Article Courtesy of Florida Politics

By Jesse Scheckner

Published  September 28, 2024

‘We don’t have the data.’

Calls are mounting for a Special Session to address rising costs and potential fines stemming from Florida’s relatively new condominium laws. But according to Miami Rep. Vicki Lopez, one of the main architects of the legislation, it is now too soon.

Lopez said there simply isn’t enough information now to get it right, and that won’t change until at least January, when assessments are due on how much reserve funding condo buildings in the state need for repairs.

“There’s a lot of what I call anticipatory anxiety,” Lopez told Florida Politics. “People say there’s a sense of urgency, that this is going to be really bad. It may very well be bad, but we don’t know yet. We don’t have the data. And once I know what and where the financial impact will be, then we can sit down and look at a solution.”

Florida lawmakers updated the state’s condo safety strictures after the deadly June 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South Condo in Surfside.

In a 2022 Special Session, they set new requirements to ensure condo associations maintain their buildings regularly and have enough reserve funding. In the two Regular Sessions after that, Lopez and Fleming Island Sen. Jennifer Bradley, a fellow Republican, passed measures to fine-tune the changes.

All three measures passed with unanimous support in both chambers of the Legislature.

The new rules mandated, among other things, that condo buildings three stories and higher undergo milestone inspections 30 years after construction and every 10 years after that.

Condo associations that existed on or before July 1, 2022, must also complete a structural integrity reserve study (SIRS) by the end of this year to determine how much they need to increase their reserve funding to pay for necessary maintenance and repairs.

Most condo boards will adopt budgets for 2025 in November or December, Lopez said, meaning that any fee increases needed to shore up shortfalls in their structural reserves won’t be included in their next required spending plan.

She continued that by the time condos begin their budgeting work for 2026, the 2025 Session will have passed, and lawmakers will have passed additional legislation to address the crisis.

Lopez said she’s asked the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to put together a breakdown in January of how many condos completed their SIRS and how much their reserves must increase to reflect those studies.

After that, she said, one potential fix could look similar to Miami-Dade’s Condominium Special Assessment Program, which provides condo owners with no-interest loans of up to $50,000 to cover assessment-required repairs.

“I don’t think any option is off the table for consideration. We have to do something,” she said. “But right now, there’s a lot of misinformation. People think they have to get all the SIRS in the bank account tomorrow, and it’s not that. If a roof has a 10-year life and it’s estimated to cost a million dollars at the end of 10 years, you have to reserve $100,000 per year, not $1 million the first year.”

‘We’re going broke’

For some condo associations that haven’t raised membership fees for years and unit owners living on fixed incomes, the cost of these changes is more than alarming; it’s life-altering.

“I don’t know where we’re going to live or how we’re going to live,” 79-year-old Howard Konitz told WPLG in June after he and his wife were hit with a $224,000 assessment for their condo in Aventura. “We can’t afford it. We’re going to go broke.”

They’re hardly alone. In May, Ivan Rodriguez, 76, told the Wall Street Journal that he liquidated his 401(k) retirement account to buy a two-bedroom North Miami condo in 2019. Five years later, after his condo board proposed a nearly $30 million special assessment for repairs, he joined 12 other unit owners in putting their homes up for sale.

Rodriguez ultimately accepted an offer of 42% less than what he paid.

When prospective buyers learned of the assessment they’d inherit by buying his home, he said, “They’d run in the opposite direction.”

John Cadden of Condominium Advisory Group, whose website touts the firm’s services helping condo owners and associations navigate Florida’s laws, told WESH last month that the associations themselves are somewhat to blame for the issue.

“It used to be, you did a reserve study, but you could vote as a condominium to waive reserves and not reserve any money,” he said. “Of course, when people are asked to spend less money, they always agreed.”

That’s what happened with the Champlain Towers South condo. A year before the collapse that killed 98 people, an independent budget review warned association members that they had less than 7% of the recommended amount of money needed to repair the building and remain solvent.

But little compelled them to act on the information. The Legislature passed a law in 2008 requiring reserve studies to be conducted every five years. Lawmakers repealed the rule two years later amid pressure from real estate lawyers and property managers.

Two localities set their own standards. Miami-Dade and Broward, where a preponderance of the state’s condo inventory stands, have programs to recertify all their buildings 40 years after construction.

“Had they chosen the 30-year mark, Champlain Towers would not have collapsed,” Lopez said. “We’ve corrected that. It’s in the other 65 counties that no building has ever been certified by a local government.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, CFO Jimmy Patronis and a few current and former lawmakers have called for a Special Session to address these issues. So far, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo has maintained that the proper time for corrective legislation is when lawmakers reconvene for Session next year.

It’s not guaranteed Lopez will be there to carry the bill. She faces a challenge from Democrat Jackie Gross-Kellogg in flippable House District 113.