A bill targeting a controversial law about condominiums has cleared a key vote in the California state legislature. The bill, Assembly Bill 1093, proposes to change a state law that gives condo owners the right to sue developers to fix any construction defects up to 10 years after construction.

Background

Experts and housing activists have long pointed to the policy as a major culprit for California’s condo crisis because it frequently leads to costly lawsuits. The bill proposes to absolve developers of responsibility for defects one year after they’re fixed, although more sweeping reforms were proposed in earlier versions.

Condos historically are cheaper than most comparable-sized single-family homes — about 20 percent cheaper in Southern California. However, fewer and fewer are getting bought or built. Industry-wide issues such as skyrocketing building costs and insurance premiums are some of the reasons for the decades-long slowdown, but condo building took an even bigger hit than single-family homes after the Great Recession.

Impact

Today, California builds about 3,000 condos a year compared to tens of thousands more than two decades ago, according to a 2025 UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation study. The current system “forces the homeowners to sit with defects sometimes for years even when a simple fix would make sense for everyone,” Democratic Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the bill’s author, said at a June committee meeting.

Housing and environmental groups supporting the bill say changing construction defect laws will make condo construction more appealing to developers who’ll be better able to sidestep onerous lawsuits. Workers with Habitat for Humanity said after building 30 affordable housing condos in Fremont, the nonprofit was sued for millions of dollars after one owner noticed what the builders described as minor water damage.

Original reporting: Voice of San Diego — read the source article.