Section 1 — Overview: Condo safety inspections in Arkansas

Arkansas imposes no milestone or structural inspection statute on condominiums, and it has no structural integrity reserve study requirement of the kind Florida adopted in 2022.¹ The state's condominium statute is the Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, a traditional 1960s framework whose maintenance and insurance provisions run sparse next to modern uniform acts, so condominium safety obligations rest on building codes, insurance, and the recorded declaration rather than on a dedicated inspection law.²

Practical obligations come from four places read together: the council of co-owners' general duty to administer, maintain, and repair the common elements; the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code administered by the State Fire Marshal; insurer requirements; and the recorded master deed and bylaws.³ Arkansas's code layer runs comparatively centralized, because the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code applies statewide, unlike states that leave building and fire code adoption to individual municipalities.⁴

Nationally, Arkansas sits in the no-statutory-mandate category, apart from statutory-mandate states such as Florida, which requires a milestone inspection of most condominium and cooperative buildings three or more stories tall by December 31 of the year the building reaches 30 years of age, and every 10 years after that.¹ The sections below lay out the statutory and regulatory framework, the actual compliance obligations and their sources, recent legislative and judicial activity, and Arkansas's position in the national landscape.

Section 2 — The statutory and regulatory framework

2A. The Arkansas Horizontal Property Act: a thin condominium statute

The Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, codified at Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq., is the primary condominium statute. It started life as Act 60 of the First Extraordinary Session of 1961 and has seen only limited amendment since.⁵ It's a traditional Horizontal Property Act — not the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, not the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act — and Arkansas has enacted no modern successor condominium act, so there's no pre-date/post-date statutory split of the kind seen in states that layered a new act over an old one.²

The Act uses older terminology throughout: horizontal property regime, apartment (or unit), council of co-owners, master deed.⁶ The maintenance duty is functional and general. Section 18-13-116 binds the co-owners to contribute pro rata toward the expenses of administration and of maintenance and repair of the general common elements and, in the proper case, the limited common elements, with the administrator, board of administration, or other form of administration specified in the bylaws carrying out that administration.⁷

The Act's general common elements include the foundations, main walls, roofs, and all other elements rationally of common use or necessary to the building's existence, upkeep, and safety — which places structural components inside the council's maintenance responsibility while leaving each apartment to its owner.⁶ Insurance provisions run sparse. Section 18-13-117 is permissive: the co-owners "may, upon resolution of a majority, insure the building against risk," without prejudice to each co-owner's right to insure the individual apartment.⁸

Section 18-13-118 addresses how insurance proceeds apply to reconstruction after fire or other disaster, providing that reconstruction isn't compulsory when it comprises the whole or more than two-thirds of the building.⁹ The Act imposes no scheduled structural or milestone inspection and contains no reserve or reserve-study provision; the maintenance duty is a continuing general obligation, not a fixed-schedule inspection mandate.¹⁰

2B. The Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, building and fire safety, and elevators

The Arkansas Fire Prevention Code (AFPC), 2021 Edition, is administered and enforced by the State Fire Marshal's Office within the Arkansas Department of Public Safety, and it incorporates the 2021 International Fire Code, International Building Code, and International Residential Code as the State Fire Marshal has amended them.¹¹ It applies to commercial and multifamily construction statewide.

Under Section 101.2.2, each district, county, municipality, or other political subdivision may adopt and enforce only the provisions of the AFPC — the AFPC is the only foundation document available for modification — and local jurisdictions may adopt more stringent provisions on top of it.⁴ Enforcement splits in two. When a jurisdiction establishes a building department and a building official, primary responsibility for administering and enforcing the building code (Volume II) falls to that local authority, while the State Fire Marshal's Office keeps statewide jurisdiction to inspect places as necessary for fire-safety enforcement.¹²

The Code governs construction, alteration, and fire and life safety, including exits, fire alarm and extinguishing systems, and fire escapes.¹³ Elevators run on a separate track, regulated by the Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing through the Elevator Safety Board and Elevator Safety Section under Ark. Code § 20-24-101 et seq.; the program requires installation and alteration permits, inspection and testing, periodic inspections, and a certificate of operation for elevators statewide.¹⁴

Part of northeastern Arkansas sits inside the New Madrid Seismic Zone, a catastrophic-planning area covering 34 northeastern counties that runs northeast from Marked Tree (Poinsett County) through Blytheville (Mississippi County), and the model building codes folded into the AFPC carry seismic design provisions for that region — a building-code matter applied at the construction and alteration stage, not a recurring statutory inspection requirement.¹⁵ The Code governs construction, alteration, fire and life safety, and specific systems such as elevators, but it doesn't add up to a comprehensive periodic structural inspection of the building envelope of the kind Florida mandates.¹¹

2C. Insurance, the declaration, and the practical inspection drivers

Because the statutory insurance provision is permissive and sparse, the practical inspection cadence for Arkansas condominiums gets set outside the statute.⁸ Property insurers commonly impose inspection conditions as a term of coverage — for roofs, wiring, and other building systems — and these are market-driven underwriting requirements, not statutory ones.¹⁶

The recorded master deed and bylaws are the operative documents that most directly shape inspection and maintenance practice, and under the Horizontal Property Act, the bylaws govern the regime's administration.¹⁷ Where an association incorporates as a nonprofit corporation, the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq., supplies corporate formalities such as board and member procedures and records, but it imposes no inspection duty and isn't a condo-safety law.¹⁸ The operational takeaway: because the condominium statute runs thin, actual inspection obligations in Arkansas come primarily from the Fire Prevention Code, insurer conditions, and the recorded declaration, read together.

Section 3 — Compliance obligations

The following groups what an Arkansas condominium must actually do, with the source of each obligation identified. There's no single Arkansas condo-safety-inspection statute; the condominium statute itself runs thin, and most obligations are code-based, insurer-driven, or declaration-based.

A. Structural and building-envelope obligations

• The council of co-owners carries a general and continuing duty to administer, maintain, and repair the general common elements, which include the foundations, main walls, and roofs (source: statutory, Horizontal Property Act § 18-13-116 and § 18-13-102).⁷
• New construction and alteration of the structure must comply with the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, Volume II, including applicable seismic design provisions in the New Madrid zone (source: building code, AFPC).¹¹
• The structural obligation is a general duty to maintain plus building-code compliance at construction and alteration. It's not a periodic statutory structural inspection.¹⁰

B. Fire and life-safety obligations

• Condominium buildings must comply with the fire and life-safety provisions of the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, including exits, fire alarm and extinguishing systems, and fire escapes, enforced by the State Fire Marshal and local building and fire officials (source: fire code, AFPC).¹³
• Local jurisdictions with building departments administer the building code locally, while the State Fire Marshal keeps statewide inspection jurisdiction (source: fire code, AFPC).¹²

C. Elevator and mechanical-systems obligations

• Condominium elevators must hold a current certificate of operation and undergo permitting, testing, and periodic inspection under the Elevator Safety Board rules the Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing administers (source: statutory and administrative, Ark. Code § 20-24-101 et seq.).¹⁴

D. Reserve, insurance, and disclosure obligations

• Arkansas doesn't mandate reserve studies or minimum reserve funding for condominiums; the Horizontal Property Act contains no reserve-study provision, and any reserve expectation typically comes from lender requirements or the declaration, not statute (source: absence of statute; declaration-driven and lender-driven).¹⁰
• Association-level building insurance is permissive under § 18-13-117, so property coverage and any inspection conditions attached to it are, in practice, driven by the carrier and the declaration rather than compelled by statute (source: statutory baseline plus insurance-driven).⁸

Section 4 — Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacting a condominium structural, milestone, or SIRS-style inspection mandate was introduced or passed in Arkansas's 2025 regular session.²⁰

B. Recent appellate rulings

Arkansas appellate courts have produced essentially no case law on a condominium association's structural or common-element maintenance duties. The only located Arkansas appellate condominium decision concerns assessment-lien priority rather than safety or maintenance.

No Arkansas appellate decision within the past 36 months turned up on condominium structural defects, water intrusion, or the council of co-owners' maintenance duty.

C. Active legislative debates

No Arkansas bill proposing a milestone, structural, or reserve-study inspection mandate for condominiums is pending, and the state shows no post-Surfside legislative momentum toward such a mandate; 2025 activity on the Horizontal Property Act (Act 516) stayed confined to definitional and administrative modernization.¹⁹

Section 5 — National positioning and related coverage

Arkansas sits in the no-statutory-mandate group on condominium safety inspections. Statutory-mandate states go much further: Florida, through Senate Bill 4-D of 2022, codified at Fla. Stat. § 553.899 and enacted after the June 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, requires a milestone structural inspection of condominium and cooperative buildings three or more habitable stories tall by December 31 of the year the building reaches 30 years of age (25 years for buildings within three miles of a coastline), repeating every 10 years, together with a structural integrity reserve study.¹

California, through Senate Bill 326, signed August 30, 2019, effective January 1, 2020, and prompted by the 2015 Berkeley balcony collapse that killed six, added Civil Code § 5551 to require condominium associations of three or more units to inspect wood-supported exterior elevated elements such as balconies, decks, and walkways more than six feet above grade, with the first inspection due January 1, 2025 and re-inspection at least once every nine years after that.²² Arkansas has neither regime.

The practical implication for multi-state operators is direct: a firm managing Florida condominiums must not assume Florida's milestone or SIRS obligations exist in Arkansas, and, just the same, the absence of an Arkansas mandate doesn't eliminate liability, because the council of co-owners' duty to maintain, the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, and insurer conditions still apply. On the record of the 2025 session, Arkansas shows no verified legislative momentum toward adopting a milestone, structural, or reserve-study mandate.¹⁹ A federal layer still applies: HOA Weekly's federal FHA and VA condo-approval coverage explains that HUD's FHA project-approval review draws on the same reserve-funding and physical-condition documentation a state inspection or reserve-study law would generate, so a reserve deficit or unresolved maintenance finding can still jeopardize a project's FHA approval even absent an Arkansas mandate.²³

1. Fla. Stat. § 553.899 (Mandatory structural inspections for condominium and cooperative buildings), enacted by SB 4-D (2022) ↩
2. Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq. (chapter listing, 2024 Arkansas Code) ↩
3. Ark. Code § 18-13-116 (Liability for expenses and assessments), as set out in Act 516 of 2025 ↩
4. Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, 2021 Edition, § 101.2.2 (Locally adopted codes) ↩
5. Ark. Code § 18-13-103 (source note: Acts 1961 (1st Ex. Sess.), No. 60, § 3) ↩
6. Ark. Code § 18-13-102 (definitions of apartment, general and limited common elements), Act 516 of 2025 text ↩
7. Ark. Code § 18-13-116 (maintenance and repair of common elements; administration), Act 516 of 2025 text ↩
8. Ark. Code § 18-13-117 (Insurance generally) ↩
9. Ark. Code § 18-13-118 (Application of insurance proceeds to reconstruction) ↩
10. Community Associations Institute, Reserve Studies and Funding Resources (Arkansas not among states requiring reserve studies or funding) ↩
11. Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, 2021 Edition, Foreword (2021 IFC/IBC/IRC adopted; State Fire Marshal administration) ↩
12. Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, §§ 103–104 (local building official authority over Volume II; State Fire Marshal statewide inspection jurisdiction) ↩
13. Ark. Code § 20-22-1010 (Duties of State Fire Marshal; fire alarm systems, extinguishing equipment, fire escapes, exits) ↩
14. Administrative Rules of the Elevator Safety Board, Ark. Code § 20-24-101 et seq. (permits, inspection and testing, operating permits) ↩
15. Arkansas Geological Survey, New Madrid Seismic Zone of Northeast Arkansas (34-county catastrophic planning area; runs from Marked Tree through Blytheville) ↩
16. Discussion of lender and insurer expectations for Arkansas condominium reserves and inspections (market-driven, not statutory) ↩
17. Ark. Code § 18-13-108 (Bylaws govern administration of the regime) ↩
18. Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq. (corporate formalities for incorporated associations) ↩
19. SB323 / Act 516 of 2025 bill status (To Amend the Horizontal Property Act) ↩
20. HB1660 of 2025 bill status (Died in House Committee at Sine Die adjournment) ↩
21. First State Bank v. Metro District Condominiums Property Owners' Ass'n, 2014 Ark. 48, 432 S.W.3d 1 ↩
22. California SB 326 (2019), adding Civil Code § 5551 (inspection of exterior elevated elements) ↩
23. HUD, FHA Condominiums (project-approval review of insurance coverage, financial condition, pending legal action, and physical property condition) ↩