Reserve studies for condos & high-rises.
With a plethora of assets and a heavy expense load, no stone is unturned and no asset left out. We recognize the rigidity such a plan needs and know how to guide you through it.
Heavy expense load, handled with precision.
Elevators, envelopes and shared mechanicals need a plan that keeps dues predictable. We recognize the rigidity that plan needs, and we walk the board through it.
A condominium board carries a different kind of risk than a subdivision board. The components are fewer but far more expensive, and they do not fail politely one at a time — an envelope, a roof and an elevator can land inside the same five-year window and turn a manageable plan into a special assessment.
That is why the inventory matters more here than anywhere else. Missing a single major component does not shift the projection slightly; it moves it by a number that changes what the board has to ask owners for. We would rather spend the extra day on site than deliver a tidier report with a gap in it.
Four line items that decide the whole plan.
The envelope
Cladding, sealants, windows and balconies. The most consequential category in a tower, and the one where a deferred repair compounds into structural cost.
Elevators
Modernization cycles are long enough that most boards have never been through one. When it arrives it is rarely a number the reserve absorbs quietly.
Roofs and decks
Shared across every unit, so replacement is never partial, and exposure varies enough by climate that regional cost data matters more than a national average.
Mechanical and life safety
Boilers, risers, pumps, fire systems. Shorter lives than the structure, and the category where safety findings override the funding curve.
Where a jurisdiction requires a structural or milestone inspection, those findings feed the funding plan as line items. We cite the program that applies to your building; where none applies, we say so.
Because far more sits on the association’s books, and it concentrates. Shared roofs, the building envelope, elevators, risers, boilers, garage structure and life-safety systems are all association responsibility, and several of them are six-figure replacements that arrive within a few years of each other. In a subdivision an underestimate costs you a repaving cycle; in a tower it costs you an elevator modernization the reserve was never built to carry. The inventory takes longer and the funding plan has to be more rigid, because there is less room to phase your way out of a bad year.
That depends on your state and on the building, and it is not something we will guess at. Several states have introduced structural inspection or reserve-funding programs for taller residential buildings in recent years; many states have nothing of the kind. We will confirm what actually applies to your property before it goes in the report, and where a program does apply, its findings feed the funding plan as real line items rather than a footnote. What we will not do is imply that one state’s program applies to a building somewhere else.
Honestly, and in priority order. If the inspection turns up water intrusion, envelope failure or a life-safety item, that goes to the front of the plan regardless of what the previous schedule said — safety and water damage are the two categories we never spread out for the sake of a smoother curve. Then we model the rest around it. A board facing a real backlog usually needs to see two or three funding scenarios rather than one recommendation, and that is a conversation we expect to have.
It might, and you should know that before you commission the study rather than after. But an accurate plan is what keeps an increase gradual instead of arriving as a special assessment nobody budgeted for, and it is the only thing that lets you show owners the reasoning. Most boards find the number less alarming once it is spread across a real timeline and attached to specific components rather than an abstract shortfall.
Four weeks from the site inspection, backed by the 4/10 Guarantee: your report within 4 weeks of inspection, or 10% off your invoice. Larger buildings take longer to inspect than to model, so the scheduling conversation is the one worth having early — particularly if you are working toward a budget deadline.
Also see HOAs & PUDs and updates.