. The building's hard systems. Sea walls, elevators, waterproofing, stairwells, balconies, foundations, electrical systems, and parking structures are among the examples lender guidance lists when it looks for critical repairs, and plumbing, electrical, waterproofing and exterior painting are the ones the reserve study statute independently requires an association to study. Find out what has been replaced, what is scheduled, and what is merely hoped for. Contracts for work to be performed are official records, so the schedule is verifiable rather than aspirational.
12. Who hands you the documents, and the window that follows. Be clear about who has the right to what. Official records are open to association members and anyone a member authorizes, so a prospective purchaser cannot walk into the management office and demand the file. What a buyer under contract on a resale gets, at the seller's expense, is a defined package: the declaration, the articles, the bylaws and rules, the current annual financial statement and budget, the frequently asked questions document, the inspector-prepared milestone summary if there is one, the most recent reserve study or a written statement that none has been completed, and the turnover inspection report for a turnover inspection performed on or after July 1, 2023, if there is one. The buyer is also entitled to receive a governance form from the seller. The resale contract must then either confirm you received that package more than seven days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, before you signed, or give you the right to cancel by written notice within seven such days after signing and receipt. Where the association has a milestone inspection summary, a turnover inspection report or a structural integrity reserve study, the contract must carry both. You may also extend the time for closing to no more than seven such days after you receive the documents, and any purported waiver of those rights has no effect. The right to void ends at closing, which is the entire reason to calendar it on day one.

Before the deposit goes hard

None of this replaces a professional inspection or an attorney's read of the documents, and every building on this coast tells a different story through its paperwork. The milestone and reserve provisions above have already been rewritten more than once since 2021, so read the statute as it stands on the day you go under contract. What the checklist replaces is hope as a strategy. Work through all twelve with your agent before the deposit goes hard, and the view you fall for will be one you can afford to keep.