In May 2026, more than 400 residents of a Delray Beach condominium complex packed into a town hall to hear a court-appointed trustee tell them, in so many words, to stop suing each other. Robert Furr, the Boca Raton attorney overseeing the bankrupt Palm Greens Recreation Association, warned owners they could still owe a special assessment worth several million dollars split among them, even after the litigation ends. One resident, Connie Moccia, told a reporter she couldn't sell her unit if she wanted to. No buyer will touch a property tangled in active bankruptcy proceedings.
That's an extreme version of a mechanism now shaping nearly every condo sale in Delray Beach, and it explains something the city's median home price can't.
The Median Price You've Seen Isn't Measuring One Market
Search "Delray Beach home prices" this summer and you'll land on three different numbers. One portal puts the three-month median, through May 2026, at $544,674. Another shows a June 2026 median of $414,000, up almost 12 percent from a year earlier. A third tracks a home value index closer to $340,000. None of these figures is wrong. They're measuring different slices of the same city, and Delray Beach packs an unusually wide mix of property types into a small footprint: waterfront estates east of the Intracoastal, walkable condos around Atlantic Avenue, gated single-family neighborhoods west of I-95, and everything between.
Split the sales by property type over the twelve months ending August 2026, drawing on Regional MLS data covering more than 3,200 closings, and the picture sharpens. Single-family homes carried a median sale price near $850,000. Condos closed at a median near $178,000. Blend those into one citywide figure and you get a number that describes neither market well. It's why your neighbor's "the market is on fire" and your other neighbor's "nothing is moving" can both be true on the same block.
Same Zip Codes, Different Timelines
The price gap is one thing. The speed gap is more telling, because it's held steady all year rather than showing up in a single month.
Back in January 2026, single-family homes in Delray Beach were selling in about 40 to 45 days, even at higher price points, while condos and townhomes carried a median that exceeded 170 days. By June, the gap hadn't closed, it had sharpened. Single-family inventory had tightened to 3.59 months of supply, well under the six-month line that marks a seller's market, and homes were going under contract in a median of just 28 days. Condos sat at 6.2 months of supply, just above that same six-month threshold, with a median of 88 days on market, roughly three times the wait of a comparable house.
Picture two cities layered on top of one another and you're closer to the truth than the citywide median suggests. Delray Beach houses are transacting in what looks like a genuine seller's market. Condos, as a category, sit closer to balanced-to-soft. And within that condo category, specific buildings are barely moving at all.
The Law Quietly Deciding Which Condos Can Sell
The easy explanation, that buyers simply prefer space over stacked living, doesn't survive contact with what's happening inside the condo segment itself. New, boutique condo buildings in Delray are pricing at a premium and moving forward with construction. Older buildings approaching or past the 25- and 30-year marks are the ones stuck. The dividing line isn't unit type. It's reserve funding.
Florida passed Senate Bill 4-D in 2022, in direct response to the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside that killed 98 people. The law requires a Milestone Inspection, a structural review by a licensed engineer or architect, for any condo or co-op building three stories or taller once it hits 25 years of age within three miles of the coast, or 30 years elsewhere, and every ten years after that. A companion requirement, the Structural Integrity Reserve Study, forces associations to actually fund the repairs those inspections turn up. For budgets adopted after December 31, 2024, boards can no longer vote to waive or underfund reserves for structural components, and full funding started January 1, 2026. You can read the requirement directly in the Florida statute, and the City of Delray Beach publishes its own plain-language summary for owners trying to figure out where their building stands.
For decades, plenty of associations kept dues low by underfunding reserves and hoping nothing broke. That option is gone. Buildings catching up now are issuing special assessments ranging from a few thousand dollars to well over $100,000 per unit for major structural work, depending on what the inspection finds. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also started flagging buildings with missing inspections, thin reserves, or unresolved litigation as non-warrantable, which knocks out conventional 30-year financing and shrinks the buyer pool to cash only. Palm Greens, built more than 50 years ago north of Lake Ida Road between Military Trail and Jog Road, is a worst-case version of this same math: a recreation-association bankruptcy layered on top of an underfunded amenity structure, with owners frozen out of the market while a court sorts it out.
New Construction Doesn't Have This Problem, and That Tells You Something
If the issue were condos in general, new condo construction in Delray would be struggling too. It isn't. In February 2026, the Delray Beach City Commission approved a 26-unit luxury conversion at 109 SE 5th Avenue, a project led by former Mayor James Baker on behalf of a family office demolishing its own two-story headquarters to build roughly 98,000 square feet of residential space a few blocks from Atlantic Avenue. Pricing hasn't been announced, but comparable boutique buildings nearby suggest where it will land: Onix Delray Beach, a 26-unit project in the SoFA district under construction three blocks from Atlantic Avenue, is pricing from $1.549 million, and 111 First Delray has traded around $1,000 per square foot.
None of these projects carries forty years of deferred maintenance or an underfunded reserve account. They're built to current reserve standards from the ground up, which is exactly why buyers aren't hesitating on them the way they hesitate on a dated building with an unresolved reserve study. The lesson for anyone shopping the resale condo market here isn't "avoid condos." It's "find out which condos already did their homework."
What This Means Before You Write an Offer
If you're looking at a single-family home west of I-95 or around Lake Ida, you're competing in a genuinely tight market. Move quickly, arrive with financing already lined up, and expect less room to negotiate than the citywide headlines imply.
If you're considering a condo, especially one in a building three stories or taller that's approaching or past 25 to 30 years old, ask for three things before you get attached to a unit:
- The building's Milestone Inspection report, or confirmation of when one is scheduled
- The current Structural Integrity Reserve Study, including the percentage of reserves actually funded
- Board meeting minutes from the past year, which will show any assessment discussed but not yet voted on
You can also check the state's own records. The Florida DBPR maintains a public portal where associations are required to file their inspection and reserve status. Twenty minutes there can tell you more about a building's financial health than any listing photo will.
If you're selling a well-managed condo, this is your advantage. A building with a completed inspection, fully funded reserves, and no pending assessments is now the exception rather than the rule. That scarcity is worth stating plainly in your listing rather than hoping buyers stumble onto it themselves.
Quick Answers
Does the reserve law affect single-family homes too? No. The Milestone Inspection and reserve study requirements apply to condominium and cooperative associations under Florida Chapter 718. Most single-family HOAs fall under Chapter 720 and aren't subject to these specific rules, which is part of why the single-family market has kept moving while parts of the condo market slowed.
How do I find out if a specific building has completed its inspection? Ask the seller or listing agent directly, and cross-check the state's DBPR portal, where associations are required to file their Milestone Inspection and reserve study status.
Is Palm Greens representative of the whole condo market? No. It's an extreme case involving a separate recreation-association bankruptcy stacked on top of the reserve issue. But the underlying mechanism, an amenity or building structure that went underfunded for years, is the same one now surfacing in milder forms across buildings approaching their 25- or 30-year inspection deadlines.
Buying or selling in Delray Beach right now means reading a building's financial health as carefully as its floor plan. AJ Bergman and the Bergman Realty Group team track which Delray Beach buildings have already cleared their inspections and which haven't, so you're never the buyer who finds out about a six-figure assessment after closing. Get your free home valuation today and let's talk through what your property, house or condo, actually looks like in this market.
