Seismic assessment of existing reinforced concrete frame and shear wall buildings is discussed. Building on an earlier preliminary assessment procedure incorporating aspects of capacity design into a systems approach for assessment, suggestions are made towards a displacement-based, rather than forced-based approach to determining available capacity. Based on results from recent experimental programs, procedures are proposed for assessing member strength including column and beam-column joint shear strength, that result in less conservative estimates of performance than would result from application of existing code rules.