Oregon required annual reserve studies in 1999. New York has nothing.
Oregon Revised Statutes § 100.175 has required every condominium board to conduct or update a reserve study each year for more than two decades. New York's equivalent bills received no committee hearing before Albany adjourned. On January 4, 2027, Fannie Mae fills the gap with a lending standard. Companion to Nationwide, HOA reserves are running out. New York has no reserve requirement.
Oregon enacted its annual reserve study mandate for condominium associations in 1999. The statute, ORS § 100.175, requires every board formed after October 23 of that year to conduct or review a reserve study annually, maintain a written maintenance plan, and refuse any owner vote that would eliminate funding if the reserve account would not be adequately funded for the following year. New York Senate Bill S7600 and Assembly Bill A8945, which would have imposed a 30-year reserve study requirement on New York condominiums and co-ops, were referred to committee in January 2026. The 2025-2026 Albany session ended June 5 without a floor vote on either. That gap is now 27 years wide.
What Oregon ORS § 100.175 requires of every board.
The statute imposes three obligations on condominium associations formed after October 23, 1999. First, the board must annually conduct a reserve study or review and update its most recent one. The study must determine the reserve account requirements for maintaining, repairing, and replacing common elements that will normally require major work between one and 30 years from the date of the study. Second, the board must maintain a written maintenance plan that describes those elements, the timeline for the expected work, and the funding target for each. Third, if the reserve account would not be adequately funded for the coming year, the board may not reduce or eliminate contributions to meet that shortfall, even by owner vote. Associations formed before October 23, 1999 are exempt by default, but a board resolution or a majority vote of unit owners can bring an older association into compliance voluntarily. The statute gives unit owners something New York's Condominium Act does not: a statutory floor that the board cannot waive away in a budget meeting.
What a mandatory annual review catches.
A reserve study quantifies a building's deferred-maintenance liability by listing each common element, its expected remaining useful life, and the cost to replace it. A board that reviews that list every year sees cost-escalation in real time. When a roof replacement budgeted at $400,000 in 2018 now costs $580,000, the annual update forces that number into the current budget cycle before the board reaches a closing date on a sale. Without a study, the board carries the same stale estimate until a contractor quote arrives, at which point the gap between reserve balance and actual replacement cost falls to unit owners as a special assessment. The annual cadence does not prevent surprises, but it shrinks the distance between when a funding shortfall first appears in the ledger and when the board must address it in writing. In New York, that distance has no statutory ceiling.
The no-waiver provision Oregon got right.
The most consequential sentence in ORS § 100.175 is the one that restricts what a majority can vote to do. Under the statute, unit owners cannot vote to suspend or reduce reserve contributions if doing so would leave the account underfunded for the following year. This provision directly answers the question Florida's legislature faced after Champlain Towers South collapsed in June 2021: associations that waived reserve funding for years created financial conditions that made the cost of deferred repairs easier to postpone. Florida's SB 4-D (2022) and SB 154 (2023) banned waivers of structural reserve funding for buildings three stories or taller. Oregon had barred the general equivalent for all condominiums formed after 1999, more than twenty years earlier. New York's companion bills, A8945 and S7600, do not appear to include an analogous restriction. The bills were not scheduled for a hearing before Albany adjourned.
New York's reserve standard is set by Fannie Mae, not Albany.
New York has two statutory provisions that touch reserve accounts. New York City Administrative Code § 26-703 requires newly converted co-op and condo buildings to establish a reserve fund at conversion, typically set at three percent of the offering price in co-op conversions. Real Property Law § 339-mm imposes a similar obligation on preservation condominium plans. Neither provision creates an ongoing reserve obligation. Once the conversion reserve is established, no New York statute requires any board to conduct a study, maintain a minimum balance, or fund reserves at any particular rate for the life of the building. The operative standard for most NYC condos is set by Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03, which took effect August 3, 2026 and subjects every building with more than 10 units to full project review. Under that letter, starting January 4, 2027, a building that cannot produce a qualifying reserve study showing funding at the study's recommended level must allocate at least 15 percent of annual assessment income to reserves or lose eligibility for conventional financing. As of July 2026, at least 66 NYC condo and co-op buildings were already on Fannie Mae's unavailable list, the majority citing reserve or deferred-maintenance deficiencies. That is not a state law. It is a lending product guideline that reaches roughly the same buildings a reserve study mandate would, but without the annual cadence that catches problems before a sale.
| Provision | Oregon | New York |
|---|---|---|
| Annual reserve study or review | Required by statute — ORS § 100.175, condos formed after 10/23/1999 | No statute; A8945 and S7600 not advanced |
| Written maintenance plan | Required (ORS § 100.175(2)) | No statute |
| Minimum reserve funding level | Must be adequate per the current study | No statute; Fannie Mae LL-2026-03 imposes 15% of assessment income from January 4, 2027 |
| Owner vote to reduce reserves | Prohibited if account would be underfunded | No restriction; business judgment rule applies |
| Scope | Condos formed after October 23, 1999; older condos by board or majority vote | Conversion reserve only at formation; no ongoing requirement |
How the gap compounds: from deferred study to special assessment.
The path from a missing reserve study to a five-figure special assessment is not unusual. A building that has never commissioned a study does not know which common elements are within 10 years of replacement. The board funds reserves by reference to what it funded the year before, adjusted for whatever cost increases the managing agent flags at the annual budget meeting. When a facade failure or elevator modernization arrives, the reserve balance covers a fraction of the actual cost. The board must then choose between a special assessment and a building loan. Both options cost more than a funded reserve would have, because the capital was not accumulating during the years the study was deferred. New York's business judgment rule, as the Court of Appeals applied it in Levandusky v. One Fifth Avenue Apartment Corp., 75 N.Y.2d 530 (1990), protects a board's financial decisions from challenge by unit owners. A board that declined to fund reserves for five years carries the same protection as one that made a well-reasoned choice. No state agency reviews either outcome.
What New York boards should do before January 4.
Fannie Mae's January 4, 2027 full-review implementation is 126 days away. Under Lender Letter LL-2026-03, a building that relies on the 15-percent-of-assessments floor rather than a qualifying study faces two risks. First, buyers using conventional financing at buildings that fall short of the 15-percent floor will run into lender rejections at closing. Second, the percentage floor may be an inadequate proxy: a building that needs $1.2 million in facade repairs within four years may satisfy the 15-percent floor while still producing a special assessment the moment a contractor quote arrives. A qualifying reserve study, updated within three years by an independent qualified professional, eliminates the percentage floor requirement and substitutes actual 30-year cost projections. The Community Associations Institute's June 2026 Condominium Safety Public Policy Report recommends mandatory reserve studies in every state. At least twelve states already require them by statute. New York is not among them. The study a board commissions voluntarily before year-end does what Oregon's statute has required automatically since 1999.
Bottom line.
Oregon condominiums formed after October 23, 1999 have operated under a statutory annual reserve study requirement for 27 years. That requirement includes a restriction on owner action: a majority cannot vote to eliminate funding if the account would not be adequate for the coming year. New York's companion bills, A8945 and S7600, were in committee when Albany adjourned June 5, 2026, and received no floor vote. The gap between the two states is a policy choice. Starting January 4, 2027, Fannie Mae converts that policy choice into a lender requirement. A reserve study commissioned before the end of 2026 can substitute for the 15-percent floor, give buyers better financing terms, and serve as the first document in a building's reserve file that actually reflects what the building costs to maintain.
Primary sources: Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 100 (Condominiums) · NY S7600 (reserve study, 2025–26 session) · NY A8945 (reserve study, 2025–26 session) · NYC Administrative Code § 26-703 · Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 (eff. August 3, 2026)
Companion resources: Nationwide, HOA reserves are running out. New York has no reserve requirement. · Fannie Mae's 15% reserve floor arrives in January. NYC condo boards need to act. · What your reserve study's funding method means after August 3. · Florida made structural condo reserves non-waivable in 2024. New York's equivalent bill never moved. · The condo industry's own trade organization backs mandatory reserve studies. New York's bill didn't advance. · Regulatory gap inventory · How we built this