One apartment building owner recently gave us a copy of a “courtesy notice” sent by well-meaning California city officials (“City”) to advise all apartment building owners and homeowner associations within its boundaries that CA’s newly minted balcony inspection laws require all balconies and other “Exterior Elevated Elements” (“EEE”) to be inspected by January 1, 2025.  That is generally true.  The notice goes on, however, to not only mandate the reporting of “identified required repairs” which the City obligates the property owners/managers to correct (subject to proper permitting and re-inspection requirements), but to also threaten to open “formal code enforcement cases” as early as “mid-2024” for what appears to be all properties whose owners/managers have not already submitted a report to the City. The inconsistencies and ambiguities in this City’s “courtesy notice” are nowhere to be found in the governing statutes, thus crystallizing just how misunderstood CA’s balcony inspection laws happen to be, even by those in positions of authority who have a hand in their enforcement.  As such, this article explores some of the details of the laws which seem to cause confusion and discusses the commonalities and differences between the law governing EEE inspections of multifamily dwelling units like apartment buildings and the one regulating EEE inspections of condominium complexes.