Why Highland Beach Condo Listings Disclose More Assessments Than the Rest of the Coast

"For us, we have enough condos over 40 years old to warrant attention. It's not a threat today, but it's enough of a concern for us to implement a recertification process to ensure the safety of our people and property."

Highland Beach Town Commissioner John Shoemaker said that in the fall of 2021, a few months after the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, as commissioners gave tentative approval to an ordinance requiring structural and electrical recertification for most of the town's condominiums. Florida's statewide milestone inspection law was still months from passing. Highland Beach moved first.

Five years later, that early move shows up in the data in a way that can read as alarming if you don't know the backstory. A September 2026 review of active condo listings across five South Florida counties found that Highland Beach carries the highest share, by a wide margin, of listings whose public remarks mention an unresolved special assessment, a structural integrity reserve study, a milestone inspection, or a concrete restoration project without stating that the matter is closed. The town's rate sits well above the regional average and more than five times the Palm Beach County figure.

That number is not a warning about Highland Beach real estate. It is a byproduct of a barrier-island town with an older condo stock and a local ordinance that started asking these questions before the state required anyone to.

What the September Snapshot Actually Shows

The comparison, pulled from active listings across Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, Martin, and St. Lucie counties as of mid-September 2026, breaks down like this:

Highland Beach's figure comes from a base of roughly 100 active condo listings, small enough that a handful of buildings can move the percentage several points in either direction. That matters for how you read it. A town with 80-plus condominium associations packed onto about two square miles of barrier island will always have a higher concentration of buildings crossing an age threshold in a given year than a sprawling market with a mix of new construction and older stock. Highland Beach doesn't have much new construction to dilute the number. Most of its condo buildings went up between the 1970s and the 1990s, which means a larger share of them are old enough to require recertification in any given cycle.

The other driver is procedural, not structural. Highland Beach's own building department enforces a recertification schedule that is more frequent than the statewide floor for buildings once they clear 40 years.

Why Highland Beach Got There First

Florida's statewide milestone inspection law, Senate Bill 4-D, set the baseline at an initial inspection when a building turns 30, or 25 if a local jurisdiction determines coastal exposure warrants it, with reinspection every 10 years after that. Highland Beach's own ordinance, adopted before the state law and updated since, runs on a tighter clock for its older buildings: recertification every 10 years once a building passes 25, and every 7 years once it passes 40. The town's threshold also captures any building over three stories or 50 feet in height, a broader net than the state's habitable-stories test alone.

Practically, that means a Highland Beach condo built in the 1970s has been through this process more times, and more recently, than a similarly aged building in a town that only started complying once the state law forced the issue in 2022. More inspections and more reserve studies mean more paperwork on file, and under Florida's 2024 transparency law, associations with 25 or more units now have to post that paperwork, governing documents, budgets, and reserve studies, to an online portal. A building doing exactly what it's supposed to do is, by design, generating more visible documentation than a building that has been quieter about the same underlying condition.

The town has also been active on the funding side. Highland Beach promoted the state's My Safe Florida Condo pilot program to residents in 2025, a matching-grant initiative offering associations $2 for every $1 spent on storm hardening, up to $175,000, with the town's own state representative helping spread the word. That's a tool aimed at offsetting exactly the kind of capital costs that show up in a special assessment notice.

Two Boards That Didn't Wait for the Ordinance

The Coastal Star's 2021 coverage of the commission vote captured two Highland Beach condo boards already ahead of the process. At Highlands Place, a 12-story, 45-unit building completed in 1989, board president David Stern had already reached out to a structural engineer and asked to be placed on a list for inspection before local rules were finalized. He put it plainly: getting inspected and confirmed sound helps property values.

A short distance away, at the far older Penthouse Highlands, then more than 50 years old, board president P.T. Henry said his association had completed a concrete restoration project a few years earlier as a matter of routine upkeep, not regulatory pressure, and welcomed the town-mandated recertification anyway as a way to confirm what the board already believed about the building's condition.

Neither story describes a building in trouble. Both describe associations that treated structural maintenance as an ongoing responsibility rather than a box to check once a law forced it, which is the opposite of what a high disclosure number might suggest to someone skimming listings from outside the market.

What a Flagged Listing Actually Means for Financing

Where the disclosure rate does create real friction is in financing. Fannie Mae has retired its Limited Review option for condominium loans, which means every purchase now goes through Full Review, requiring the lender to collect the association's budget, financial statements, reserve study, delinquency data, and insurance documents before closing. A building with a documented milestone inspection and a funded SIRS moves through that process more predictably. A building where the paperwork is incomplete, or where a special assessment has been approved but not yet fully disclosed in writing, can slow an underwriter down regardless of how sound the actual structure is.

This is the practical reason a Highland Beach buyer should treat the listing remarks as a starting point, not the full picture. A mention of "milestone inspection" or "SIRS" in the description tells you a document exists. It doesn't tell you what the document says.

What to Request Before You Write an Offer

For any Highland Beach condo under serious consideration, ask for:

• The most recent milestone inspection summary, and the full Phase Two report if one was required
• The current Structural Integrity Reserve Study, including the funding schedule for the eight mandatory components
• The association's reserve account balances against that funding schedule
• The last 12 months of board meeting minutes
• Any special assessment notice, including the amount, the payment terms, and whether it was approved before or after the contract's effective date
• The estoppel certificate, which will confirm assessments and dues in writing

Highland Beach's building department, reachable through the town's permits office, can confirm whether a specific building has an open recertification notice on file, independent of what the seller's paperwork says. For a barrier-island town with a documented history of enforcing its own timeline, that's a verification step worth taking rather than skipping.

If You're the One Listing

The same math works in reverse for a seller. With roughly one in six active Highland Beach condo listings carrying some version of this disclosure right now, a clean, organized file, current SIRS, a milestone summary with no open items, board minutes that show a board actively managing reserves rather than reacting to them, is a genuine point of separation in a market where buyers and their lenders are reading these documents closely.

Contract language typically decides who absorbs an assessment that surfaces mid-transaction: one levied before the contract's effective date is usually the seller's responsibility, one levied after typically becomes the buyer's. Knowing exactly where your building stands on its inspection and reserve cycle before you list means that conversation happens on your terms, not in a renegotiation after an appraisal or underwriter flags something you hadn't disclosed clearly.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly

Does a milestone inspection mention on a listing mean the building failed? No. Most buildings clear Phase One, a visual structural review, without triggering Phase Two, which only happens if that first review finds substantial deterioration. A listing that mentions an inspection has occurred is disclosing a completed process, not necessarily a problem.

Does Highland Beach's local ordinance replace the state law, or does it run alongside it? Both apply. The state sets the floor through Senate Bill 4-D and its amendments. Highland Beach's own ordinance, enforced by the town's building department, layers a more frequent recertification schedule on top of that floor for buildings once they pass 40 years old.

A high number on a market data page is only useful once you know what's generating it. In Highland Beach's case, the number is generating from a town that started asking hard questions about its buildings before anyone made it do so, and from boards that, in more than one documented case, didn't wait to be asked.

If you're weighing a specific Highland Beach building and want a second set of eyes on its inspection history, reserve position, or assessment disclosures before you write an offer, the Jennifer Kilpatrick Team can walk through the documentation with you.