What Connecticut actually requires today

The obligation that exists is a disclosure duty, not a funding or study duty. A Connecticut association must tell owners the amount held in reserve and the basis on which that figure is calculated. Nothing requires a professional study, a funding percentage, or a schedule for replacing components.

Public Act 26-31 added one further disclosure at the point of sale rather than a substantive requirement: from October 1, 2026 the residential condition report advises a buyer in a community of more than twelve units to “request from the common interest community a report of such common interest community's reserve funds.”³

Note what that is. It tells the buyer to ask. It does not oblige the association to have anything to give them.

The standard arrived from Washington instead

This is the substantive development, and it is the reason a dead 2025 bill is worth reporting in 2026.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued coordinated changes to project standards on March 18, 2026. Two of them function as a reserve mandate for any Connecticut association whose owners need conforming financing:

The replacement reserve minimum rises from 10% to 15% of the annual budgeted assessment income, effective January 4, 2027. Associations must fund to the highest level recommended in their reserve study, and the “baseline funding” method is no longer accepted. An exception applies where a reserve study updated within three years is funded at its highest recommended level.⁴

Limited Review is retired for loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026, pushing essentially every condominium sale into full project review with the documentation that requires.

So the binding reserve standard for Connecticut associations in 2027 was written by a mortgage regulator, not in Hartford. It applies through the mortgage market rather than through the statute book, which means it reaches associations whose owners want to sell or refinance and leaves others untouched — a considerably less even distribution than a statute would produce.

The Surfside argument, used in both directions

There is an irony in the Connecticut record worth setting out plainly.

In 2025, the Surfside-shaped bill — a mandatory annual reserve study — was left to die without a hearing.

In 2026, the Community Associations Institute's Connecticut chapter invoked Surfside to help defeat House Bill 5437, which would have required owners to affirmatively approve budgets and special assessments, arguing that owner reluctance to approve spending was “exactly the problem that occurred at Surfside.”⁵

Both positions are internally coherent. Together they describe a state where the collapse is available as an argument against changing the approval process, and unavailable as an argument for a study requirement.

Where boards stand in the absence of a mandate

Treat January 4, 2027 as the operative date, not a legislative session. An association funding reserves below 15% of budgeted assessment income, or using a baseline funding method, is on a clock that has nothing to do with Hartford.

A reserve study updated within three years is now worth money. It is the route to the exception, and from October 2026 it is also the document buyers are told by statute to request.

Expect the assessment consequences to arrive together. Raising reserve contributions to 15% while insurance costs are also rising produces exactly the kind of increase that owners resist — and, under Connecticut's existing ratification rule, a budget passes unless a majority of all owners rejects it.

What to watch next

The 2027 session convenes in January and is a long session, restoring individual legislators' ability to file bills. Senator Looney remains in office. Nothing has been announced, and no inference should be drawn from the subject's history — but if a reserve bill returns, it will be arriving into a market that has already imposed a stricter standard than the one SB 816 proposed.