Stand in the lobby of Washington Park Tower and a broker will tell you that Washington passed a sweeping new condo disclosure law this year. It is true. It is also, for that specific building, mostly beside the point.
Washington Park Tower went up in 1969. It is the only high-rise Madison Park has, 23 stories holding just 57 residences, designed by architect Roland Terry, with dues that fold in concierge staffing, earthquake insurance, and central hot water. Canterbury Shores and Lakeshore West, the neighborhood's other named waterfront associations, are cut from the same era: low-rise, amenity-rich, decades old. If you are shopping condos in Madison Park this fall, you are almost certainly shopping buildings that were built decades before the 2018 cutoff that determines which disclosure rules actually apply to them.
That gap matters more than the headlines suggest.
What actually changed on July 1, 2026
Washington's condo and HOA law has been in transition for a while. The state's newer framework, the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, took its first phase into effect on January 1, 2026, unifying disclosure, reserve study, and governance rules that had previously lived in scattered corners of the older Condominium Act. A further round of amendments landed on July 1, 2026, and this is the piece getting the attention: boards must now include a one-page reserves summary in the annual budget package, hand over the full reserve study to any owner who asks within ten business days at no charge, and disclose funding levels directly inside the resale certificate.
Those are real improvements. They are also scoped to communities governed by the newer act, which generally means associations formed after 2018. Older condominiums, the ones still operating under the 1990 Condominium Act, remain on their own track for now, though several provisions in this year's amendments do reach back toward them.
Madison Park's condo stock did not form after 2018. It formed when Nixon was in office.
The law your building actually lives under
None of this leaves Madison Park buyers unprotected. The older Condominium Act already requires a reserve study that lists every major component, estimates its useful life and remaining life, and presents the board with three distinct funding paths: a full funding plan built to reach 100 percent funded status by the end of a 30-year window, a baseline funding plan built only to keep the account above zero for those same 30 years, and whatever contribution rate a reserve professional actually recommends. Associations with what the statute calls "significant assets" have had to prepare and update this study, with a full on-site inspection required at least every three years, since well before this year's headlines.
The resale certificate has its own long-standing teeth. Washington law requires a set of specific disclosures at the point of sale, including any unpaid special assessments and, if no current reserve study exists, a statutory warning that a purchaser could be handed a special assessment on demand for a component the study never budgeted. That certificate has to reach a buyer within ten days of a request, and the preparation fee is capped by statute rather than left to whatever the managing company wants to charge.
So the mechanics of disclosure in Madison Park have not been thin. What is thin is the assumption that this year's law upgraded them.
Why a clean disclosure isn't the same as a safe number
Here is where the older law starts to show its age, not because it hides anything, but because it never asked boards to choose the safe option, only to show their homework.
A reserve study that follows the baseline funding plan is fully compliant. It is also, by the state's own reserve-industry sources, the higher-risk of the two standard paths, because it is built only to avoid a zero balance, not to actually fund the roof, the dock, or the elevator when its useful life runs out. A board can adopt that plan, disclose it exactly as required, hand it to a buyer inside ten days, and still be running toward a shortfall the paperwork was never designed to prevent.
This is why monthly dues are such an unreliable shortcut in a neighborhood like this one. A 1964-era waterfront building can carry dues around 530 dollars a month while a fully staffed high-rise like Washington Park Tower runs closer to 2,100. The cheaper number does not mean the cheaper building is better funded. It might simply mean the association has chosen the baseline path, or has not updated its study recently, or is counting on the lender's minimum funding floor, commonly around 10 percent of the annual budget, as though that floor were the same thing as adequate reserves. It is a lending threshold, not a funding target.
The math that shows up at closing, not before
Run the numbers the way an association actually has to. If a 40-unit building needs 400,000 dollars for a roof and has 200,000 dollars sitting in reserve, the shortfall is 200,000 dollars, and it gets divided across owners by their percentage interest, which in an equal-share building works out to roughly 5,000 dollars per unit. That bill does not show up gradually. Boards typically have to authorize it by vote and can offer payment plans over 12 to 36 months, but the obligation attaches to the unit, not to the timing of your closing.
A reserve study that discloses a baseline funding plan is telling you, in compliant, statute-satisfying language, that a bill like this is more likely than it would be under a full funding plan. The disclosure law does the job of surfacing that sentence. It does not do the job of making the sentence say something better.
What to ask before you waive the financing contingency
A few questions get you past the paperwork's surface and into what it actually says:
- Is this association governed by the newer Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, or has it stayed under the 1990 Condominium Act? Ask directly. The answer changes which disclosure timeline and format apply.
- Does the current reserve study reflect a full funding plan or a baseline funding plan? Both are legal. Only one is designed to actually cover the components list when they wear out.
- When was the last on-site inspection, not just a desk update? The statute allows some update levels between full studies to skip the site visit entirely, so a "current" reserve study can still be running on a desk review of old numbers.
- Is the association large enough to be exempt from the reserve study requirement entirely? A narrow waiver exists for very small condominiums, so confirm unit count rather than assume.
- What does the resale certificate say about unpaid or upcoming special assessments, and does that number match what's in the meeting minutes from the last year?
None of these questions require a lawyer to ask. They require asking them before you remove your financing contingency, not after.
A note on what this means for sellers, too
If you're on the other side of this, sitting on a unit in one of these buildings, the same gap cuts the other way. A board that can point to a full funding plan, a recent on-site inspection, and a clean delinquency rate is handing its sellers a real marketing asset in a market where buyers are starting to ask sharper questions. That paperwork is worth assembling before you list, not after an inspection contingency forces the issue.
A few questions worth settling directly
Does the new July 2026 law mean I don't need to hire someone to review the resale certificate myself? No. The law changes what boards have to hand over and how fast. It does not interpret the numbers for you.
If my building predates 2018, does any part of the new law apply to it at all? Some provisions reach back toward older associations, and an existing association can also vote to opt into full coverage under the newer act. Ask the board directly which framework currently governs the building rather than assuming based on age alone.
Is a lower monthly HOA fee ever a reliable signal that a building is healthier? Not on its own. It can just as easily mean the association is underfunding reserves relative to a comparable building charging more.
Madison Park rewards buyers who read past the summary page. If you're weighing a specific building here, whether it's a high-rise on 43rd Avenue or a low-rise nearer the beach, Guy Tobin can help you get the actual reserve study, not just the one-pager, and read it the way the building's age requires. Get a free home valuation to start the conversation.
