Washington required condo boards to send owners a reserve summary. New York's bills did not advance.

Washington State's 2026 amendments to the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, RCW 64.90.545, took effect July 1, 2026. Beginning on that date, every board governed by the act must include a one-page reserve summary in the annual budget package it distributes to unit owners at least thirty days before the fiscal year begins. Any owner who wants the full reserve study can request it in writing and receive it within ten business days, electronically, at no cost. New York Assembly Bill A8945 and Senate Bill S7600, which would have imposed comparable reserve study and disclosure obligations on New York condominiums and cooperatives, were referred to committee when the 2025-2026 session opened in January 2026 and received no floor vote before Albany adjourned June 18, 2026. New York has no reserve study mandate and no disclosure requirement. The gap is not an oversight; it is the result of a legislative calendar that ended without reaching the bills.

What the July 1 amendment adds.

Washington's WUCIOA already required boards to commission and update reserve studies on a defined schedule. The 2026 amendments added two obligations on top of that existing requirement. The first is a routine annual disclosure: the one-page reserve summary goes to every unit owner as part of the annual budget package, without any owner needing to ask. The second is a request right: an owner who wants to read the full underlying study submits a written request and receives the document electronically within ten business days, at no cost to the requesting owner. The ten-day window and the no-cost requirement are meaningful. Prior to the amendment, Washington boards governed by WUCIOA were required to have a reserve study and to make it available for inspection, but the practical barriers to accessing it (scheduling, in-person review, copying fees) could slow or complicate the process. The 2026 amendment removes those barriers for electronic delivery and sets a hard response deadline. A board that sits on a request past the tenth business day is out of compliance on two separate counts: failing to deliver the study and failing to meet the timeline. WUCIOA as amended in 2026 applies to all common interest communities in Washington State. ESSB 5129, signed in April 2025 and effective January 1, 2026, extended RCW 64.90.545 to communities formed before July 2018 that were previously exempt from the act's reserve provisions. Both the reserve study requirement and the July 1, 2026 disclosure provisions are now mandatory for all covered communities.

What the one-page summary must show.

The summary required by the July 1 amendment is not a brief narrative. RCW 64.90.545, as amended, specifies that the reserve summary must include four categories of information. First, a component list identifying each major common element that will require significant maintenance, repair, or replacement, with the remaining useful life and the total useful life for each component. Second, the association's current reserve account balance and the percentage of full funding that balance represents. Third, a 30-year projection of reserve account balances, expected expenditures on each component, and the contribution rates the board recommends to meet those projected costs. Fourth, the funding method the board is using and whether that method matches the study's recommendation. That four-part summary gives an ordinary unit owner, without any engineering background, enough information to evaluate three things: whether the building's physical components are aging faster than the reserve account is growing, whether the board is funding reserves at the level its own engineer recommended, and whether a special assessment is likely within a foreseeable window. A board that delivers those four items annually is giving owners the basis for an informed question at the next board meeting. A board that does not deliver them is asking owners to trust that the account is adequate without any data to support that trust.

What New York's reserve law says, and where it ends.

New York Real Property Law §339-w requires a condominium sponsor to include a reserve fund schedule in the offering plan and to contribute to a reserve fund before turning board control over to the unit owners. That obligation runs once, at turnover. After the sponsor steps back, no state statute requires the board to commission a reserve study, to update one, to fund at any minimum level, or to tell owners what the building's capital needs look like over any future period. BCL §624 gives co-op shareholders the right to inspect books and records on notice. RPL §339-w gives condo unit owners inspection rights tied to the turnover documents. Neither provision creates a right to a current reserve study, because no state statute requires a current reserve study to exist. A board that commissions a reserve study voluntarily has no obligation under New York law to share it with owners, and a board that never commissions one faces no state penalty. There is no state agency monitoring reserve fund levels for New York's condominiums or cooperatives between transactions. The only post-turnover reserve standard that applies to NYC condo buildings is set by the secondary mortgage market: Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03, effective August 3, 2026, raises the minimum reserve allocation to 15 percent of annual assessment income for buildings seeking conventional financing from January 4, 2027 forward. That requirement fires only when a unit goes to market and a buyer applies for a mortgage. Between sales, no public body reviews whether the reserve account matches what the building's engineering needs.

Why disclosure is a separate requirement from having a study.

A reserve study that only the board can see functions as an internal planning document. One that owners can read is an accountability mechanism. Those are different things. When a board receives an engineer's recommendation that it fund the reserve at $400,000 per year and adopts a budget at $200,000, owners who never see the study have no basis to challenge that gap. Under New York's business judgment rule, established in Levandusky v. One Fifth Avenue Apartment Corp., 75 N.Y.2d 530 (1990), a court will not second-guess a board's financial decisions absent evidence of self-dealing or bad faith. A reserve funding level that the board set at half the engineer's recommendation, with no owner ever having access to the study, is exactly the kind of decision that Levandusky insulates. The court defers to the board's judgment. The owners have no study to present to show what that judgment displaced. Washington's amendment closes that feedback loop by making the summary routine and the full study accessible. Owner access to reserve data does not override the board's authority to make funding decisions. What it does is create a factual record. An owner at a Washington community who reads the annual summary and sees that the reserve is 42 percent funded when the study recommends 80 percent can ask a pointed question at the annual meeting with the document in hand. An owner at a New York condominium who suspects the same problem has no document to request, because the state does not require the study to exist.

The bills that did not advance.

Assembly Bill A8945, introduced in the 2025-2026 session, would have required New York condominiums and cooperatives to commission a capital reserve study prepared or reviewed by a credentialed reserve specialist, architect, or engineer, covering a 30-year funding projection. The bill included a provision requiring that the study be made available to unit owners on written request. Senate Bill S7600 contained parallel provisions. Assembly Bill A8945 was referred to the Housing Committee; Senate Bill S7600 was referred to the Judiciary Committee. Neither received a committee hearing before Albany adjourned June 18, 2026. This was not the first time. Prior-session versions of the same bills produced the same committee referral without a floor vote. 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 change the Albany calendar. The session adjourned June 18 without a scheduled hearing on either bill. For context on what was decided in the same session: Int. 0242-2026, which would add family and relationship structure as a protected class in co-op applications, received a committee hearing September 7. Int. 1015-2026, which would expand J-51 for LL97 retrofit costs, received a Council committee hearing September 9. Neither of the reserve bills received a hearing in the same legislative season in Albany.

What Washington's requirement joins.

Washington is not alone. Tennessee's SB 863, enacted in 2023, requires reserve studies for associations whose common elements carry more than $10,000 in aggregate replacement cost, with a five-year update cycle and an annual adequacy review. The study must be made available electronically to owners. Oregon has required annual reserve studies since 1999. ORS §100.175 has been on the books for 27 years. Hawaii requires annual audits and a reserve study updated every three years for associations with 20 or more units under Chapter 514B, enacted in 2006. New Jersey enacted a mandatory 30-year reserve study requirement in January 2024 under S2760. Washington's July 1, 2026 amendment adds something those states do not all share: a routine, annual disclosure to every owner without requiring the owner to ask. The Tennessee study goes to owners electronically, but as a static document rather than an annual summary integrated into the budget cycle. Washington's one-page summary, embedded in the budget package that every owner already receives, makes reserve status a normal part of the annual financial picture rather than a document an owner must actively request. New York's 15,108 condo and co-op buildings have none of these requirements.

Bottom line.

Washington now requires condo boards to tell unit owners about the state of their reserves every year. The summary goes to every owner automatically, as part of the budget. Any owner who wants the underlying study can get it electronically within ten business days at no cost. New York's equivalent legislation was referred to committee in January 2026 and adjourned without a floor vote, continuing a multi-session pattern. New York has no reserve study mandate and no reserve disclosure requirement. The first actor to price a building's reserve position in New York is typically the mortgage market, when a buyer applies for conventional financing on a unit in a building that cannot meet Fannie Mae's reserve threshold. Between those financing events, no public body, no annual summary, and no request right tells an owner whether the account behind their building's long-term capital needs is on track or years behind the engineer's recommendation.

Primary sources:
RCW 64.90.545 — Washington reserve study requirements (WUCIOA) · NY Assembly Bill A8945 (2025-2026 session) · NY Senate Bill S7600 (2025-2026 session) · Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 · OseranHahn: Washington 2026 condo statute revisions — a board's 90-day checklist

Companion resources: Washington's 26-item condo resale disclosure law. · Tennessee required reserve study updates every five years. · Oregon required annual reserve studies in 1999. · The condo industry backed reserve study mandates. Albany didn't act. · HOA reserve failures nationally and New York's gap. · Fannie Mae's 15% reserve floor arrives January 2027. · New York's business judgment rule and the reserve gap. · Legislative graveyard.