Safe Balconies. Stronger Communities.
We inspect balconies and other elevated exterior components — walkways, landings, exterior stairs and railings — and document what we find, location by location, for condominium associations, townhome communities, rental owners and property managers.
What this is
A general visual condition inspection: an inspector observes what can be seen and safely reached without taking anything apart, photographs it, and writes it up against a scope agreed for your property beforehand.
It is not an engineering evaluation, a structural certification, or a guarantee of safety, and it does not by itself satisfy a Florida statutory inspection requirement. Those are separate services with their own rules about who may perform them. See how the inspection types differ.
Dated photographs keyed to building, level and location, with observations written to be read by owners rather than decoded.
Conditions that need a licensed engineer are flagged as such, so nobody mistakes a visual observation for a structural conclusion.
The same observation categories at every address, so one building can be set against the next and this year against last.
Who we work with
What changes between these is not the inspection — it is how the scope is cut, how access is arranged, and how the documentation has to be organised to be useful to whoever reads it.
Board-level documentation of balcony condition across every stack and elevation, in one consistent format.
Coverage for balconies, decks, landings and exterior stairs across multi-address communities.
One scope, one schedule and one reporting format you can carry across every association you manage.
Visual balcony and railing documentation for properties that turn over guests frequently.
A documented condition record for balconies and elevated exterior components at rental properties.
Portfolio-wide inspection programs with consistent documentation across every address you manage.
What we do
Each one scoped in writing to the property in front of us.
A non-invasive visual assessment of accessible balcony surfaces, railings, and visible supporting components, documented with photographs and written observations.
From $295 for a single-unit inspection
The same visual approach extended beyond balconies to other elevated exterior elements — walkways, breezeways, landings, exterior stairs, and railings.
A single coordinated scope across several buildings or several properties, with consistent documentation so results can be compared building to building.
A return visit that documents the visible condition of previously noted locations after repair work or after a defined monitoring interval.
Statutory filing
Florida public lodging establishments of three or more stories must have their balconies, platforms, stairways and railings inspected and certified on DBPR form HR-7020, filed with the Division of Hotels and Restaurants and valid for three years from the date of inspection.
What you receive
An inspection is only worth what the record it leaves behind is worth. Here is how that record is put together.
A report gets read by people who were not there: a board at next month's meeting, a contractor pricing the work, an owner who wants to know what happens next. So every observation is tied to a photograph and a location reference that can be found again on site.
Report format and delivery are confirmed in your written scope before the inspection, so what arrives is what you agreed to.
How it works
You see the scope and the price in writing before anything is scheduled.
Address, buildings, stories, an approximate balcony count, and how the balconies are reached.
In writing: what is inspected, what is excluded, what you receive, and the price.
One point of contact, resident notice agreed in advance, scheduled around occupancy.
The report in the agreed format, including anything we could not reach and why.
Who does the work
Owner & Lead Inspector
More than twenty years building and renovating houses before moving into inspections. Elevated exterior components fail at the details — coatings, sealant joints, railing penetrations, flashing and drainage — and a trade background is what makes those details legible.
Balconies are the specialism, not the whole trade. The same licence covers home, condo, insurance and commercial inspections under our parent practice, High Tide Inspections.
Qualifications and what they coverWe perform visual condition inspections. We are not engineers, and we do not issue structural certifications.
Service areas
First Coast Balcony Inspections serves the Northeast Florida coastal corridor from North Jacksonville south to Palm Coast.
Staying inside a single corridor keeps scheduling tight enough to sequence multi-building work properly, and it means the conditions we are looking at — salt exposure, wind-driven rain, the local building stock — are the ones we look at every week.
Everything from the Northside down to Flagler County shares the same working conditions, and they act on the same vulnerable details regardless of which city the building happens to be in.
Before you book
The ones that come up before someone decides to go ahead.
A balcony inspection is a documented assessment of the condition of a balcony and its visible components — the walking surface, the guardrails and handrails, the attachment points, the drainage, and the visible underside and edges.
Our standard offering is a general visual condition inspection. An inspector observes what can be seen and safely reached without taking anything apart, photographs it, and writes up the observations location by location.
You receive a written report in the format agreed in your scope, containing dated photographs keyed to each location and plain-language observations about what was seen there.
The report states clearly what was inspected, what could not be seen or reached, and which observations, in our judgement, warrant review by a licensed engineer. Exact report format and delivery are confirmed in writing before the inspection, as part of your scope.
No. A general visual balcony condition inspection does not, by itself, satisfy any Florida statutory inspection requirement.
Florida has several distinct inspection regimes with their own triggers, scopes and qualification rules — including milestone inspections for qualifying condominium and cooperative buildings, structural integrity reserve studies, and balcony inspection certificates for certain public lodging establishments. Each of these is a separate requirement with its own rules about who may perform it. Confirm what applies to your property with your association attorney and the authority having jurisdiction, and verify current requirements against the official Florida statutes.
Send us your property details through the request form and we will come back with a property-specific scope and quote before anything is scheduled.
A single-unit balcony inspection starts at $295. Anything larger — a whole building, a community, a portfolio — is quoted against the property, because the cost depends on the number of buildings, the number of stories, the balcony count and how the balconies are reached. The more you can tell us up front, the more precisely we can scope it.
It depends on how your balconies are reached. Where balconies are only accessible through a unit, someone has to let the inspector in; where they can be observed from common areas or from the exterior, unit access may not be needed.
We work this out with you during scoping, before anything is scheduled, so that access arrangements and resident notices can be handled in advance. Locations that end up inaccessible on the day are recorded as not inspected rather than assumed.
A single-unit balcony inspection starts at $295. For anything larger, both price and timeline are quoted against the property, because they depend on the number of buildings, the number of stories, the balcony count, how balconies are accessed and the documentation you need.
Send us the property details and you will get a written scope and quote that states the price and the timeline for your property specifically, before you commit to anything.
Next step
Tell us about the property and you will get a written scope and quote for your buildings, your balcony count and your access conditions — before anything is scheduled.
