The compliance detail is “audible in each common space”

This phrase is doing the real work, and it is where a board's cost sits. The requirement is not one device per building or one per floor. It is that an alarm notification be clearly audible in each common space.

For a New York building that means working through the spaces one at a time. A long double-loaded corridor may need more than one device to be clearly audible at both ends. A multi-flight stairwell is one space by name and several by acoustics. And the statute contemplates a “system or systems” as well as individual devices, which is the design answer for a larger building — an interconnected system with notification appliances rather than a scatter of single-station alarms.

Note what the amendment also removed: the words “single station.” The original provision contemplated stand-alone battery devices. The current text contemplates devices, systems, or both.

Which common spaces count is a rulemaking question

The statute hands the definition to the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council, with a floor:

“The council shall define common spaces for the purposes of the standards promulgated pursuant to this paragraph, provided that such definition shall include any spaces accessible by all residents, including, but not limited to, lobbies, hallways, and stairwells.”

So lobbies, hallways and stairwells are in by statute. Beyond those, it depends on the Council's rules. The spaces a New York board would want to know about are the ones that are arguably accessible by all residents without being a lobby, hallway or stairwell: a laundry room, a package room, a mail room, a bicycle room, a community room, a basement corridor, a roof landing, an interior garage.

We could not establish whether the Council has promulgated those rules. That is a real gap, and it is a question for an engineer or fire-protection consultant rather than a guess. The statutory minimum — lobbies, hallways, stairwells — is safe to design to; the rest is not yet settled as far as we can tell.

Why this is easy to miss and expensive to miss

Three reasons this particular obligation slips past New York boards.

It is in the Executive Law, not the Uniform Code as boards read it. Section 378 is the statute directing the Code Council; a board's compliance calendar is usually built from local filings and inspection cycles, and this is neither.

The date moved. The 2024 chapter originally took effect immediately; Chapter 21 of 2025 amended that chapter's own effective-date clause to read “This act shall take effect [immediately] December 31, 2025.” A board that looked at this in early 2025 and concluded it had time was right, and the time has now run.

There is nothing to file. Unlike a facade report or an emissions report, this obligation produces no submission, which means nothing chases a board that has not complied. It surfaces at an inspection, or after a fire.

Outside New York City this sits inside the Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code enforcement done by the municipality; in New York City the Building Code and Fire Code govern and the obligation sits alongside a building's existing alarm and detector requirements. Our New York condo safety inspections page covers the inspection landscape.

What else changed in the code in the same window

Two things worth knowing, because they are the framework this sits in.

The 2025 Uniform Code and Energy Code took effect December 31, 2025 — adopted December 5, 2025, affecting 19 NYCRR Parts 1219 to 1229, Part 1240 and Parts 1264–1265. Any new construction, addition or substantial alteration an association undertakes outside New York City is now designed and permitted under the new code.³

But the all-electric provisions are not in force. The Department of State's own notice states: “Implementation and enforcement of the 2025 provisions…that prohibit the installation of fossil-fuel equipment and building systems in new buildings…continues to be suspended by Court Order and are neither effective nor enforceable.” The suspended provisions are 19 NYCRR § 1240.6 and Subpart 1229-2, and a court ruling of July 2, 2026 continues the suspension.

That is a correction worth making loudly, because vendors and consultants have been telling New York boards the opposite. A board or developer building new townhomes or a new amenity building outside New York City may still install gas equipment. Anyone saying gas was prohibited from January 1, 2026 is wrong. Because the suspension rests on litigation rather than repeal, treat it as temporary and design for a possible electric future where that is cheap to do — but do not treat it as law today.

We were not able to verify the case name, court or docket for the July 2, 2026 order from a primary source, so we are not reporting the procedural history. Our EV charging page covers the adjacent electrification questions boards are being asked.