New Jersey mandated reserve studies for condos. New York still hasn't.

New Jersey signed S2760 into law on January 8, 2024. The statute requires every covered condo and co-op association in the state to complete a capital reserve study with a 30-year funding plan, conducted by a credentialed reserve specialist or licensed engineer, updated every five years. New York has no equivalent. Assembly bill A8945 remains in Assembly Housing, and Senate bill S7600 was reported out of Judiciary and committed to Finance on May 28, 2025 before being re-referred to Judiciary on January 7, 2026. Neither has reached a floor vote, and New York's 15,108 condo and co-op buildings carry that gap into 2026.

What the NJ law actually requires.

NJ S2760/A4384, the Structural Integrity and Reserves Law, applies to residential condo and co-op buildings whose primary load-bearing systems are concrete, masonry, steel, or hybrid construction. For buildings over 15 years old, the initial structural inspection was due by January 8, 2026. Subsequent inspections run every five years for buildings over 20 years old and every 10 years for buildings between 15 and 20 years old. The law's author, the NJ Department of Community Affairs, described the statute's purpose at signing as protecting residents through documented structural integrity and long-term reserve adequacy.

Reserve studies run on a parallel track. Each covered association must commission a 30-year capital reserve study from a Reserve Specialist credentialed through the Association of Professional Reserve Analysts (or an equivalent national credential), or from a licensed professional engineer. The study must project cash flows across the full 30-year horizon. The projected reserve fund balance cannot go negative at any point in the plan. Studies must be renewed every five years.

An August 2025 amendment, S3992, addressed associations that were severely underfunded at the original law's effective date. It allows associations to temporarily cap reserve contributions at 85% of the baseline plan for up to five years, provided they disclose to unit owners, in 20-point bold font, the specific year a special assessment will be required and the anticipated dollar amount of that assessment. The 30-year horizon and the professional credential requirement are unchanged by the amendment.

Why NJ moved when it did.

The collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida on June 24, 2021 killed 98 people. Post-collapse investigations pointed to deferred maintenance and reserve shortfalls extending back more than a decade. The collapse triggered legislative responses across multiple states. New Jersey was one of the first to translate those lessons into statute, covering both structural inspections and reserve funding in a single bill rather than addressing them separately.

New Jersey was not the only state to act. Florida passed HB 913 in 2022, establishing statewide structural inspection requirements, reserve mandates, and a cloud-based building registry. Virginia enacted reserve study disclosure requirements in 2023. Hawaii passed reserve fund minimums for condominiums in 2022. We covered California's post-Surfside trajectory in an earlier post: California required balcony inspection disclosure at sale. New York hasn't. The FL HB 913 comparison, the first post in this series, remains the clearest precedent: Florida fixed condo transparency after Surfside. New York hasn't.

The pattern across these states is consistent: a high-profile structural failure created political will to require what had previously been optional. Each resulting statute produces a documented, credentialed funding plan on a 30-year horizon filed with a state agency. New York has not yet produced that result.

What New York law currently says.

New York Cooperative Corporations Law §72 requires co-op corporations to maintain "reasonable reserve funds" for capital repairs. The statute does not define "reasonable," specify a minimum balance, require any particular calculation method, or mandate a reserve study of any duration. No Department of State or AG regulation fills in that gap. A board can satisfy the standard by maintaining almost any positive balance in a capital line item, with no independent review and no state filing.

For condominiums, the situation is more bare. Real Property Law Article 9-B, the NY Condominium Act, does not require a reserve study, a minimum reserve balance, or a funding plan of any duration. The AG's Real Estate Finance Bureau reviews offering plans before a building first goes on sale; that review does not extend to ongoing reserve adequacy after the offering plan closes. Post-offering, reserve management moves entirely to the board, with no state audit mechanism and no required periodic reporting to any agency.

This is not a feature of particularly permissive NY regulatory philosophy. NY mandates extensive compliance reporting across the local-law stack: LL97 carbon benchmarking, LL84 energy benchmarking, LL11 facade inspections, LL126 garage inspections. It has simply not extended that same reporting logic to the question of whether a building's capital accounts can cover the repairs those inspections identify.

The two bills waiting in Albany.

Assembly Bill A8945, introduced July 16, 2025, amends the Real Property Law to direct condominium and cooperative housing associations to complete a capital reserve study including a 30-year funding plan. The study must be prepared by a reserve specialist credentialed through the Association of Professional Reserve Analysts or by a licensed engineer in good standing. Findings must be filed with the state comptroller. Companion Senate bill S7600, sponsored by Senator Siela A. Bynoe, mirrors the requirement. The two bills have not moved identically. S7600 was referred to Senate Judiciary on April 23, 2025, reported and committed to Finance on May 28, 2025, and re-referred to Judiciary on January 7, 2026 at the start of the second year of the session. A8945 was referred to Assembly Housing and re-referred the same day. Neither has reached a floor vote, though S7600's advance out of one committee distinguishes it from most of the reforms we track.

This result is consistent with the pattern documented on the legislative graveyard post: condo and co-op reform bills in New York regularly complete the session at committee level, often without a recorded vote. Reserve study mandates have not generated the floor debate that would place members on the public record. See also the Legislative Graveyard index for the full bill history.

What an unfunded reserve gap costs unit owners.

When a building has not maintained reserves adequate to cover a capital repair, the board faces three options: special assessment, bank loan, or deferred maintenance. Special assessments arrive with limited notice and run from a few thousand dollars per unit to more than $50,000, depending on the scope of work. Loans add interest cost to the underlying repair and require the association to have adequate credit. Deferred maintenance accelerates the next failure and creates liability exposure.

New York's Local Law 11 FISP cycle (mandatory exterior facade inspections every five years) provides a repeatable illustration. Buildings with thin reserves regularly face emergency assessments when a FISP cycle reveals required repairs: the contractor mobilizes, scaffolding goes up, and the assessment notice follows within weeks. A 30-year reserve model that included the facade inspection cycle would have projected the cost and funded ahead. The model does not exist because the law does not require it. See the Local Law 11 post for the full extraction mechanics.

For buildings with expiring 421-a tax abatements, the timing problem is sharper. A tax-bill increase and a capital assessment arriving in the same fiscal year is a predictable stress scenario for affordable-tier unit owners, and it is precisely the scenario a 30-year reserve model would flag years in advance. The 421-a post has the abatement timeline and the carrying-cost math.

Bottom line.

New Jersey enacted a mandatory reserve study law in January 2024, updated it in August 2025, and now requires every covered building to produce a credentialed 30-year funding plan filed with the state. New York has proposed bills that would do something equivalent. The 2025-2026 legislative session closed without those bills advancing. New York is not structurally unable to mandate reserve studies. New Jersey's law shows the legislation is drafable, passable, and administrable across a comparable housing stock — the absence in New York is a choice, and that choice is made for the owners in 15,108 buildings. For the count, see the 15,108-building universe post. For every prior comparison in the NY-vs-elsewhere series, see the National Comparison page.

Companion resources: Florida fixed condo transparency after Surfside. New York hasn't. · California required balcony inspection disclosure at sale. New York hasn't. · Ten reform bills. Zero enacted. The NY condo legislative graveyard. · What is Local Law 11 and why it could cost you $50,000. · Your 421-a tax abatement is expiring. · National comparison index