In brief
If your association replaced a roof after the 2024 storms, the reserve study you budget from probably still shows the old roof. An update resets its remaining life, changes the annual contribution and gives owners a budget they can check. The law does not force a new SIRS until 10 years pass, but the numbers stop being right the day the new roof goes on.
Two years on from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, a lot of Tampa Bay boards are sitting on new roofs, rebuilt seawalls and repaired garages. Many of the same boards are about to adopt a budget from a reserve study written before any of that work was done.
Why the old study is now wrong
A reserve study gives every component a useful life, a remaining life and a replacement cost, then works out how much the association must set aside each year. When a roof that the study showed with four years left is replaced, three things change at once:
- the remaining life jumps back to something close to the full useful life of the new roof;
- the cost moves to today’s price for the roof you actually installed, not the one the study assumed;
- the money in the roof reserve may have been spent, partly covered by insurance or replaced with a loan or special assessment.
A budget built on the old line can overfund the roof for years while other components go short, or it can show a reserve balance that no longer exists.
Does the law require a new SIRS?
Not by itself. Under section 718.112(2)(g) a structural integrity reserve study has to be done at least every 10 years for condo and co-op buildings three habitable stories or higher. A new roof does not restart that clock.
What the law does require is that reserves for SIRS items, and the roof is one of them, are funded each year without waiver for budgets adopted on or after December 31, 2024. Funding the wrong amount is not the same as funding the right one. If the board knows the study is out of date, it is on firmer ground with an update than without one. Ask the association’s attorney how that applies to your budget cycle.
Update or start again?
CAI’s standards describe updates with a site visit and without one. After a roof replacement, an update without a site visit is often enough if the provider gets good paperwork: the contract, the final invoice, the permit and the warranty. If other work happened too, such as balcony repairs, a seawall or a garage, an update with a site visit is the safer choice, because the provider needs to see what is there now.
A full new study makes sense if your last one is more than five or six years old, or if it predates the SIRS rules altogether.
What to send the provider
- The current study and any SIRS, with the year each was prepared.
- Contracts, invoices and permits for every repair since September 2024.
- Insurance claim settlements, so the provider can see what was paid and what came from reserves.
- Any milestone inspection report, phase one or phase two.
- The board’s current reserve balances by component, if you keep them that way.
With that in hand, most providers can turn an update around before the budget meeting.
The budget meeting
Bring the updated figures to the meeting where the board adopts the budget, not after it. Owners will ask why the roof line changed, and a dated update with the new roof on it is the clearest answer you can give.
If you need someone to prepare it, our Tampa reserve study request takes two minutes and we will name a provider who covers your part of the bay.