In Highland Beach, the Newest Tower on the Block Still Sent Someone a $91,000 Bill

In June 2024, a buyer closed on a two-bedroom unit at Toscana, the oceanfront condominium complex on Highland Beach's barrier island whose towers were completed in 2000. Nothing about the closing looked unusual. Five months later, a letter arrived. The buyer owed $91,000, their proportional share of a $7 million elevator-replacement project the building's board had been discussing since at least March, three months before the closing table. A lawsuit later filed by the buyer alleged the seller knew about the assessment and said nothing.

Toscana is not an old building by Highland Beach standards. It is not falling apart. It has full-service amenities, a beach club, and a reputation as one of the town's premier addresses. That is exactly what makes the story worth sitting with. Buyers shopping condos on this stretch of coast have learned to treat a building's age as a rough proxy for risk: older tower, more likely a big bill is coming; newer tower, safer bet. The Toscana case says that proxy is wrong, or at least incomplete, and the reason why says more about how Florida's post-Surfside reserve law actually works than any median price ever will.

The Reserve Law Only Covers Part of the Building

Florida's response to the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse created two separate obligations for condo and co-op buildings three stories or taller. A milestone structural inspection is required at 30 years, or 25 years for buildings within three miles of the coast, which covers every condo tower in Highland Beach. Separately, a Structural Integrity Reserve Study, or SIRS, had to be completed by the end of 2025 and identifies how much a building must set aside for a defined list of structural components: roof, load-bearing walls, floors, foundation, fireproofing, waterproofing, electrical, plumbing, and any single item whose replacement cost crosses a set dollar threshold, adjusted for inflation to $25,675 in 2026. Boards can no longer vote to waive or underfund reserves on that list the way they once could.

What that list does not automatically include is the part of the story buyers tend to overlook. Elevators and emergency generators land on the SIRS schedule only if a building's engineer classifies them as major components crossing that dollar threshold, and that classification is a judgment call each association's reserve specialist makes, not a blanket statewide mandate the way roof and concrete restoration now are. Insurance premiums sit entirely outside the reserve conversation. They are an operating expense, renewed every year, and a spike in that line item can trigger a special assessment with no structural inspection involved at all. A building can be young, structurally sound, and fully compliant with its SIRS, and still hand an owner a six-figure bill for a system the reserve law never touched.

Two More Buildings, Two Different Bills

Toscana's story is not the only one on this island. At Clarendon, a beachside condominium, the board's insurer dropped coverage entirely as carriers pulled back from Florida's coastal risk. The board scrambled and ultimately secured coverage through Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state's insurer of last resort. The premium rose 56% to roughly $400,000 a year, and insurance alone now consumes about 42% of Clarendon's operating budget. To cover the increase, the board levied a special assessment averaging about $7,000 per unit. Nothing was being repaired. Owners were paying for the privilege of staying insured. Board president John Shoemaker put it plainly to a local reporter: "It's absolutely killing us and we're looking at a 20% increase coming this year."

At Seagate, the trigger was different again. Milestone recertification inspections turned up emergency generators that had not been functioning properly for years, a life-safety gap nobody had flagged until the state-mandated inspection forced the issue. The board had to pay for temporary generators while arranging permanent replacements, an unbudgeted cost that had nothing to do with concrete or roofing.

Three buildings, three different mechanisms, none of them predicted by how old the tower is. That is the pattern worth remembering when a listing agent points to a building's construction date as a selling point.

Why This Runs Through Nearly Every Highland Beach Transaction

This matters more in Highland Beach than it would almost anywhere else in Palm Beach County because of how the town's housing stock is built. The town's own tax roll lists roughly 3,700 condominium parcels against about 367 single-family parcels, meaning close to nine of every ten taxable properties on this barrier island sit inside a condo or co-op association. Average assessed value runs near $1.0 million per condo unit versus roughly $3.5 million per single-family parcel, a gap that reflects both scarcity of land and the sheer weight of condo inventory. The town's total millage for fiscal year 2025/2026 is set at 3.5875 mills, a number worth knowing but a small piece of the real carrying-cost picture compared to what a board decides to assess.

In a market like Boca Raton or Delray Beach, a condo-specific cost spike is one segment of a much larger, single-family-heavy market, easy to shop around. In Highland Beach, condo economics are close to being the entire market. There is no quiet alternative segment to retreat to if a buyer wants to stay on this stretch of coast. That is the real reason the Toscana, Clarendon, and Seagate stories are not isolated anecdotes. They are the mechanism running underneath almost every transaction this town produces.

What to Actually Ask Before Writing an Offer

The documents that would have caught the Toscana situation before closing are not exotic. A buyer or their agent can request the building's current SIRS report, the most recent milestone inspection summary including any phase two findings, the last twelve months of board meeting minutes, the current insurance declarations page, and a written disclosure of any special assessment adopted, pending, or even discussed by the board in the past year. Florida law gives associations a defined window to produce the estoppel package once a request is made, and reading it before signing rather than after the inspection period closes is the only version of this that actually protects a buyer.

It's also worth checking whether a building has applied for the state's My Safe Florida Condo pilot program, which offers matching funds of two dollars for every one dollar an association spends on hurricane hardening, up to $175,000. A building that has tapped that program for wind mitigation work has offset exactly the kind of capital spending that otherwise shows up as a special assessment on someone else's closing statement.

Local market commentary has described the heaviest wave of Highland Beach special assessments, the 2023-24 period, as easing. That does not mean the diligence window has closed. Many associations are still working through reserve requirements that only became fully binding in 2026, and the components outside that mandate, elevators, generators, insurance, remain exactly as unpredictable as they were when Toscana's buyer opened that letter.

FAQ

Does a newer condo building in Highland Beach mean lower assessment risk? Not automatically. Toscana's towers were completed in 2000 and the complex still produced a $91,000 per-unit assessment for an elevator replacement, a system that falls outside the specific structural components the state's reserve law requires buildings to fund.

Is insurance covered by the same law that requires structural reserve funding? No. The Structural Integrity Reserve Study addresses components like roofs, load-bearing walls, and waterproofing. Insurance premiums are an annual operating expense, and a spike like the one Clarendon experienced can trigger its own special assessment with no structural inspection involved.

What should I request before making an offer on a Highland Beach condo? The building's current SIRS report, the most recent milestone inspection summary, twelve months of board minutes, the insurance declarations page, and a written disclosure of any assessment the board has adopted, proposed, or discussed recently.

Do Highland Beach's single-family homes face the same rules? No. The milestone inspection and SIRS requirements apply only to condo and cooperative buildings three stories or taller. The town's roughly 367 single-family parcels sit outside that framework, though they carry their own maintenance obligations, from seawalls to roofs, that a buyer should still budget for separately.

Every one of these numbers lives in a document somewhere, a board packet, an inspection report, an insurance renewal. Finding it before an offer is written, not after, is the difference between a smooth closing and a letter that shows up five months later. If you are comparing buildings on this stretch of coast and want someone who reads those documents for a living, The Buchbinder Group is available to request a private consultation.