Tennessee required condo boards to update reserve studies every five years. New York's bill did not advance.

Tennessee Senate Bill 863, enacted in the 2023-2024 legislative session and codified in Tennessee Code Annotated Title 66, Chapter 27, requires every unit owners' association whose common elements carry an aggregate replacement cost above $10,000 to maintain a reserve study, update it at least every five years, and make the full study available to owners electronically. New York Assembly Bill A8945 and Senate Bill S7600, which would have imposed a comparable requirement on New York condominiums and cooperatives, were referred to committee when the 2025-2026 session opened in January 2026. Neither received a committee hearing before Albany adjourned June 5, 2026. The gap between what Tennessee now requires and what New York still does not is a policy choice.

What Tennessee's law requires.

Tennessee SB 863 amended Tennessee Code Annotated Title 66, Chapter 27 to impose three obligations on qualifying associations. The first is a study itself: if a board has never had one conducted, it must commission one. The second is a five-year update cycle. Under the statute, if the board had a reserve study conducted on or after January 1, 2020, it must have that study updated within five years of the original date and at least every five years after that. The third obligation runs annually between those five-year updates: the board must review reserve funding for adequacy each year. Alongside those three substantive requirements, the statute includes a transparency obligation. The board must make a copy of the reserve study available to all unit owners by electronic mail or by posting it on the association's website. Commissioning a study and keeping it from owners is non-compliance on two separate counts. A reserve study, in plain terms, is an engineering assessment of the building's common elements (roof, facade, elevators, boilers, hallways, parking structures, and any shared systems) that documents their current condition, estimates their useful remaining life, and calculates the funding level the association needs to replace them on schedule. Done properly, a reserve study gives a board a 30-year projection of capital expenditure and the common charge level required to meet it without a special assessment.

The $10,000 threshold and who it reaches.

Tennessee expressed the coverage trigger in terms of aggregate replacement cost of the common elements, not the association's annual budget. A $10,000 floor on replacement cost is low. A building with a shared roof, one elevator, a lobby, and a boiler room carries common elements whose replacement value runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars before adding the facade or the parking deck. Every ordinary multi-unit residential condominium association in Tennessee qualifies under the statute's terms. The law carves out three categories: boards still under declarant control at the time of sale, condominiums titled to a single owner, and properties held as a tenancy by the entirety between spouses. Those exemptions follow a standard template found in condo acts in other states and do not reduce the mandate's reach for any conventional residential building whose owners are distinct individuals. New York City's 10,882 condominium buildings would almost entirely fall within the Tennessee statute's scope if it applied here.

What New York's law says about reserves — and when it stops.

New York Real Property Law §339-w requires a condo sponsor to include a reserve fund schedule in the offering plan and to fund the reserve at the time the sponsor turns board control over to the unit owners. That obligation fires once, at the moment of turnover. After that date, no state statute requires the board to commission a reserve study, to maintain a minimum reserve balance, or to show owners what the building's capital needs look like over any future period. BCL §624 gives co-op shareholders the right to inspect financial books and records. RPL §339-w gives condo unit owners a right to inspect records at the time of turnover. Neither provision creates a right to a current reserve study, because the state does not require one to exist. A board that commissions a reserve study voluntarily has no obligation to share it with owners under New York law, and a board that never commissions one faces no state penalty. The only reserve-related standard that reaches NYC condo buildings after turnover is set by the private secondary mortgage market: Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03, effective August 3, 2026, which beginning January 4, 2027 will require buildings seeking conventional financing to carry reserves at 15 percent of annual assessment income.

The transparency element New York's bills also included.

Tennessee's owner-access requirement did not appear in the statute by accident. A reserve study that only the board can see functions as an internal planning document. One that owners can read is also a disclosure mechanism: it tells each owner whether the building's capital position is sound, whether the board is funding at the level the engineer recommended, and whether a special assessment is likely within the study's projection window. New York Assembly Bill A8945 included a comparable transparency obligation. Under the bill as introduced, the reserve study would have to be made available to unit owners upon written request. That bill was referred to the Housing Committee in January 2026. It received no committee hearing before the session closed. The existing inspection rights under BCL §624 and RPL §339-w cover financial records and books but do not reach reserve engineering studies, because those studies are not required to exist.

The bills that did not advance — again.

A8945 and S7600 would have required condominiums and cooperatives to commission a capital reserve study that covers a 30-year funding plan, prepared or reviewed by a credentialed reserve specialist, architect, or engineer. Both bills were introduced in the 2025-2026 legislative session and referred to committee in January 2026. Neither received a floor vote before Albany adjourned June 5, 2026. Those were not the first introductions. Prior session versions of the same bills produced the same outcome. The Community Associations Institute's June 2026 Condominium Safety Public Policy Report identified 18 states with reserve study mandates and recommended that every state enact one. CAI represents managing agents, attorneys, and vendor firms serving condo and co-op buildings. That industry recommendation did not move the Albany calendar. The session ended without a scheduled hearing on either bill.

What 18 states require that New York does not.

Tennessee is one of at least 18 states that require reserve studies or reserve funding at a specified level. The group spans states that acted after the 2021 Surfside collapse, including Florida, which banned waiving reserves for structural components, and states that acted much earlier. Oregon required annual reserve studies in 1999. New Jersey enacted a mandatory 30-year reserve study requirement in January 2024. Colorado required a reserve study at developer turnover, effective August 2026. The states without mandates are not uniformly small. New York is the country's third-largest state by population, with roughly 15,000 condo and co-op buildings. The absence of a reserve study requirement in New York is not an oversight from the era before Surfside. Albany saw the bills and referred them to committee. The session adjourned.

Bottom line.

Tennessee required condo boards to commission reserve studies, update them every five years, review funding adequacy every year, and share the results with owners. The threshold that triggers the requirement is $10,000 in common element replacement cost. New York's equivalent legislation was referred to committee in January 2026 and adjourned without a floor vote. The state's only reserve obligation on a condo board runs at the moment a sponsor turns over control and does not recur. After that transition, the operative reserve standard for NYC condos is set by a Fannie Mae lending rule that applies only when a unit goes to market for a conventional mortgage. Between transactions, no state body is checking whether the building's capital plan is funded at the level its own engineer recommended.

Companion resources: The condo industry backed reserve study mandates. Albany didn't act. · HOA reserve failures nationally and New York's gap. · Oregon required annual reserve studies in 1999. · Florida made structural reserves non-waivable. · Fannie Mae's 15% reserve floor arrives January 2027. · National comparison index. · Legislative graveyard.