What the pool does write, and on what terms

The Beach Pool remains a genuine market for the individual unit owner, one unit at a time, and the deductible menu is the part worth knowing:

“At the option of the insured, policies may have a one percent (1%), two percent (2%), five percent (5%) or ten percent (10%) wind/hail/hurricane deductible.”

The percentage runs against the Building/Dwelling limit, or against the Business/Personal Property limit where there is no building coverage. The residential new-business service fee is $65.

Ineligibility rules are worth flagging because several catch older coastal stock: vacant property; any structure commenced on or after January 1, 1971 “not built in substantial compliance with the Southern Standard Building Code, including the design-wind requirements therein”; property in flood zones A or V without matching NFIP flood coverage; Coastal Barrier Resources Act areas without equivalent flood cover; and “[a]ny building, dwelling or structure … located in whole or in part in or over water.”

The squeeze this creates

The reason these exclusions matter more in 2026 than they did is what is happening on the other side of the same building.

Fannie Mae's Selling Guide section on master property insurance for project developments, in its version dated August 5, 2026, requires coverage of at least “100% of the estimated replacement cost value of the project improvements, including common elements and residential structures.” It caps master-policy deductibles at 5% of the coverage amount per occurrence and at $50,000 per unit. And it names the peril expressly: “Windstorm (including named storms designated by the U.S. National Weather Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by a name or number).”

So conforming mortgage eligibility now demands a full-replacement-cost master policy with a named-storm peril and a 5% deductible ceiling — while the state's residual market offers 10% deductibles, no blanket form, and a $3 million cap per location. The two requirements do not meet.

Fannie Mae also retired the Limited Review pathway for condominium project eligibility, for loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026. The current project-standards section offers only a waiver, Full Review via Condo Project Manager, Fannie Mae Review via PERS, or FHA approval — meaning more Alabama coastal projects will have their master policy actually examined rather than assumed.

A third pressure: the state's mitigation grant excludes condominiums

Alabama's flagship wind-mitigation subsidy, Strengthen Alabama Homes, pays 100% of mitigation cost up to $10,000 toward an IBHS FORTIFIED Roof or FORTIFIED Silver designation. Its governing rule, Ala. Admin. Code r. 482-1-159-.02, says the home “must be an owner occupied, single-family, primary residence, and cannot be a condominium or mobile home.” The program's own materials repeat it: “No rentals, no townhomes, no condominiums, or mobile homes.”

There is no FORTIFIED grant path for a shared roof in Alabama. The buildings most exposed to wind are the ones the subsidy structurally cannot reach.

What it changes for boards and managers

Do not plan a master-policy renewal around the wind pool. If a broker's placement strategy assumes AIUA as the fallback layer for common elements, the rules above are the document to put in front of them.

Unit-owner exposure is where the pool actually helps, and loss assessment is the gap. Owners can get wind coverage there one unit at a time, but the pool writes no loss assessment coverage — so a unit owner relying on an AIUA policy has no wind-pool response to a post-storm special assessment. Whether their HO-6 elsewhere carries loss assessment is worth asking now rather than after a storm.

Deductible choice is a governance decision. The 1/2/5/10% menu is the insured's option. A 10% wind deductible on a coastal building is a decision about how large a future special assessment the association is prepared to levy.

What we could not establish

The November 1, 2025 edition is current, but AIUA does not post superseded editions, so we cannot say what changed on that date. If the Board altered condominium eligibility, limits, or the loss-assessment and blanket exclusions in this revision, that is not visible from the published documents, and we are not going to infer it.

We also found no publicly noticed AIUA rate filing, rate hearing or rate-change announcement in the past fourteen months. AIUA rates go to the Department of Insurance through SERFF, which is not a public docket.

What to watch next

One indicator is public. AIUA publishes its reinsurance tower, and the 2026 structure holds total limit at $625 million with an $85 million retention — identical in dollars to 2025, but re-scored: the top of the placed program moved from a 232-year to a 304-year modelled return period, and the attachment point from 26-year to 31-year. The same money now sits behind a rarer modelled event.

The other is legislative. The Alabama Coastal Commercial Insurance Joint Interim Study Commission, created in 2024, was asked by a 2025 resolution to consider “broadening the coverage scope of the Alabama Insurance Underwriting Association's Wind Pool … for commercial properties.” That is the mechanism by which these exclusions would change. We found no published report from the Commission and nothing currently scheduled.