Property Condition Assessment
Immediate repairs and the replacement reserve, from one walk-through.
The two tables everything else is scaffolding for
A condition report gets read by somebody deciding whether to buy a building, lend against it, or budget for it. They are looking for two numbers, and every checklist that stops at ticked boxes leaves both of them to be worked out later on a napkin.
- Immediate repairs
- What has to be spent in year one — a failed system, an unsafe condition, or a component already past the end of its life. On a purchase this is the figure that comes off the price or into the escrow.
- Replacement reserve
- The annual amount for components that still work but will age out during the hold. Funded over the years the component actually has left — a chiller due in year three of a twelve-year hold has to be funded in three years, not twelve. Anything with more life than the term is outside it: no contribution, and reported in its own section rather than dropped, because a zero with a reason is information.
A component belongs in one table or the other and never both. Counting a roof as an immediate repair and reserving for it is the most common arithmetic error in a condition report, and this tool makes it structurally impossible.
What it will not do
It will not invent a cost. There are no default dollar figures anywhere in this tool, for the same reason the capital plan builder has none: a roof is $8 a square foot in one market and $22 in another, and a number we made up would flow into somebody’s underwriting and be wrong by a factor of three. Rate every system and enter no prices and you still get the useful half of the document — the condition picture and what is owed immediately. The totals say plainly when they understate because a rated system carries no cost.
It will not quietly drop what nobody looked at, either. A locked roof hatch is a fact about the assessment, so it prints in its own section rather than vanishing.
Where it goes next
Everything rated poor is work somebody owes, which is what a punch list is for — the immediate repairs hand straight across. If what you want is not a walk-through but a twenty-year forecast from the year each component went in, that is the capital plan builder, which shares this tool’s component catalog so the two cannot disagree about what a building is made of. For the tenant-facing move-in and move-out record, see the condition report.
And if what you want is the checklist to walk the building WITH — room by room, ticked as you go, rather than the report that comes out of it — that is the inspection checklist, which has a version preset for commercial and office buildings. The two are meant to be used in that order.
Questions people ask
- What is a property condition assessment?
- A walk-through survey of a building's systems, done during due diligence, that answers two questions for a buyer or lender: what has to be repaired immediately, and how much should be set aside each year for replacements over the hold period. It is a condition report, not a code inspection and not an appraisal.
- What is the difference between immediate repairs and replacement reserves?
- Immediate repairs are deficiencies that need spending now — a failed system, an unsafe condition, or a component past the end of its life. Replacement reserves are the annual amount set aside for components that still work but will age out during the term. A component belongs in one table or the other, never both; counting a roof in both is the most common arithmetic error in a condition report.
- Is this an ASTM E2018 assessment?
- No. ASTM E2018 is the consensus guide for a baseline property condition assessment, and a report under it is walked and signed by a qualified assessor who puts their name and liability on the result, including records review and interviews. This tool follows the same structure — the same systems and the same two tables — so the person walking the building has the right form and a lender recognizes the output. It does not make the assessment.
- How is remaining useful life worked out?
- From a typical planning range for the component, adjusted by the condition rating recorded on the walk. Published expected-useful-life tables disagree with each other because a boiler on hard water is not a boiler in Denver, so the figures are planning numbers rather than measurements, and the person standing in front of the equipment overrides the table by choosing the rating.
- What happens to systems I could not look at?
- They are marked not observed and listed in their own section of the report, excluded from both tables. A gap in a condition report is a fact about the report, and a document that quietly omits what nobody inspected is the one most likely to be relied on when it should not be.