HOA Reserve Study Law Changes in 2026 — a state-by-state and federal roundup.

2026 was an unusually busy year for reserve-study law. The mortgage agencies rewrote the condo rulebook, several states moved from "have a study" to "actually fund it," and one major post-Surfside mandate came fully into force. Here's what changed, when it takes effect, and what it means for your board — in plain English.

1. Federal: the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac condo overhaul

The biggest 2026 development isn't a state statute — it's the secondary mortgage market. In parallel guidance issued the same day (Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 and Freddie Mac Bulletin 2026-C), the two agencies tightened condo project standards in three ways that bear directly on reserve studies:

• The reserve minimum rises from 10% to 15%. The replacement-reserve allocation must be at least 15% of annual budgeted assessment income for Full Review loan applications dated on or after January 4, 2027 — up from the long-standing 10%.
• Limited Review is retired. Effective August 3, 2026, the streamlined limited-review path is eliminated for all established condo projects. Projects of ten or fewer units gain a new waiver path, so in practice it's projects of more than ten units that get pushed into Full Review — with the deeper budget, reserve, and condition scrutiny that entails.
• Studies must fund to their highest recommended level. Also effective August 3, 2026, when a reserve study is used to demonstrate adequacy, the budget must adopt the study's highest recommended funding amount. The baseline funding method — keeping the balance above zero but no higher — is no longer accepted for this purpose.

Two nuances worth getting right. First, the dates are staggered: the reserve-study rules bite in August 2026, four months before the 15% number changes in January 2027. Second, "baseline funding is no longer accepted" is a lender underwriting rule, not an industry-standard change — the CAI National Reserve Study Standards still recognize baseline funding as a valid goal. And FHA has not matched the move: its condo guideline remains around 10% of the budget, so conventional and FHA reserve expectations now diverge.

The practical takeaway for a board is simple: a current reserve study that funds to its recommended level is the cleanest way to stay on the right side of all of these at once. Our Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac condo reserve requirements guide walks through the full project-review picture.

2. Maryland: from "have a study" to "fund it"

Maryland delivered the clearest state-level shift of the cycle. Under HB 292 / SB 63, effective October 1, 2025, condominium and HOA budgets must now fund reserves according to an adopted funding plan and the amounts recommended in the most recent reserve study — not merely disclose the study and move on. A one-fiscal-year hardship deviation is available, but only by a two-thirds vote of the owners. The underlying at-least-every-five-years study cycle (Md. §§ 11-109.2 / 11B-112.2) continues, and Montgomery, Prince George's, and Howard counties layer on additional overlay requirements.

This is the direction of travel nationally: disclosure-only regimes are gradually becoming funding-mandatory regimes. Maryland boards that treated the reserve study as a filing exercise now have to treat it as a budgeting constraint.

3. Washington: the reserve study arrived before the full statute

Washington has been consolidating decades of condo and HOA law under WUCIOA (RCW 64.90), with a January 1, 2028 full cutover for pre-2018 communities. But a 2025 amendment, ESSB 5129, pulled the reserve-study piece forward: as of January 1, 2026, pre-2018 associations are already required to maintain a WUCIOA-compliant reserve study. In other words, 2028 is when the full statute takes over — 2026 is when the reserve study itself became mandatory for these associations. A separate 2026 law (HB 2354) exempts certain small middle-housing communities from the reserve-study requirement. See our Washington reserve study guide for the details.

4. California: a quiet addition, and a bill that never was

California's headline statutes didn't change in 2025–26, but one enacted addition matters for scoping a study: SB 900, effective January 1, 2025, requires gas, water, and electrical service lines the association is responsible to maintain to be carried as major components in the reserve study. If your California association maintains any utility service lines, they belong in the component inventory now.

One clarification while we're here: you may see references to "AB 1101" as California reserve law. That bill died in committee and never became law. The enacted authority for exterior-elevated-element (balcony) inspections coordinated with the reserve study is SB 326 (Civil Code § 5551), as amended by AB 2579. And the frequently discussed proposal to lower the 20% assessment-increase cap to 8% (SB 1007) remains proposed only — the current cap is still 20%.

5. Colorado and New Jersey: turnover studies and post-Surfside mandates

Colorado — HB26-1099 (effective August 12, 2026) creates a new declarant obligation: before turning a new planned community or condominium over to its owners, the builder must obtain and fund an independent 30-year reserve study and deliver it to the association. It does not impose an ongoing study cycle on existing Colorado associations — CCIOA § 38-33.3-209.5 still requires only annual disclosure for them.

New Jersey is the state most often missing from reserve-study coverage, and it shouldn't be. Under P.L. 2023 c.214 (S2760/A4384), covered condominium and cooperative buildings must complete periodic structural inspections plus a 30-year capital reserve study, updated at least every five years. A 2025 amendment (S3992) added the option to fund at 85% of the selected plan for the following five years — a softer funding target than Florida's mandatory full-funding SIRS model. Because New Jersey's implementation deadlines have moved through DCA rulemaking, confirm the current dates for your building with the state before you calendar them.

6. Florida: no change, but the deadline has passed

For all the attention Florida gets, 2026 brought no statutory change — several reserve-relief bills (including majority-vote SIRS waiver proposals) died in committee for the third year running. What did happen is the calendar: the initial SIRS deadline of December 31, 2025 has passed. Applicable residential condo and co-op buildings of three or more habitable stories should already have a completed SIRS on file; a building whose milestone inspection is due on or before December 31, 2026 may complete its SIRS alongside that inspection. Our Florida SIRS compliance guide covers the eight components and the funding rules in full.

7. What did not change

Just as important as the changes is what stayed put — because a lot of 2026 commentary blurred proposed bills with enacted law:

• California's Davis-Stirling core is intact: the triennial study (Civil Code § 5550), annual disclosure (§ 5570), and the 20%-per-year assessment cap with a 5% special-assessment vote trigger (§ 5605) are all still current law.
• Florida's SIRS framework — the eight components, the no-waiver rule, the $25,000 catch-all threshold (which is indexed to inflation) — is unchanged by any 2026 bill.
• Nevada (five-year cycle, NRS 116.31152), Texas (no reserve-study mandate), and most other states' cycles are unchanged.
• The CAI National Reserve Study Standards (Level I / II / III; Full, Baseline, and Threshold funding goals) have not been rewritten since 2023.