For years, a condominium association’s balcony inspection report was an internal document. The board received it, budgeted against it, and filed it. That era ended on January 1, 2026.
Under SB 410, the association’s most recent E-3 inspection report — the structural inspection required by Civil Code 5551, better known as SB 326 — became part of the resale disclosure package, and an association record available to owners. In plain terms: every buyer, every buyer’s agent, every escrow officer and every lender can now read your balcony report.
Why this changes the economics of sitting on repairs
An unrepaired finding used to be a line item in a reserve study. Now it is a disclosure that follows every unit in the building through every sale. And the audience reading it has changed from board members to underwriters — people professionally employed to find reasons to say no.
The lending side has moved in the same direction at the same time. Fannie Mae’s project standards make a condo project ineligible for financing when a structural inspection shows unaddressed critical repairs, and as of August 2026 the streamlined “Limited Review” path is retired for established projects — meaning more loan files get the full review where someone actually reads the inspection report, the board minutes and the reserve study. A building with open structural findings and no funded repair plan can find that its units are effectively unfinanceable — not unsellable to cash buyers, but closed to the majority of buyers who need a loan.
The way back is documented repairs
The route from “report with findings” back to “financeable building” runs through exactly one thing: repairs that are performed, permitted, and documented. The lender’s reviewer needs to see that the deficiencies the inspection identified have been resolved — which means the repair work itself, the permit trail, and records the association can hand to escrow.
This is repair work with a paperwork requirement attached, and both halves matter. A repair performed without permits or close-out documentation can leave the building in disclosure limbo: physically fixed, administratively still broken.
What a board should do this quarter
If your association’s report has open findings, treat the repair plan as a sales-enablement project for every owner in the building, because that is what it now is. Scope the repairs from the report’s findings. Get them permitted and performed. Close them out with documentation the association keeps on file — and hand that file to escrow alongside the report, so what buyers and lenders read is not “deficiencies found” but “deficiencies found and resolved.”
And when repairs are done, a re-inspection or updated report from a qualified independent professional — under 5551, a licensed structural or civil engineer, or a licensed architect — is what refreshes the record the market reads.
The repair side is ours
WICR Waterproofing & Construction performs SB 326 and SB 721 repair work across Southern California — 40 years, CSLB #745936, waterproofing and structural repairs scoped directly from inspection-report findings, performed on permit, with the close-out documentation your association’s file needs. Request a repair bid package for your board or call 888-388-9427.
