Condo Owners and Pyrrhotite: What Changed, and the One Step That Unblocks Your Building

For most of this crisis, condominiums have been the hard case. A single-family owner can test their foundation, file a claim, and get in line on their own schedule. Condo owners couldn’t — and the reason is structural, not personal.

Why condos are different

Here’s the fact that explains almost everything about condo delays: you don’t own your foundation, and CFSIC won’t deal with you about it. In a condominium the foundation is a common element owned by the association, and CFSIC does not recognize an individual unit owner as having standing in the condo application process. The association is the applicant and the claimant. However motivated you are, you cannot file for your building’s foundation yourself.

That’s why a building full of ready, worried homeowners can sit still for a year — the paperwork is waiting on a board vote, not on an engineer.

What changed

Three developments have opened up the path for condominium claimants.

The sequencing rule was relaxed. Associations used to have to remediate their Severity Class 3 platforms before their Class 2 platforms. CFSIC modified its Underwriting and Claims Management Guidelines so that Class 2 and Class 3 condominium foundation platforms can be adjusted at the same time — an entire association’s affected platforms can proceed under one schedule rather than queuing behind each other.

The cap is per unit, and it scales with the building. The cap on allowable remediation expenses is $82,000 per eligible unit — raised from $76,000 effective January 20, 2026. The important nuance: the cap on total allowable concrete work is calculated based on the number of eligible units resting on a common foundation platform. A multi-unit building therefore carries a substantially larger total allowance than the per-unit number suggests on its own.

An association applies once. A single application covers all affected units regardless of severity class code — a board does not need to re-apply per platform.

For comparison, the cap for a stand-alone single-family home is $205,000. See what replacement really costs for how the covered and uncovered portions break down.

CFSIC is asking condo associations to call

This is the part worth acting on. In its recent updates, CFSIC has reported that applications from condo associations are increasing, and has directly encouraged condo association presidents to contact the Superintendent’s office.

The reasoning is straightforward from the program’s side: restoring a condo building restores a large share of a town’s property tax base in a single project. Condos aren’t a side case for CFSIC’s mission — they’re central to it.

The bottleneck is contractor selection

For a single-family owner, the first step is technical: test the foundation. For a condo owner, the first step is organizational — getting the association to put this on an agenda and authorize someone to act.

But boards routinely get the order wrong. The intuitive plan is: meet, apply, get approved, then find a contractor. CFSIC’s own updates point at what actually goes wrong — associations have taken a year or longer simply to interview and select a contractor. Run those tracks in parallel instead:

• Ask for it as an agenda item at the next association meeting.
• Bring the specifics: the $82,000 per-eligible-unit cap, the Class 2 / Class 3 sequencing change, and the fact that CFSIC is asking presidents to reach out.
• Ask the board to designate one person to contact the Superintendent’s office.
• Begin contractor interviews immediately — not after approval comes through.

Buildings that have done this are moving. Buildings waiting for someone else to start are not.

There’s a cost argument too: an association acting collectively is cheaper per household than everyone acting alone, because the testing and engineering work happens once for the platform rather than once per unit. Testing costs are also largely reimbursable.

Two questions every board asks

What if a unit owner won’t participate? CFSIC requires a CRCOG-approved contractor willing to replace foundations on a shared platform even when not all unit owners on that platform concur. The replacement method must be approved by the town building inspector before remediation begins.

How does the money flow? On countersigning a Participation Agreement, CFSIC pays the contractor a deposit of 10% of the total remediation cost, capped at $50,000 for conventional multi-unit condominium platforms. And be aware of the other side of the PA: CFSIC is auditing agreement holders who have no scheduled remediation start date, and has said that after a lengthy delay a claimant should not be surprised to be removed from the program.

Where Massachusetts stands

Massachusetts still has no CFSIC-style program that pays for replacement. The state’s Stakeholder Working Group delivered its final report on March 31, 2026 recommending a crumbling concrete assistance fund.

The live vehicle now is S.3091, “An Act creating crumbling concrete relief for homeowners,” introduced April 27, 2026 and currently pending in the Joint Committee on Financial Services. It would implement the working group’s recommendations and fund them through a $6 fee on homeowner and condominium insurance policies plus a $6-per-cubic-yard surcharge on ready-mix concrete. Pending is not passed — but it is further than Massachusetts has previously gotten.

At least 52 municipalities have one or more suspected or confirmed affected homes, per MASSRACF’s self-reported tracking — check the affected-towns map for yours.

For MA condo owners, the practical advice is the same as for MA single-family owners: get tested, get reimbursed, and document everything. Eligibility for any future program will likely depend on the records you build now.

The deadline that matters

The CFSIC application window closes 5:00 PM on June 30, 2030. For condominiums that is closer than it looks. Association decisions, engineering assessments, and construction scheduling all run on slower clocks than an individual homeowner’s. A condo building beginning the conversation today is not early.

The email, written for you

The step that unblocks a building is one message to whoever runs your association. Most people never send it because they don’t know what to say. So here it is — copy it, fill in the brackets, send it.

Subject: Crumbling foundation program — CFSIC is asking associations like ours to contact them

If you’re emailing a property manager rather than a board president, add one line: “Please forward this to the board president and confirm it’s been received.” Managers route; boards decide.

If you get no reply, ask for it in writing at the next meeting so it lands in the minutes. A documented request is harder to leave un-actioned than an email — and it starts the paper trail either way.

Nothing in this template asks the board to commit money or approve a project — only to make a call and start interviews. That’s deliberate; it’s a low-friction ask, which is what gets a “yes” at a board meeting.

Your next step

If you own a condo: email your association president or property manager and ask them to contact the CFSIC Superintendent’s office. If you’re on the board: make the call yourself.

Our free Homeowner’s Pyrrhotite Checklist lays out the documentation sequence in order, and the CFSIC claims process walks through what happens after you apply.

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General information for homeowners, not legal, engineering, tax, or real estate advice. Condominium claims involve association governance and documents specific to your building — confirm your situation with your association, CFSIC, and a licensed professional before acting. Figures and deadlines change. Figures current as of August 2026.