California required balcony inspection disclosure at sale. New York hasn't.

California now requires condo sellers to provide buyers with the building's most recent balcony and elevated-walkway inspection report before contracts are signed. The requirement took effect January 1, 2026, under SB 410. New York has no equivalent obligation. A buyer purchasing a condo unit in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Queens is not entitled by statute to see the building's most recent structural inspection report before signing. That gap is a policy choice, not an accident.

What happened in Berkeley in 2015.

On June 16, 2015, a fifth-floor balcony at the Library Gardens apartment complex on Kittredge Street in Berkeley collapsed. Six people died; seven more were injured. Subsequent investigation found that untreated wood in the exterior ledger board had dry-rotted to the point of structural failure. The balcony had not received an independent structural inspection of its wood framing. The California Contractors State License Board found that the wood used was not rated for exterior applications, in violation of the state building code at the time of construction.

California's legislature passed two companion bills in the years that followed: SB 721 (2018, for rental buildings with three or more units) and SB 326 (2019, for condominiums governed by the Davis-Stirling Act). New York has no statute enacted in response to a comparable failure of an elevated element in a residential building. Local Law 152 (gas piping inspections) followed the 2014 East Harlem gas explosion; Local Laws 126 and 11 address parking structures and building facades. No law specifically addresses wood-framed exterior elevated elements in residential condominiums.

What SB 326 requires of California condo associations.

Signed by Governor Newsom on August 30, 2019, SB 326 added California Civil Code §5551 to the Davis-Stirling Act, which governs condominiums, planned developments, and homeowner associations with three or more units. Every covered association must retain a licensed structural engineer, architect, or civil engineer to visually inspect all exterior elevated elements (EEEs). An EEE is any load-bearing structure made of wood or wood-based products, elevated more than six feet above the ground, and designed for human occupancy: balconies, decks, stairways, walkways, and their railings. The inspector files a written report with the association's board of directors.

The first inspection deadline was January 1, 2025, for associations formed before January 1, 2019. Inspections repeat on a nine-year cycle after that. If the inspector finds an EEE in "poor condition" or at "elevated risk of failure," the association must immediately restrict occupant access and begin repairs within 180 days. There is no opt-out, no self-certification pathway, and no alternative to a licensed professional. The inspection report becomes a board record available to any member on request under California Civil Code §5200, the Davis-Stirling member-records statute.

What SB 410 added at the point of sale.

SB 326 required the inspection and the report. SB 410 (signed September 2024, effective January 1, 2026) required the disclosure. The bill amended California Civil Code §4525, which lists what sellers must provide to buyers in common interest development transactions, to include the most recent Civil Code §5551 EEE inspection report. Before SB 410, the report existed inside the HOA's board records; a buyer would need to know to ask for it, and the association's response was not on a statutory schedule. Since January 1, 2026, the most recent EEE inspection report is a required item in the seller's pre-contract disclosure package.

In practice: a buyer purchasing a condominium unit in any California CID now receives, before signing contracts, the licensed engineer's written assessment of the building's balconies, decks, stairways, and walkways. If the most recent report flagged any EEE as requiring repair or as at elevated risk of failure, the buyer sees that before committing to purchase. The report is not a warranty; if the engineer missed something, the buyer still bears that risk. But the buyer receives the same documented assessment the board received, on the same timeline, before money changes hands.

What New York requires at the point of resale.

New York has no equivalent buyer-disclosure obligation for structural inspection reports at condo or co-op resale. The closest analog is the Facade Inspection Safety Program (FISP, codified at NYC Administrative Code §28-302), which requires five-year facade inspections for buildings six or more stories. FISP results are filed with the NYC Department of Buildings and appear in the public FISP database. But FISP covers the building's full exterior facade, not exterior elevated elements as a discrete structural category, and no statute requires a seller to provide the FISP report to the buyer at contract signing. A buyer who searches DOB's database may find the building's current FISP filing; a buyer who does not know to search receives nothing.

The New York Seller's Property Disclosure Statement, authorized under Real Property Law §462-a, does not apply to condo or co-op resales; it covers one-to-four-unit residential transfers. For condominiums, the offering plan and its amendments govern the initial sale under the Martin Act; resales carry no equivalent statutory disclosure package. What a resale buyer receives depends on what their attorney requests, what the board chooses to produce within whatever timeframe it elects, and what the board's own records contain. None of those three variables is regulated.

A buyer seeking to replicate the California disclosure in a New York transaction would need to: request board records in writing under the condo's governing documents or BCL §624; independently look up the building's FISP record in the DOB database using its Block-Lot number; and search NYSCEF for any active litigation by address. Each step requires knowing to ask. Nothing consolidates the information, nothing standardizes the response timeline, and nothing places it in the buyer's hands before contract signing as a matter of course.

The bill that passed 58-1 and then stalled.

New York Senate Bill S7541, sponsored by Sen. Siela Bynoe, would have required condo and co-op boards to provide the buyer with the most recent engineering reports and inspection records at contract signing. The Senate passed S7541 58-1 in June 2025. The Assembly companion, A8337, was not brought to a floor vote; the sponsor withdrew before the chamber could act. A8337 sits in the Housing Committee as of June 2026. The 58-1 Senate vote was near-unanimous and bipartisan; the floor debate cited Surfside and the absence of any pre-sale inspection disclosure requirement. What the vote did not produce was an Assembly companion with the standing to move.

S7541's scope was broader than SB 410 (engineering reports generally, not only EEE inspections), but the structural principle was the same: buyers should receive what the board knows about the building's physical condition before committing to purchase. The Senate majority endorsed that principle. The Assembly did not bring it to a recorded vote. The regulatory gap this bill targeted is catalogued on this site and remains open.

Two jurisdictions have now enacted that principle in some form: Florida through HB 913 after Surfside (reserve study disclosure, milestone inspection results, mandatory structural integrity reports); California through SB 326 after Berkeley (mandatory EEE engineer inspections) and SB 410 (point-of-sale disclosure of those reports). New York's Senate has gone on record for the same idea. New York's Assembly has not.

Bottom line.

California built its mandatory EEE inspection regime in 2019 following the Berkeley collapse, set the first inspection deadline for January 2025, and in January 2026 closed the disclosure gap: sellers must now hand buyers the engineer's report before contracts are signed. New York has no equivalent on either count. The FISP database is accessible to any buyer who knows to search it; a buyer's attorney can request board records; neither substitute is the same as a statutory, pre-contract, seller-supplied disclosure package. A buyer in Los Angeles or San Francisco receives the engineer's written assessment of the building's balconies and walkways as a required item in the disclosure packet. A buyer in Manhattan, the Bronx, or Staten Island does not. That difference has a legislative record in Albany, a 58-1 Senate vote that names it, and a cost that a future buyer will absorb after closing.

Primary sources
California Civil Code §5551 (SB 326) · SB 410 (2024) text · California Civil Code §4525 · California Civil Code §5200 · NY S7541 · NY A8337 · NYC DOB FISP

Companion resources
Florida's post-Surfside condo reform vs New York's gap · NY S7541: 58-1 Senate, Assembly sponsor withdrew · Regulatory gap: no mandatory disclosure to buyers · National comparison of condo governance regimes · Buying a NYC condo: the CCNYC guide