Can a home inspection tell me if a special assessment is coming?

No — an inspection cannot predict a special assessment, but it can show you the physical conditions that cause one. That distinction is the honest answer, and it is worth understanding rather than glossing over. A special assessment is a charge levied by the association on every owner to fund a cost the reserve fund cannot cover, most often a roof, siding, parking deck, elevator, boiler or a major envelope repair. It is a financial and governance event, decided by a board reading a budget. An inspector reads buildings, not books, and does not perform a reserve study, a financial audit or a legal review. What an inspection does give you is the condition evidence that usually precedes the vote. Visible signs that big money is near include a roof plainly at the end of its service life, exterior work already underway on the building, envelope repairs that were patched rather than replaced, water staining at the ceilings of top-floor units, deteriorating balconies, guards and deck ledgers, spalling or settling at a parking structure, and drainage and grading failures at the foundation. Exterior scaffolding on a building you are about to buy into is the loudest possible signal there is. Reading those alongside the documents is where the answer actually lives, and the documents are yours to demand during the review contingency: the reserve study and the current reserve balance measured against the big-ticket items coming due; the special assessment history and any pending or contemplated assessment; twelve to twenty-four months of board minutes, where problems surface long before they appear in a disclosure; the master insurance policy; and any litigation. Board minutes are the single most underused document in a condo purchase — the discussion of a failing roof appears there a year or two before the assessment does. We will tell you what the building's condition suggests and what to ask. Have an attorney read the governing documents.