With a site visit
We walk the property again. Conditions get re-rated, photographs get updated, and the inventory is checked against what is actually there. Use this when years have passed or the physical plant has changed.
Reserve study updates.
An update keeps a current study honest: costs, conditions, and the funding plan, refreshed. You can do that with a site visit or without one: a site inspection every five years, financial updates between. Confirm what your state requires.
§ 01Two kinds of update
Without a site visit
A financial-only refresh: replacement costs, inflation, and the funding model, using the last inspected inventory. Use this between visits — not as a substitute for seeing the property when the property has changed.
§ 02Cadence
Inspect every 5 years. Confirm your state.
Plan on a full reserve study with a site inspection every five years (every three if you have complex assets or their condition is changing quickly), with a financial update in the years between. A financial update in the off years is always worth doing: it refreshes pricing and drops completed repairs and replacements off the report. State law may set a minimum; we will point you to the current rule.
§ 03Questions
If the component inventory from your last study still matches what is on the ground, an update is the honest next step and the cheaper one. If buildings have been added, common areas transferred, governing documents changed, or several years have passed with no site visit, we will tell you that stretching the old inventory would give you a tidy report built on stale assumptions. We would rather recommend the fuller study and be right than take the smaller fee and hand you a number the board cannot rely on.
An update with a site visit means an inspector walks the property again and re-assesses condition — useful when components are aging unevenly, when there has been weather damage, or when the last visit is more than a few years back. An update without one refreshes costs, inflation assumptions and your funding plan using the existing inventory, which is appropriate in the years between inspections. The usual pattern is a full reserve study with a site inspection every five years (every three if you have complex assets or their condition is changing quickly), with a financial update in the years between.
Generally, plan on a full reserve study with a site inspection every five years (every three if you have complex assets or their condition is changing quickly), with a financial update in the years between. A financial update in the off years is always worth doing: it refreshes pricing and drops completed repairs and replacements off the report. Your state may also set a minimum schedule, and that is worth confirming rather than assuming — we can point you to the current requirement.
Usually yes, and it is rarely as bad as boards fear. Even a dated study carries a component inventory that is expensive to rebuild from scratch, so there is real value to recover. What changes is the honesty of the assumptions — costs, remaining life, and what has actually been replaced since. If the gap is large enough that the inventory can no longer be trusted, we will say so up front rather than quietly billing an update and delivering something closer to a guess.
The same commitment as a full study — four weeks from the site inspection, backed by the 4/10 Guarantee: your report within 4 weeks of inspection, or 10% off your invoice. Updates without a site visit move faster in practice, but they depend on getting current financials from you, so the clock is really about how quickly that arrives.
Full studies: HOA / PUD and condo / high-rise.