Section 2: The statutory and regulatory framework

2A. The D.C. Condominium Act: maintenance, repair, and insurance

The D.C. Condominium Act, codified at D.C. Code § 42-1901.01 et seq., dates from the Condominium Act of 1976, as amended, and governs condominiums created in the District after March 28, 1977.⁵ Cooperatives are common in the District but answer to separate cooperative and corporate law, so the statutory analysis here stays confined to condominiums.⁶ The Act allocates maintenance responsibility in § 42-1903.07: except to the extent the condominium instruments provide otherwise, all powers and responsibilities for maintenance, repair, renovation, restoration, and replacement belong to the unit owners' association for the common elements and to the individual unit owner for the unit.⁷ That's a general standard of responsibility, not a fixed-schedule inspection requirement, and nothing in § 42-1903.07 sets an inspection interval, a trigger age, or an inspector-credential requirement.⁷ The Act's insurance obligations appear in § 42-1903.10, which requires the association, to the extent reasonably available, to maintain property insurance on the common elements of at least 90 percent of replacement cost, plus liability insurance; § 42-1903.10(d-1) provides that "[e]ach unit owner shall, to the extent reasonably available, purchase condominium owner's insurance coverage with dwelling (whether residential or commercial) property coverage at a minimum of $10,000 and condominium owner personal liability insurance coverage at a minimum of $300,000."⁸ On reserves, § 42-1903.08 authorizes the association to adopt and amend a budget that includes reserves and to collect assessments to fund them, and § 42-1904.04 requires a declarant's public offering statement to disclose the reserve amount or state that there is none.⁹ The Act doesn't require a condominium association to conduct a reserve study on any schedule and doesn't set a minimum reserve funding level.¹⁰ The Act therefore imposes no scheduled structural or milestone inspection; the maintenance duty stays general. What the Act does supply for construction defects is a warranty: § 42-1903.16(b) sets a two-year warranty against structural defects, backed by developer security of 10 percent of estimated cost,¹¹ administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development, which also offers a need-based assistance fund of up to $10,000 for associations that special-assessed to pursue a warranty claim.¹² In 4022 Georgia Avenue, LLC v. D.C. Department of Buildings (D.C. July 17, 2025), the D.C. Court of Appeals upheld a DOB order requiring a former owner-developer to correct defects, a finding that it said “could have” rested “based on the language of Section 42-1903.16(b) alone,”¹³ and the Office of the Attorney General announced on May 7, 2026 a consumer-protection settlement under which the developer pays $400,000 to the association.¹⁴

2B. The citywide construction codes, fire and life safety, and elevators

The citywide D.C. Construction Codes, based on the International Codes and administered by the Department of Buildings (DOB), apply to condominium and cooperative buildings, and DOB conducts construction, housing, and property-maintenance inspections and code enforcement across the District.³ The District's Property Maintenance Code (12-G DCMR) requires that structural members, foundation walls, exterior walls, roofs, and similar elements be maintained in sound condition and good repair, and DOB enforces those standards on a complaint and proactive basis rather than through a periodic condominium structural inspection.¹⁵ The DOB Proactive Inspection Program, created by the Proactive Inspection Program Act of 2024 (D.C. Law 25-141), targets multifamily rental buildings for residential property-maintenance and building-code compliance, which reaches rental housing rather than owner-occupied condominium units.¹⁶ Fire and life-safety enforcement runs through the D.C. Fire and EMS Department's Office of the Fire Marshal, Fire Prevention Division, which conducts routine maintenance inspections of buildings other than single-family dwellings, annual license-renewal inspections for select occupancies, and complaint investigations under the DCMR Fire Code.¹⁷ Elevators and other conveyances must operate under a valid certificate of inspection issued by DOB; the certificate is valid for two years, during which the conveyance must undergo periodic inspection and testing, and DOB assumed conveyance inspection and certification authority effective October 1, 2025.¹⁸ These regimes impose obligations at construction and for specific systems such as fire protection and elevators, but they don't create a comprehensive periodic structural inspection of the building envelope of the Florida type.³

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

The statutory property and casualty insurance requirements sit in § 42-1903.10, but in practice property-insurance carriers impose their own inspection conditions as a condition of coverage or renewal; those carrier requirements are market-driven, not statutory.⁸ The recorded declaration and bylaws are the operative documents for many associations: the inspection cadence for a given condominium is typically set by the declaration and the board rather than by statute, because § 42-1903.07 defers to the condominium instruments.⁷ Where an association incorporates, the D.C. Nonprofit Corporation Act, D.C. Code § 29-401 et seq., supplies corporate-formality and fiduciary standards for directors, but it imposes no building-inspection duty.¹⁹ The operational takeaway: absent a statutory inspection mandate, actual inspection obligations come from the citywide D.C. Construction Codes and fire code, insurer conditions, and the declaration, read together.

Section 3: Compliance obligations

A. Structural and building-envelope obligations

The association's structural obligation is a general duty to maintain, repair, and replace the common elements under § 42-1903.07 (source type: statutory, the D.C. Condominium Act), combined with building-code compliance under the D.C. Construction Codes and Property Maintenance Code DOB enforces (source type: building code).⁷ There's no periodic statutory structural inspection; the obligation is the maintenance duty plus code compliance.¹⁵

B. Fire and life-safety obligations

Condominium and cooperative buildings must comply with the DCMR Fire Code, enforced by the D.C. Fire and EMS Department's Fire Prevention Division through routine maintenance inspections of non-single-family buildings and complaint investigations (source type: fire code).¹⁷

C. Elevator and mechanical-systems obligations

Elevators and other conveyances may not operate without a valid two-year certificate of inspection from DOB, with periodic inspection and testing during the certificate term (source type: building code).¹⁸ Boilers and unfired pressure vessels must be inspected at least once a year by DOB inspectors or DC-licensed boiler insurance companies (source type: building code).²⁰

D. Reserve, insurance, and disclosure obligations

The association must maintain property and liability insurance under § 42-1903.10, and unit owners must carry the statutory minimum coverage (source type: statutory, the D.C. Condominium Act).⁸ The association may adopt budgets that include reserves under § 42-1903.08, and a declarant's public offering statement must disclose the reserve amount or state there is none under § 42-1904.04, but no statute requires a reserve study or a minimum reserve balance (source type: statutory, the D.C. Condominium Act).¹⁰ Carrier-imposed inspection or coverage conditions are contractual (source type: insurance-driven), and any fixed inspection schedule in a given community derives from its declaration (source type: declaration-driven).⁷ There's no single D.C. condo-safety-inspection statute; most obligations are code-based, insurer-driven, or declaration-based.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill introduced in Council Period 25 (2023-2024) or Council Period 26 (2025-2026) would create a Florida-style milestone or structural inspection regime or a SIRS-style reserve-study mandate for condominiums.²² Because the page title primes an expectation of such a regime, the absence is itself the finding: no mandate has been enacted.

B. Recent appellate rulings

C. Active legislative debates

There's no active proposal in the D.C. Council for a milestone, structural, or reserve-study inspection mandate for condominiums; the current condominium legislative activity concerns insurance-cost allocation (B26-0495) rather than a Surfside-style inspection or SIRS regime.²²

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

The District is a no-statutory-mandate jurisdiction for condominium structural and safety inspections. That places it apart from statutory-mandate states such as Florida, where a residential condominium or cooperative building three or more stories in height "must have a milestone inspection performed by December 31 of the year in which the building reaches 30 years of age" (a local enforcement agency may set 25 years where environmental conditions such as proximity to saltwater justify it) and every 10 years after that under Fla. Stat. § 553.899, plus structural integrity reserve studies under Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(g); and apart from elevated-element-inspection states such as California, where Civil Code § 5551 requires the board of a condominium project to have a licensed engineer or architect conduct a visual inspection of exterior elevated elements "at least once every nine years," with the first inspection due by January 1, 2025.²⁴ For a firm managing condominiums across states, the practical implication cuts two ways: Florida's milestone and SIRS obligations do not exist in the District, and the absence of a District mandate doesn't eliminate liability, because the duty to maintain, the building and fire codes, and insurer conditions still apply.¹ The District shows no verified legislative momentum toward a milestone, structural, or reserve-study mandate.²²

Federal condominium financing supplies a check the District's own law doesn't: HUD's FHA project-approval review and the separate VA project-approval process both require evidence of adequate reserve funding and sound physical condition, so a District condominium seeking FHA approval, or seeking to keep it through the three-year recertification cycle, must independently document reserve adequacy that the D.C. Condominium Act itself doesn't require, since § 42-1903.08 only authorizes reserve budgeting without mandating a reserve study or a minimum funding level.²⁵

Compliance baseline

• All D.C. condominium associations: The operative safety-compliance baseline is the § 42-1903.07 maintenance duty plus the D.C. Construction Codes, Property Maintenance Code, fire code, and elevator/boiler certification rules, including two-year elevator certificates and annual boiler inspections. Enactment of a D.C. bill creating a milestone or structural inspection requirement would change this baseline.
• Boards and managers: Any inspection cadence beyond the codes comes from the recorded declaration and bylaws, and § 42-1903.10 sets a 90 percent replacement-cost standard for master property insurance. Under the Baker decision, a bylaw liability waiver did not shield an association from a claim for failing to repair a known common-element defect.
• Multi-state comparison: Florida milestone/SIRS and California § 5551 procedures have no D.C. counterpart; D.C. obligations rest on code compliance, insurer conditions, and the declaration. D.C. law does not require a reserve study, so any study an association commissions is voluntary or set by its instruments.
• Pending legislation: B26-0495 sits in the Committee on Housing. If enacted, it would change unit-owner HO-6 coverage minimums, require annual proof of insurance, and raise the deductible chargeable to an owner.

Caveats

• Baker v. Chrissy Condominium Association was retrieved as a slip opinion from dccourts.gov (No. 20-CV-0312, decided May 27, 2021); an official Atlantic Reporter (A.3d) citation could not be verified in commercial or free databases.
• Bill status for B26-0495 is current as of the July 19, 2026 verification date; legislative status can change, and the primary record is the Council's page at lims.dccouncil.gov.
• The finding that no milestone/structural or SIRS bill exists in Council Periods 25 and 26 rests on the current D.C. Code, the Council legislative record, and industry legislative-tracking reports; it reflects the position as of the verification date, and active post-Surfside momentum nationally means it can change.
• Planned communities with shared multi-story structures — clubhouses or parking structures, for example — may face analogous building-code and insurer inspection obligations, but they fall outside the condominium-specific statutory scope of this page.