Give Kaminskiy Care and Repair the engineer's or inspector's report and the findings get a written price, a City permit and a rebuild that passes the final, from Highway 111. Rental building with no report yet? Our sister company, Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, performs the SB 721 inspection.
BBBAccredited BusinessMore than half of Palm Desert's homes are attached or stacked rather than detached, and nearly a third of all of them stand empty part of the year as seasonal places, so California's two balcony laws reach this city mostly through its condominium associations and its rental corridors, and the reports they produce land on the desks of boards and managers who need the findings fixed before the owners come back. That is the work of Kaminskiy Care and Repair (CSLB #1106209): whether the report is an association engineer's SB 326 report from a club off Country Club Drive or an SB 721 report on an apartment building along Highway 111 or Fred Waring Drive, every finding gets its own written price, a permit filed with the City's Building and Safety Division inside the 120-day window, joists and ledgers rebuilt in treated lumber, a coating rated for desert ultraviolet laid across the whole deck, rails reset, and the permit final with photographs. A rental building that has never been inspected calls the same office: our sister company Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, a B general building contractor since 2008 (CSLB #922807), performs that SB 721 inspection on its own contract and signs the report inside 45 days. The repair crew runs from our office on Highway 111, in the middle of the valley.
Rental corridors, club condos, resort associations.
A rental building of three or more units in Palm Desert owes the state three things: a qualified inspection of every wood-supported balcony, deck, exterior stair and walkway that stands more than six feet above the ground, a written report kept with the building's records through two inspection cycles, and the repairs that report lists finished inside the statute's deadlines. A condominium association owes the same under SB 326, with an engineer or an architect writing the report. The repairs are where Kaminskiy Care and Repair comes in: each finding gets its own written price, a permit filed through the City's portal, and a crew from Highway 111 that rebuilds the framing, recoats the deck with a system rated for the heat, resets the rails and finishes before the permit final. A rental building that still needs its SB 721 inspection gets it from our sister company Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, which holds the license class and the years the statute names.
AFTERBEFORERotted Joists & Ledgers
Coatings Baked by the Sun
Guardrails & Handrails
Exterior Stairs & Walkways
Immediate-Threat Shoring
The Permit on Fred Waring Drive
Permit Final & RecordsRental Building Never Inspected?Each of these is a call the Highway 111 office takes. A report with findings gets a written price per item and a permit filing before the deadlines close in, anything tagged an immediate threat is closed off and shored ahead of everything else, and a rental building with no report yet gets its inspection booked with our sister company.
Email or text the engineer's or inspector's report with the address. Rental building never inspected? Tell us the street and the unit count and the SB 721 inspection is booked with Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling.
The building walked against the findings, a price on every line, the permit filed with Building and Safety inside 120 days, and anything tagged an immediate threat closed and shored ahead of the rest.
Framing, coatings, stairs and rails rebuilt inside the permit window by the crew from Highway 111, every element photographed, the City's permit final, and the close-out letter for the board or the owner.
Every job is backed in writing by our workmanship warranty and done by a Kaminskiy-certified, background checked technician.
Wood dries fast in Palm Desert, so a report here usually starts at the surface: a coating chalked and split by ultraviolet, sealant open at the door threshold and the wall, a scupper that holds monsoon rain. Below those lines come the ones that cost money: moisture at the ledger where a drip emitter or the lawn sprinklers have been aiming for years, joist ends soft behind the stucco, termite galleries in a rim board, a post sleeve with no sound wood around it. Each is a repair priced on its own line, and the remaining-life estimate beside each element sets the order before the season.
A rental building with three or more units is under SB 721 (Health and Safety Code 17973): first inspection due January 1, 2026, then every six years, and a general contractor with the right license may inspect it. A condominium project with three or more units, which is most of the stacked housing behind a Palm Desert club gate, is under SB 326 (Civil Code 5551): due January 1, 2025, then every nine years, and only a licensed structural or civil engineer or an architect may inspect it. A club whose units are all single-story may have no elevated element at all, and the engineer's report says so; a club with upstairs units has balconies and stairs to count.
A report with findings opens the first window: the owner applies to the City for the repair permit within 120 days. The permit opens the second: the repairs are finished within 120 days of its issue. An element tagged an immediate threat skips both, is closed off at once and is reported to the Building and Safety Division within 15 days. If the repairs are still open 180 days after the report, the inspector must tell the City, and 30 days after that notice the daily penalty starts.
Rot held to a joist end, a post base or a short run of ledger is cut back to sound wood, sistered or replaced and flashed. Rot across the ledger or through most of the joists, or termite galleries that have hollowed the rim, means the balcony comes off and goes back on new framing. Either way the coating is redone edge to edge with a system rated for the heat, because a patched membrane on a west-facing Palm Desert balcony splits again by the second summer.
Palm Desert counts close to forty thousand homes, and the city's own housing study puts a third of them in buildings of two units or more, a fifth in buildings of five or more, and nearly a third of all of them empty part of the year as seasonal places. Most of that stock went up between 1970 and 1999, in the decades the country clubs were built out. Where a building sits, and who holds the title, decides which law it is under, what the report finds and what the rebuild looks like.
The rental buildings SB 721 reaches first: two-story stucco garden apartments and small walk-ups of ten to thirty units from the 1960s through the 1980s, with cantilevered balconies on the street side and an open stair and a second-floor walkway serving the upper units at the back. Fifty desert summers have chalked and split every original coating, the guardrail sleeves are rusted inside the stucco, and the stair stringers stay dark where the courtyard sprinklers reach them. The finding we see most is a joist end gone soft behind a soffit that looks fine from the parking lot; the repair is new joist ends and flashing, a coating rated for the heat, and the rails re-set into sound wood, scheduled around year-round tenants.
Hundreds of attached and stacked condominiums behind each gate, built mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, run by an association under SB 326 and owned in large part by people who are elsewhere from May to October. The engineer or architect inspects; the board brings us the report. The upper units carry the balconies and the open stairs, and the findings follow the sun: the south and west coatings split first, the sealant at the slider threshold opens, the balcony-to-wall joint takes the monsoon rain, and a post base in an irrigated planter goes soft. We price the repairs line by line for the board, match the club's color and profile for the architectural committee, and phase the work so the stairs stay open and the heavy carpentry is done before the owners fly back for the season.
The larger garden complexes of the 1980s and 1990s along Country Club Drive and Hovley Lane, which house many of the College of the Desert renters, have the most elements to count on any building in the city: corridor walkways, stair towers and rows of balconies, in the windiest part of the valley, where blowing sand packs the scuppers and grinds the coating at the door sills. North of them is the newest rental stock, including a 330-apartment community on Technology Drive that opened in 2025 and a 269-unit one on Explorer Drive. A building whose permit was issued on or after January 1, 2019 runs on its own clock, an inspection within six years of its certificate of occupancy, so those owners are planning a first inspection now rather than catching up on one.
Count the units and look at how they are held. Three or more rental units under one roof puts the building under SB 721: the first inspection was due January 1, 2026 and it repeats every six years. A condominium project of three or more units, which is how most of the stacked housing in the Palm Desert clubs is held, is under SB 326: due January 1, 2025, every nine years, and inspected by a licensed structural or civil engineer or an architect. A duplex and a detached house are outside both laws. An investor who owns several condominiums inside one association is still under the association's SB 326 duty, not SB 721. Send us the address and we settle it on the call.
A finding is opened at the soffit, the rot or the termite damage cut back to sound wood, and the joist end, ledger or rim board rebuilt in treated lumber with new hangers and new flashing. The membrane is stripped to the sheathing across the whole walking surface, re-sloped where the monsoon rain ponds, flashed at the door and the wall, and recoated with a system rated for desert heat; a patch is next summer's split. Posts that move in their sleeves are reset into the new framing or replaced at code height, with the anchors flashed. Every element is photographed before, during and after, and on a club the colors are matched to what the committee approved.
Health and Safety Code 17973 wants a qualified, licensed contractor making the repairs to the inspector's recommendations, the building code and the City's requirements; in Palm Desert that is Kaminskiy Care and Repair (CSLB #1106209), whether the report came from an association's engineer under SB 326 or from any of the four inspectors SB 721 allows: a licensed architect, a licensed civil or structural engineer, a general contractor holding an A, B or C-5 license with at least five years as a license holder constructing multistory wood-frame buildings, or a certified building inspector or building official, none of them on the City's payroll for the job. For a rental building that still needs its SB 721 report, our sister company Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, a B general building contractor since 2008 (CSLB #922807), is the inspecting contractor, on its own contract with you.
Repairs are priced from the report, one line per finding: a sistered joist end and a flashing patch is a short line, a recoated and re-sloped walkway is another, a balcony framed again with a new guardrail is a longer one. The owner or the board sees every line before any work is scheduled, and the proposal is written so the repairs can be put out to bid if that is how the association works. The SB 721 inspection, for a rental building that still needs one, is one figure for the whole building from Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, set by how many elements there are, how many types, and whether the framing is open underneath or closed behind stucco.
We read the findings and the remaining-life estimates, confirm SB 721 or SB 326, and set the walk of the building, with the association's manager or the owner. A rental building with no report yet gets its inspection booked with our sister company, and the repair side starts when it is signed.
Tenants or the manager get notice, each finding is examined from the deck and from below, enclosed framing is metered or opened at a soffit, and the proposal is written line by line against the report's numbering. In summer we start early and finish before the heat.
A standard building permit on the City's portal with the report and the repair detail attached, drawings where a cantilever is rebuilt or a guardrail changed, the County counter on El Duna Court for Bermuda Dunes and Sun City, and shoring first wherever an element is an immediate threat.
The work inside the permit window by the crew from Highway 111, photographs of every element, the City's permit final, and a close-out letter for the owner's file, the association's and the next buyer's.
Subdivision (a) of Health and Safety Code 17973 names the inspectors the state accepts: a licensed architect, a licensed civil or structural engineer, a general contractor with an A, B or C-5 license and five years as a license holder in multistory wood-frame construction, or a certified building inspector. Subdivision (g) governs the repairs: a qualified and licensed contractor, working to the inspector's recommendations, the state Building Standards Code and the City's rules. Nothing in the section stops the inspecting company's group from being that contractor. The owner contracts the inspection directly with Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, as the statute requires, and the repairs separately with Kaminskiy Care and Repair, so the report stands on its own if the board or the owner takes the work elsewhere.
The local enforcement agency is the City of Palm Desert's Development Services Department, Building and Safety Division, at the Permit Center on Fred Waring Drive. Applications go through the City's online permit portal with digital plans; its express list (panel upgrades, water heaters, reroofs, window replacements) does not include balcony, stair or walkway work, so a repair that touches framing, a ledger, a guardrail or the waterproofing is filed as a standard building permit with the inspector's report and the repair detail attached, and a rebuilt cantilever or a changed guardrail needs drawings. Work filed since January 2026 is built to the 2025 California Building Code the City adopted that month, and the contractor needs a City business license before the permit issues. Palm Desert publishes no separate SB 721 page, form or portal; the report stays in the owner's records, and an element tagged an immediate threat is reported to Building and Safety within 15 days. Bermuda Dunes and Sun City Palm Desert are unincorporated, so their permits and threat reports go to Riverside County's desert counter on El Duna Court, and each neighboring city has its own building division and the same state clock.
January 1, 2026 was the first SB 721 deadline (AB 2579 moved it back a year from January 1, 2025) and the cycle from there is six years, with a building permitted on or after January 1, 2019 inspected within six years of its certificate of occupancy instead. A report with findings gives the owner 120 days to apply for the permit and 120 days from the permit to finish. If the repairs are still open 180 days after the report, the inspector notifies the City, which sends a 30-day notice; after that a civil penalty of one hundred to five hundred dollars per day runs until the work is done, and the City may record a building safety lien to collect it. Each report is kept through two inspection cycles and handed to the buyer when the building sells.
The office is on Highway 111, in the middle of the valley. The repair crew starts the day at 74-710 Highway 111, with Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Palm Springs and Cathedral City all inside a short drive, so a board has its proposal the week the report arrives and the work is finaled before the owners return. Call 760-284-6993, text a photo of the report or the balcony, or send the form.
Can't find your answer? Call 760-284-6993 and ask us anything.
Call 760-284-6993Send the report with the building addresses and the manager's contact. We walk each building against the findings, write a price on every line in the report's own order, and file the permits with the City's Building and Safety Division inside 120 days; the repairs then run inside 120 days of each permit, phased around the season so residents keep their stairs and walkways, with any immediate-threat element closed and shored first. The close-out letter with photographs goes to the board and into the reserve-study file.
Yes. The statute asks that a qualified, licensed contractor make the repairs to the inspector's recommendations, and it does not matter who signed the report. Each finding is priced on its own line, the permit goes in with the report attached, and the work is photographed through to the permit final.
One line per finding, from the report: a sistered joist end and a flashing patch is a short line, a recoated and re-sloped walkway is another, a balcony framed again with a new guardrail is a longer one. The owner or the board approves every line before a date is set. Call 760-284-6993 with the report and the address and the proposal follows the walk of the building.
For a rental building, our sister company does: Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, a B general building contractor since 2008 (CSLB #922807), lists the element types, inspects a sample of at least 15 percent of each and signs the report with photographs inside 45 days, on its own contract with you. An SB 326 inspection on a condominium project stays with the association's engineer or architect, by statute. Kaminskiy Care and Repair (CSLB #1106209) does the repairs either way. Book through the Highway 111 office, 760-284-6993.
Two licensed companies in one group do it: Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling performs the inspection and signs the report under its own contract with you, and Kaminskiy Care and Repair contracts the repairs separately. The statute does not forbid the inspector's group from repairing; it asks that a qualified, licensed contractor do the work to the inspector's recommendations, the building code and the City's requirements. Every finding in our report carries a photograph and a description, so a board that wants three bids can hand the report to anyone and it reads the same.
Book the inspection now and keep the booking confirmation with the building's records. The daily penalty in the statute attaches to repairs left undone after a report and a 30-day notice, not to a late first inspection, and the Building and Safety Division has no reason to pursue an owner who is already moving. If the inspection finds an immediate threat, that balcony or stair is closed and shored that day and reported to the City within 15 days; every other finding goes onto the 120-day permit window.
On a condominium project the association carries the SB 326 duty: it hires the licensed structural or civil engineer or the architect, and under most governing documents it maintains the load-bearing framing and the waterproofing as common area, while an exclusive-use balcony is divided the way the CC&Rs divide it. In the Palm Desert clubs that is the board and its manager. The engineer writes the report; Kaminskiy Care and Repair prices and completes the carpentry, coating and railing work it lists, phased so residents keep their stairs, with the paperwork the board needs for the reserve study and the architectural committee.
It is the inspection California requires of the exterior elevated elements on a rental building with three or more units: balconies, decks, porches, stairways, walkways and entry structures that stand more than six feet above grade and rely substantially on wood for support, with their railings and waterproofing. A qualified inspector lists each element type, examines at least 15 percent of each, and signs a written report with photographs inside 45 days. The first inspection was due January 1, 2026, and it repeats every six years; a building permitted on or after January 1, 2019 is inspected within six years of its certificate of occupancy.
Send the address, the report and whether the building is rental or association-run; a rental building with no report yet says so and the inspection is booked. We call back with a proposal and a date. The phone is faster: 760-284-6993.
Every line on the engineer's or inspector's report priced, permitted and rebuilt to pass the City's final, from the Kaminskiy crew on Highway 111. Rental building with no report yet? Our sister company performs the inspection.
We answer in under three rings, 24/7.No price games. You get a clear written quote before any work begins, backed by our workmanship warranty.
