In early 2024, the board at Coronado, a waterfront condominium on the Intracoastal side of Highland Beach, opened a letter from its insurance carrier. The premium was going up from $1.5 million to $1.9 million a year. Then came a second letter. The insurer was dropping the building entirely, citing concerns about the roofs, and gave the board thirty days to find new coverage. It did, but the replacement policy covered only a fraction of the building's value.
What followed was a one-time special assessment of $40,000 per unit, payable over eight years, layered on top of already-rising monthly dues. The money went toward a new roof, concrete restoration, and rewiring the common areas. Board president Jason Chudnofsky put it plainly to a local reporter: "It all comes down to, we did a pretty good job." Coronado had been setting aside reserves for years. Buildings that hadn't were facing worse.
This is the part of Highland Beach condo shopping that never shows up in the listing photos. Two buildings a few hundred yards apart, similar age, similar view, can carry very different real costs of ownership, and the gap has almost nothing to do with granite countertops.
The Number Everyone Compares, and the One They Don't
As of April 2026, the median home price in Highland Beach sat at $1,149,000, with the average sale price closer to $1,721,335 and condos spending an average of 107 days on the market before selling. Those numbers get repeated constantly, and they're accurate, but they answer the wrong question for anyone actually comparing buildings.
The question that matters more in this specific town is what a building's association is on the hook for, and whether it has been saving for it. Highland Beach is barely a mile wide, built out almost entirely with condominiums from the 1970s through the early 2000s. Every one of those buildings is now working through the same set of state deadlines, and not all of them started from the same financial position.
What Changed in Florida Law, and Why It Landed in 2026
The framework driving all of this traces back to the 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside. In response, the Florida legislature passed SB 4-D in 2022, refined by SB 154 in 2023, creating two requirements for any condominium or cooperative building three stories or taller: a milestone structural inspection once the building reaches 25 years of age in coastal jurisdictions, or 30 years elsewhere, repeating every 10 years after, and a Structural Integrity Reserve Study, or SIRS, that identifies the funding needed for major structural components like the roof, load-bearing walls, plumbing, and waterproofing.
The part that actually moves money is the reserve rule. Before this law, associations could vote to waive or underfund reserves to keep monthly dues low, and many did. For any budget adopted on or after December 31, 2024, that option is gone for SIRS-covered structural items. Associations had until December 31, 2025 to complete their SIRS, or December 31, 2026 if it's paired with a milestone inspection, and per the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, buildings must begin funding reserves according to that study starting January 1, 2026.
In plain terms: 2026 is the year the bill comes due for whichever buildings spent the last two decades keeping dues artificially low. Coronado's board got there two years early, which is part of why its $40,000 assessment came with a clear plan rather than a scramble.
Four Buildings, Four Different Ledgers
Pulling recent Highland Beach MLS activity on individual buildings shows how differently this plays out even among comparable oceanfront and Intracoastal properties.
| Building | Built | Trailing 12-month price per square foot | Fee or assessment signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toscana | early 2000s | $618/sqft (period ending July 2026) | HOA fees run roughly $0.78 per square foot monthly, close to $1,170/month on a 1,500-square-foot unit |
| Highland Beach Club | 1997 | $480/sqft (period ending May 2026) | Tower units run about $0.33 per square foot monthly, near $495/month on 1,500 square feet; the eight townhouses run closer to $0.86 per square foot, nearly three times the tower rate |
| Highland Towers | older oceanfront building | $434/sqft (period ending April 2026) | Documented monthly condo fees range from $674 to $1,315 depending on the unit |
| Coronado | built in phases, 1982 and 1984 | units have traded from $350,000 to just over $1 million | A one-time $40,000-per-unit special assessment was levied in 2024, payable over eight years, on top of standard dues |
Look at Toscana and Coronado side by side. Toscana's price per square foot is more than 50 percent higher than Coronado's low end, yet Coronado's owners are the ones carrying a five-figure assessment. Price per square foot tells you what the market thinks the space and the view are worth today. It says nothing about what the association still owes on the building itself.
Highland Beach Club is the instructive middle case. Its per-square-foot HOA ratio is less than half of Toscana's, in a building built earlier, at 1997. A lower ratio in an older building isn't automatically good news. It can mean a well-funded, well-managed association, or it can mean reserves that haven't caught up to what a SIRS will eventually require. The number alone doesn't tell you which. The documents behind the number do.
How to Read a Building Before You Read a Listing
For a buyer comparing Highland Beach condos in 2026, the practical shift is simple: treat the association's paperwork as seriously as the floor plan. Before writing an offer, ask for:
- The most recent Structural Integrity Reserve Study, including the percent-funded figure for each major component, not just whether one exists
- The milestone inspection report, if the building has reached the 25 or 30-year threshold, and whether it triggered a Phase 2 detailed investigation
- Two years of association budgets compared against what the SIRS says the building should be contributing
- A five-year history of special assessments, both levied and pending
- Recent insurance renewal notices or non-renewal letters, since carriers are increasingly pricing policies, and in some cases declining to renew at all, based on milestone inspection results
A building with a clean recent milestone report and reserves tracking the SIRS schedule is a meaningfully different asset than one with the same square footage and a thinner paper trail, even if the two list for the same price today. The difference shows up later, in a maintenance fee increase or a special assessment notice, not on day one.
A Few Questions Worth Settling Early
Does a newer Highland Beach condo skip all of this? No. The SIRS requirement is triggered by building height, three stories or more, not age. A building finished this year still needs a SIRS on file. Only the milestone inspection has an age trigger.
Are HOA dues and reserve contributions the same thing? Not necessarily. Monthly dues cover day-to-day operations, staffing, landscaping, insurance premiums, and utilities. Reserve contributions are the portion set aside for future repair and replacement of major components. A building can have modest monthly dues and still be badly underfunded on reserves, which is exactly the setup that produces a Coronado-style assessment.
Can an association still choose not to fund reserves? For SIRS-covered structural items, no, once a budget is adopted on or after December 31, 2024. Associations can spread the funding through a special assessment, a loan, or a line of credit, but they can no longer vote to skip it altogether.
Highland Beach rewards patience and homework in a way the median price never will. If you're weighing two buildings that look nearly identical on paper, the SIRS report and the milestone inspection file are where the real comparison happens, and where a two-decade decision either gets easier or gets a lot more expensive.
If you'd like a second set of eyes on a specific Highland Beach building before you write an offer, Laura Gallagher and Terri Berman work this stretch of coastline closely enough to know which questions to ask the association, and when to ask them. Contact Us.
