California SB 721 Balcony Inspection Law: 2026 Deadline & Compliance Guide

Six students died in Berkeley in 2015 when an apartment balcony collapsed during a birthday party. The balcony looked fine from the outside. Nobody saw it coming. But inside the structure, the wood joists had been rotting for years — water had been seeping through failed waterproofing, hidden behind a stucco finish that gave no warning.

That's the incident that led to Senate Bill 721. California now requires owners of multifamily rental buildings to have their balconies, decks, and exterior stairs inspected by a licensed professional — and to fix whatever problems turn up.

We've done structural inspections on dozens of apartment buildings across the Bay Area. The Berkeley collapse wasn't a fluke. We still find balconies where the framing is soft enough to push a screwdriver through, even though the surface looks perfectly intact. SB 721 exists because you can't tell what's happening inside a wall by looking at the paint.

If you own a rental property with three or more units anywhere in California, this law applies to you. The deadline is January 1, 2026 — which sounds far off until you try to book an inspector in late 2025 and find they're booked solid through February.

What SB 721 Actually Requires

The law doesn't cover every balcony in California. It targets a specific category: Exterior Elevated Elements (EEEs) on rental buildings. Here's the test:

Your property falls under SB 721 if it has three or more rental units, and if any balconies, decks, stairs, or walkways extend beyond the exterior wall, sit more than six feet off the ground, and rely on wood framing for support.

That last part trips people up. We've inspected buildings where the owner was convinced their balconies were concrete — "Look, you can see the concrete surface." But underneath that thin topping slab? Wood joists. And those joists were soaked. The concrete topping actually made things worse by trapping moisture against the wood.

If you're not sure what your building is made of, that's worth figuring out before the deadline. A quick site visit from a structural engineer can answer the question in an hour.

Once you complete the first inspection, you're on a six-year cycle. For newer buildings — anything permitted after January 1, 2019 — the clock starts when you get your certificate of occupancy.

The 2026 Deadline: What AB 2579 Changed

The original deadline was January 1, 2025. The legislature pushed it back a year through AB 2579, so rental property owners now have until January 1, 2026.

Fair warning: this extension only applies to apartment buildings. If you own a condo or manage an HOA property, you're under a different law (SB 326), and that deadline already passed. We've seen owners with mixed portfolios get caught by this — they assumed all their properties had the same timeline.

Here's what the schedule looks like once you get your inspection report:

You have 120 days to pull a repair permit if the inspector finds problems. After the permit is issued, another 120 days to finish the work. Extensions are possible, but you have to ask for them and show good cause — "I forgot" doesn't qualify.

The practical problem right now isn't the law itself. It's availability. Inspectors in San Jose, Oakland, and LA are already booking months out. We talked to one engineer in the East Bay who's scheduling into Q2 2025 for new clients. If you wait until September 2025 to start this process, you may not find anyone available before the deadline.

Who Can Perform the Inspection

The law limits who can do these inspections. Licensed architects qualify. So do licensed civil or structural engineers. General contractors can do it too, but only if they hold an A, B, or C-5 license and have at least five years of experience building multistory wood-frame structures.

Here's the catch: whoever inspects your building cannot also bid on the repairs. The law explicitly prohibits it. This is meant to prevent inspectors from finding phantom problems to generate construction work for themselves. It's a reasonable safeguard, but it means you need to think about your inspection and repair contractors separately.

From a practical standpoint, reports stamped by a structural engineer tend to carry more weight with insurers and lenders. Engineers are trained to evaluate load paths and material degradation — not just "does this look bad?" — which matters if you ever need to defend your compliance in court or negotiate with your insurance company.

At Cecilia Home, our structural engineering team handles inspections and design work, but we don't do construction. That separation keeps our reports objective. We're not going to find problems that aren't there because we don't benefit from the repair work.

The Inspection Process: What to Expect

The law requires inspecting at least 15% of each type of exterior elevated element. If your building has 20 balconies, at least 3 need to be checked. With 100 balconies, at least 15.

That 15% is a floor, not a ceiling. If we open up three balconies and find dry rot in all three, we're not going to sign off on a report that says "the other 17 are probably fine." The sampling logic only works if the sample comes back clean. When it doesn't, responsible engineers expand the scope.

The inspection usually happens in two phases. The first pass is visual: looking for cracks, rust stains, water damage, sagging, fungal growth. We'll use moisture meters and sometimes infrared cameras to check for water behind finishes.

When the visual inspection can't confirm what's happening inside the structure — which is common with stucco-clad buildings — we move to invasive testing. That might mean drilling a small hole for a borescope camera, or cutting an exploratory opening through the stucco to look at the framing directly.

The invasive work is where costs climb. Cutting through stucco, inspecting, then patching and repainting can add $1,500–$3,000 per location. If half your balconies need that treatment, the inspection bill alone can hit $30,000–$50,000 on a mid-sized building. Budget for it. The quote you get upfront usually covers the visual assessment and a few test openings — not all of them.

When Inspections Reveal Problems

Inspectors sort their findings into two buckets: things that need immediate attention, and things that can wait for the normal repair timeline.

Immediate hazards — a guardrail that's about to come off, a balcony showing visible structural failure — trigger an accelerated process. The inspector has to notify you and the local building department within 15 days. You're required to barricade the area and prohibit use until repairs are done. There's no grace period for "we'll get to it next month."

Everything else follows the 120-day schedule. You have four months to apply for a permit, then four more months after approval to finish the work.

The real financial exposure isn't the inspection — it's what comes after. We've seen straightforward repairs (resealing, minor wood replacement) run $500–$2,500 per location. Structural work like replacing a ledger board or sistering damaged joists lands in the $5,000–$15,000 range. Full balcony reconstruction in a high-cost market like San Francisco or the Peninsula? $40,000–$60,000 per unit is not unusual.

Do that math on a 20-unit building where half the balconies need reconstruction. That's $400,000–$600,000 in capital work. It happens. And owners who haven't inspected yet don't know whether they're sitting on that kind of problem.

City-Specific Requirements: San Francisco, Berkeley, and Beyond

State law sets the minimum. Several California cities have added their own requirements on top, and the details matter if you own property in multiple jurisdictions.

San Francisco's Section 604 predates SB 721 and is tougher in several ways. Where SB 721 allows 15% sampling, Section 604 requires you to inspect 100% of exterior appendages. It also covers metal fire escapes and steel balconies, not just wood. The cycle is every 5 years instead of 6, and you have to file a separate compliance affidavit with the city's Department of Building Inspection.

Berkeley's E3 program set an earlier deadline — March 31, 2022 — and uses its own reporting forms. If you own a building in Berkeley and haven't done this yet, you're already in violation.

Los Angeles runs compliance through the Housing Department. San Jose has a dedicated E3 email address. Each city has its own portal, its own forms, its own quirks.

The smart move is to scope your inspection to cover both state and local requirements in one pass. But that only works if your inspector knows to do it. We've seen owners complete an SB 721 inspection in San Francisco and then get a notice from DBI because they never filed the Section 604 paperwork.

The Financial Picture: Inspection Costs vs. Non-Compliance Penalties

Inspection costs scale with building size and how much invasive testing you need. For a straightforward visual assessment, expect $300–$500 per balcony on smaller buildings. Larger complexes with 100+ units can sometimes negotiate volume rates down to $100–$150 per unit. Add in lift rentals, destructive testing, and patch-back work, and a mid-sized apartment building should budget $10,000–$25,000 for the complete inspection process.

That sounds like a lot until you look at the penalties.

After a 30-day notice, owners who haven't complied face civil fines of $100–$500 per day. At the max rate, that's $182,500 per year — for doing nothing. Unpaid fines can turn into a lien on your property, which blocks sales and refinancing. In extreme cases, the city can foreclose to collect.

Insurance is the other risk. California's property insurance market is already difficult because of wildfire exposure. Insurers are now asking for SB 721 compliance documentation at renewal. If you can't produce it, you may get dropped — and your only option becomes the surplus lines market, where premiums run 2–3x higher with worse coverage.

And if something actually happens? The Berkeley collapse settlements exceeded $20 million. A San Francisco jury awarded $12 million in another case. Even incidents without deaths have settled for over $1.5 million. If an insurer can show you weren't compliant with SB 721 when a balcony failed, they'll use that to deny your claim. You'll be personally exposed for everything above your (now-useless) policy limits.

Against that backdrop, the cost of getting an inspection looks like cheap insurance.

What Property Owners Should Do Now

If you haven't started this process, here's the short version:

Figure out if you're covered. Three or more rental units, wood-framed exterior elements more than six feet off the ground. If you're not sure about the construction, get someone to look.

Book your inspection now, not later. The longer you wait, the fewer choices you'll have. Q1 and Q2 2025 still have decent availability. Q4 2025 will be a scramble.

Keep the inspector separate from the contractor. Hire an independent engineer or architect to do the assessment. When repairs are needed, bid them out separately. That protects you from inflated scopes and gives you competitive pricing.

Set aside money for repairs. If your building was built before 2000 and has wood-framed balconies, budget at least $25,000–$50,000 for potential EEE repairs. Maybe more. Treat this like a roof replacement — something that's eventually coming, whether you plan for it or not.

Keep your paperwork. Inspection reports, repair invoices, permits, photos — all of it goes in a file. You'll need it for insurance renewals, property sales, and defending yourself if anything ever goes wrong.

At Cecilia Home, we work with apartment owners and property managers on SB 721 inspections and the structural design work that follows when repairs are needed. If you're trying to figure out whether your building qualifies, or you've received an inspection report and need help understanding the repair scope, our structural engineering team can walk you through it.

The 2026 deadline isn't moving. Owners who act now get to choose their inspector, plan their budget, and schedule repairs on their own timeline. Owners who wait will be reacting to whatever time and money they have left.