Buying a condo in San Diego splits your due diligence in two: a home inspection that scrutinizes the unit you actually own, and an HOA document review that tells you whether the association behind the walls is financially healthy and legally compliant. Get both right and you avoid inheriting a special assessment, a deferred-maintenance roof, or an overdue SB-326 balcony inspection.
A condo is two purchases in one
When you buy a detached house, you own everything from the property line up. A condo is different. You own the interior of your unit – typically from the inside surface of the perimeter walls inward, often described as “the airspace and the paint.” The building shell, the roof, the framing, the elevators, the pool, the landscaping, and usually the balconies and exterior stairs are common area owned collectively and maintained by the homeowners association.
That division matters enormously for inspection and for risk. A defect in your unit is your problem to fix. A defect in common area is the HOA’s responsibility – but you help pay for it through dues and, when reserves fall short, through special assessments that can run into the thousands. So buying a condo means inspecting what you own and investigating the entity responsible for everything you don’t.
What a condo inspection actually covers
A condo unit inspection is a visual, non-invasive evaluation of the unit you’re buying plus the building systems you can reach. We focus on the components that are yours to maintain and the conditions that reveal how the larger structure is performing. A typical San Diego condo inspection includes:
- Interior finishes and surfaces – walls, ceilings, floors, doors and windows, looking for water staining, cracking, and signs of past leaks from units above.
- Kitchen and bathrooms – cabinets, countertops, plumbing fixtures, water pressure, drainage, and any evidence of slow leaks under sinks or around tubs and showers.
- Electrical inside the unit – the panel or subpanel serving your unit, receptacles, GFCI/AFCI protection, and visible wiring.
- Plumbing accessible to the unit – supply lines, drains, and the water heater if it’s dedicated to your unit (many San Diego condos have in-unit or closet water heaters).
- HVAC serving the unit – the furnace, mini-split, or air handler and condenser assigned to you, plus the condition of accessible ductwork.
- Appliances that convey with the sale, tested for basic operation.
- Windows, sliders, and the unit’s exterior-facing elements – including your balcony or patio surface, since moisture intrusion at these points is a leading source of damage in coastal and multi-level buildings.
- Moisture and thermal clues – because so much of a condo’s structure is hidden behind shared walls, we pay close attention to the symptoms that something larger is failing, like efflorescence on a garage wall or a damp interior corner on a shared wall. Thermal imaging can help reveal hidden moisture and missing insulation that a flashlight won’t catch.
What a unit inspection generally does not cover is the guts of the common area: the roof structure, the building’s main service equipment, the elevator machinery, the pool’s mechanical room, and the load-bearing framing behind finished surfaces. Those fall to the HOA and, where required, to specialized engineers. This is exactly why the document review is not optional. If you want detail on scope and what to expect on inspection day, our buyer’s inspection page walks through the process step by step.
Reading the HOA documents like an inspector
In California you’re entitled to receive the association’s governing documents and disclosures during escrow. Most buyers skim them. You should read them the way an inspector reads a house – looking for the symptoms of trouble. The documents that matter most:
The reserve study
This is the single most revealing document in the stack. A reserve study inventories every major common-area component – roof, paint, paving, plumbing, balconies, elevators – estimates its remaining life, and projects how much money the association should be setting aside to replace each one. Look at the percent funded figure. A reserve that’s well funded means the HOA can pay for the roof or the repipe when the time comes. A reserve funded at 30 percent with an aging roof is a special assessment waiting to happen, and you’d be buying in just in time to help pay for it.
Budget, dues history, and special assessments
Compare current dues to the reserve contributions. Associations sometimes keep dues artificially low to make units easier to sell, then hit owners with surprise assessments. Ask for the history of past special assessments and any that are currently approved or under discussion. A pattern of repeated assessments tells you the budget doesn’t match the building’s real needs.
Board meeting minutes
Minutes are where the real story lives. Recurring discussions about roof leaks, plumbing failures, balcony repairs, litigation, or “the deck project” signal deferred maintenance and looming costs. A year or two of minutes will tell you more about a building’s health than the glossy listing ever will.
Insurance, litigation, and rental caps
Confirm the association carries adequate master insurance and check whether the building is involved in construction-defect or other litigation, which can affect both your safety and your ability to get a mortgage. Note any rental restrictions if you ever intend to lease the unit.
SB-326: the balcony law every San Diego condo buyer should know
If the building you’re considering has elevated, wood-framed exterior elements – balconies, decks, exterior stairs, or walkways more than six feet above ground – it almost certainly falls under SB-326. This is California’s condo/HOA balcony inspection law, codified at Civil Code section 5551. It was enacted after the 2015 Berkeley balcony collapse to force associations to find hidden dry rot before it becomes catastrophic.
Here’s what condo buyers need to understand:
- SB-326 applies to condominium and HOA-governed communities (it’s the counterpart to SB-721, which covers apartments and multifamily rentals of three or more units).
- The inspection must be performed by a licensed architect or structural engineer – a higher bar than the general home inspection of your unit.
- The first inspection deadline was January 1, 2025, and inspections must then recur every nine years, with the results tied into the association’s reserve study.
- The inspector must evaluate a statistically significant sample of the building’s exterior elevated elements and report any conditions that threaten safety.
For a buyer, SB-326 is a built-in due-diligence tool. Ask whether the association has completed its SB-326 inspection, request the report, and find out whether any repairs it identified have been funded and finished. An association that has ignored the deadline, or that received a report flagging dry rot it hasn’t budgeted to fix, is signaling both a safety issue and a coming assessment. You can read more about scope, qualified inspectors, and timelines on our SB-326 balcony inspection page. (Statutes change – always verify the current requirements and deadlines against Civil Code 5551 itself or with a qualified professional.)
If you end up serving on the board after you buy – which happens fast in smaller San Diego communities – our SB-326 guide for HOA boards covers compliance, recordkeeping, and how to fold balcony repairs into the reserve plan.
How the two reviews fit together
Think of it as a single picture assembled from two sources. The unit inspection tells you what you’ll fix in the next few years inside your own four walls. The HOA review tells you what the community will fix – and what it’ll charge you to do it. A pristine unit inside a financially starved association is a worse buy than an average unit inside a well-run one, because the assessment risk follows the building, not the paint.
San Diego’s condo stock spans a lot of eras and conditions – from mid-century coastal buildings in La Jolla and Pacific Beach battling salt-air corrosion, to 1980s and 90s complexes inland where wood balconies and flat roofs are now reaching the end of their service life. The older and more weather-exposed the building, the more weight the reserve study and the SB-326 report should carry in your decision.
Get a clear read before you commit
A condo can be a smart entry into the San Diego market – if you go in knowing exactly what you own, what the association owns, and whether that association has the money and the inspections to back up its responsibilities. The Real Estate Inspection Company inspects condo units across San Diego County and can help you make sense of what the HOA documents are really telling you.
Owner and lead inspector Joseph Romeo is an InterNACHI Certified Professional Inspector (CPI) and holds CSLB General Contractor License #1113143. Call (619) 752-4399 or contact us to schedule your condo inspection, and see the fee schedule for how pricing works – it depends on square footage, age, and access.
