Article Courtesy of The Tampa Bay Times

By Alexandra Glorioso and Rebecca San Juan

Published  March 8, 2025     

TALLAHASSEE — An influential group of real estate attorneys that advised Florida lawmakers after a residential tower partially collapsed in Surfside saw an opportunity to rein in condo associations, while realizing their advice would lead distressed unit owners in older buildings to sell to developers.

Rather than focusing on what may have caused the Champlain Towers South to fail, attorneys on a task force of a Florida Bar law section encouraged the Legislature to force condo associations to save money for future building maintenance. The recommendation became a crucial component in the state Legislature’s response to the tragedy — and a driver of the burgeoning financial crisis for condo owners in South Florida and across the state.

With unit owners now seeking relief, Miami lawmakers in key positions in state government are pushing back, saying they won’t soften a law created to prevent another catastrophic building failure. But a Times/Herald investigation shows that experts who advocated for the key component of the law viewed it not necessarily as a means to prevent another collapse, but as an opportunity to force associations to invest in their buildings, knowing it would be financially impractical for a number of unit owners.

The revelations — made clear in interviews, legal conferences and a private email thread among task force members and other experts in condominium law — undercut state leaders’ arguments against revisiting the law as the Legislature convenes Tuesday for its annual legislative session. House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican who championed the law in 2022, has been adamant that mandatory financial reserves for building maintenance are essential in preventing another building from crumbling to the ground.

“I didn’t believe, or the leadership didn’t believe, that problems with the law caused this catastrophe,” said Margaret Rolando, a Miami attorney who helped create the task force of the Real Property, Probate and Trust law section of the Florida Bar. “Whatever problems there were in the building, we weren’t trying to deal with that.”

Rolando, who said during a presentation last year about terminating old condo projects that the new law was among several factors leading condo owners to consider purchase offers that they previously “would have basically blown off,” told the Times/Herald the Surfside collapse was an opportunity to make associations “more responsible.”

“The building collapse was probably not at all due to financial conditions or lack of reserves,” she said. “We think, we don’t know, that it was probably due to some construction defect.”

Rolando’s perspective is no outlier. In a Florida Bar “Condomania” email thread for attorneys specializing in condo law, some lawyers expressed skepticism that the failure of the condo association to adequately fund its reserves was to blame for the tower’s collapse on June 24, 2021, killing 98. Deborah Marks, a Miami attorney, wrote the following January as an early version of the bill was being drafted that the state’s response could have serious financial consequences.

“I’m looking at a very real potential for many, many unit owners to simply lose their homes over this,” she wrote.

Abi Aghayere, a professor of structural engineering at Drexel University who studied the tragedy, said he didn’t think Florida’s new law was “sufficient at preventing another building collapse.”

“I feel sorry, frankly, for condominium owners in Florida,” he said.

“There’s a problem here”

The Legislature’s response to the tragedy has largely been to hold residential condominium associations for buildings three stories and above to greater account for building repairs and maintenance. Lawmakers required associations governing buildings at least 30 years old — or 25 near the coast — to complete a “milestone” building safety inspection by either Dec. 31, 2024 or 2025, as well as a structural integrity reserve study outlining annual savings required to pay for future repairs for assets like roofs, plumbing, load-bearing walls and windows. The law requires associations to have the money on hand to pay for improvements by the time they come due, which has more dramatic consequences for older buildings.

The changes followed reporting that the Champlain Towers South’s association had for three years delayed repairs recommended in 2018 by an engineering firm. The firm had identified $9 million in work, including to repair “major structural damage” caused by lack of proper drainage on the pool deck, but unit owners fought over the escalating cost of the work.

Roofing work had begun by the time the 40-year-old building failed, but structural work identified as urgent three years earlier had yet to be completed.

Days after the building collapsed, the task force, including both attorneys representing developers and condominium associations, convened to advise the Legislature on updating condominium laws, with the tragedy in mind. After months of meetings attended by legislative staff, the task force issued a series of recommendations, chief among them that associations no longer be allowed to vote to waive their obligation to save up for big, future repairs.

Bill Sklar, the chairperson of the task force, presented the recommendations to staff from the House, Senate and governor’s office. In an interview, he said the task force quickly homed in on the fact that associations have been allowed to waive funding their reserves.

“We went around the task force and every single member of the task force said, there’s a problem here,” said Sklar, an attorney who represents and lobbies for developers. “It’s left to the discretion of a board.”

That was “unacceptable,” he said, because many associations, which are responsible for maintaining their buildings, have chosen “to kick the can down the road.”

“And buildings deteriorate,” Sklar said.

State senators initially worried that the proposal would create financial problems for condo owners on fixed incomes. Citing state data, the task force said there were more than 1.5 million condo units throughout Florida, 912,000 of which were at least 30 years old — an age at which the new law required an inspection and reserve study by the start of 2025 for many condo associations.

But Perez, the current speaker of the House, was adamant that it was a necessary change to prevent a repeat tragedy, and lawmakers ultimately voted unanimously for the change during a special session held a few weeks before the one-year anniversary of the collapse. After the bill passed, he said the financial reserves provision was “the most important” part. (Perez said in an interview that the Bar’s lobbyist, who was also a task force member, was one of several advisers on the bill.)

Perez said his “initial intention” was to make condominium associations get the structural reserve study done by the end of 2022. But once lawmakers “understood the difficulties” it would bring for condo owners, “financially, we thought about maybe moving it back to 12 months. And then we moved it to 18 months. And then we landed at a place of 24 months.”

He added: “I believe that two years was ample time for condominium associations to prepare for the law that we passed.”

Today, lawmakers say they are receiving emails and phone calls from hundreds of condo owners who say they’re facing special assessments they can’t afford. The problem is especially acute in Tampa Bay and South Florida, where more than half of the state’s condo units are located.

In Miami-Dade County, a government pilot program created to help owners afford the newly required fees to fund reserves for future repairs had as of late January awarded $29.8 million in low-interest loans to more than 1,867 income-eligible condominium owners. Coast to Coast Legal Aid in Broward County said requests for assistance from low-income seniors in condos at risk of being foreclosed on increased from 14% of requests regarding homeownership issues in 2022 to 25% last year, when the Surfside law went into effect.

The law and other factors pushed monthly association fees for the median condo association fee in South Florida up almost 60% from 2019 to 2024, according to an analysis of Multiple Listing Service data by the firm Redfin for the Miami Herald.

For months, Gov. Ron DeSantis — who signed the bill — has been leading the charge to soften the legislation. He recently described it as a “good-faith effort” that nevertheless is “imposing costs in situations where it’s not like the integrity of the building is at stake.”

Carolyn Hill, the association board president of Sunrise Lakes Phase 4 Inc 1 in Broward County, said about 15 units were currently going through foreclosure because of the maintenance reserve requirements.

“For the people that are on Social Security, this is going to be a major impact to them. They can’t do anything to add to their income,” Hill, 72, said. “This is going to be a major reduction to their funds.”

As part of a letter-writing campaign she organized with hundreds of her neighbors to the governor, Hill shared a letter she said she sent laying out how her own maintenance fees increased per month from $596 in 2024 to $845 in 2025, and would be $1,068 in 2026 because of the law.

“No one from Tallahassee ever even responded,” Hill said. “I guess 726 people just isn’t nothin’ in the state of Florida.”

Now under pressure to reconsider the law he championed, Perez has held fast.

“At the end of the day, everyone needs to remember that the reason we passed this law was to make sure that Surfside never happened again,” Perez told the Times/Herald in an interview. “And that law, God willing, will accomplish that.”
“Nothing nefarious”

One thing the law has definitely accomplished: loosening the redevelopment market for builders.

At a continuing education conference for Florida attorneys held last May in Bonita Springs, materials provided to attending lawyers included a how-to co-authored by Rolando, who helped put the task force together, on terminating old condo associations to facilitate the sale of entire buildings to developers.

The handout called 2024 “a year of reckoning for many owners of aging condominium units,” highlighting how insurance costs and Florida’s condo-safety laws presented an opportunity for developers and condo owners looking to sell.

“For many associations in the past, if they received an offer, a buyout offer from a developer, a terminator, they would have basically blown off the offer, because it’s never good enough,” Rolando said during a presentation entitled “Finding the Fountain of Youth— Terminating old condo projects.”

But now, she said, “a buyout offer may be an attractive alternative” for condo owners facing big bills to fix up old buildings — or, as she called them, “targets.”

That is exactly what is happening now, according to Valerio Morabito, a Miami developer who told the Times/Herald last month that he is in negotiations with three different associations looking to “terminate” their governing structure and sell.

He said mandatory reserves combined with expensive repairs triggered by mandatory inspections are “creating a lot of stress on homeowners associations that are now considering bulk sales.”

In two instances, Morabito said, his company reached out to the condo association to begin negotiations. In a third, he said, the association came to his company through a broker — something he predicted will become more common as associations are required this year to comply with the law.

“They still have some time until they have to basically put their hands in their pockets and shell out a substantial amount of money,” Morabito said. “I think it’s going to accelerate in the next 12 months and there will be more and more owners who come together and say, ‘let’s do a bulk sale.’”

To his point, condo association terminations were down in 2024, according to data from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Foreclosures filed in county court systems, where smaller claims based on association fees are most likely to be dealt with, are up only slightly in Broward and Miami-Dade.

But lawmakers are hearing the distress from their constituents. The Times/Herald spoke to eight state senators from districts with at least 100,000 condominium units who said they were receiving calls about the new law. State Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Republican from Miami, who has made the issue a priority, estimated 400 associations have reached out from across the state about condominium problems, which often lead back to problems complying with the requirement to fund reserves.

Garcia wants to cap reserve contributions at a 15% increase per year, according to a memo her office prepared and shared with the Times/Herald, stating it “protects owners from sudden, unaffordable fee hikes while still ensuring that reserves are built up responsibly.”

In interviews, Sklar and Rolando, two leaders of the task force, pointed out that the group also wanted flexibility and financial assistance to fund the new mandate to stock reserves up-front for future repairs. Sklar said the task force “took a very measured, gradual approach,” but lawmakers wanted something stronger, and did not offer any financial assistance.

“We did not in any way, shape or form intend to create a financial stress or inordinate burden on anyone,” he said.

Rolando told the Times/Herald that “there was nothing nefarious.”

“It was just the opposite,” she said.

There was at least one other group advocating for non-waivable reserves. But Sklar acknowledged that his task force knew tightening the reins on condo associations would lead to new redevelopment opportunities for developers.

“We did foresee that associations would find that their buildings were not economically feasible,” said Sklar. He said his group understood there would be associations that decide “it’s not worth it for us to spend 5 or 10 or 20 million dollars, given the value of the property.” He said that’s why the task force recommended the Legislature make it easier to terminate a condominium to sell to a developer in those cases.

The Legislature declined the recommendation at the time, but could adopt a similar proposal this year if a bill filed by Miami state Rep. Vicki Lopez gains traction. Lopez’s bill also strips access to state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp. for condo buildings that don’t comply with the requirement to conduct a structural survey and makes it easier for condo boards to force special assessments on unit owners, another recommendation of the Bar section task force.

“Nothing to do with Surfside”

One issue complicating the Legislature’s response: The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal agency investigating the collapse, has yet to determine a cause.

In a Feb. 5 update, lead investigator Judith Mitrani-Reiser said the agency’s ultimate findings “will likely lead to significant recommendations for improvements to building codes, standards and practices, and we’re not just talking about Florida.” A draft report is anticipated to be released next year.

Aghayere, the engineer who studied the collapse and shared his findings with the federal investigators, said there were two main causes to the collapse: faulty design and faulty construction. The association’s maintenance neglect exacerbated those two inherent problems. A 2021 Miami Herald investigation pointed to design failures, shoddy construction, damage and neglect as the elements that likely doomed the building.

Aghayere thought the mandatory building inspection required under the law should be at 15 years or earlier, as opposed to the current 25 for beachside properties, and every 10 years after. Until 2006, 15 years was also the length of time condominium associations had to sue developers for construction defects. The Legislature has been shortening that “repose” window to sue, most recently in 2023, from 10 to seven years.

In the Florida Bar’s “Condomania” thread, some attorneys who were not on the task force questioned whether the Legislature’s solution was half-baked — saying lawmakers should have looked at building defects and liability for developers over shoddy design and construction. (The task force recommended the Legislature give associations “ample opportunity” to sue developers for defective design and construction.)

“What is needed to cure defective construction is responsible developers, responsible oversight by building departments and severe legal consequences for builders who engage in shoddy building practices regardless of when those defects are discovered,” Becker attorney Donna DiMaggio Berger wrote in June of 2022.

Skepticism of the law’s efficacy and of the motives of the attorneys who advocated for mandatory reserves recently spilled into public during a September legal conference held at the University of Miami.

During a Q&A, Dan Lobeck, a Sarasota condominium association attorney, questioned the connection between the law and the tower’s collapse. He noted that Pete Dunbar, the Florida Bar’s lobbyist, had tried to force mandatory reserves into Florida law back when he served in the House nearly 40 years ago. And he noted that Sklar, who runs the conference and was moderating a panel addressing the law, is a lobbyist for development interests.

“Isn’t this really because our lobbyist since the late ‘70s has been working for non-waivable reserves when he was in the Legislature?” Lobeck said, before pivoting to Sklar: “And the fact that another person happens to be the lobbyist for the building industry and therefore doesn’t want legislation, instead, to respond to construction defects?”

“I’ll let my colleagues answer that,” Sklar responded.

Sitting on the panel, Steven Mezer, a Tampa attorney with Becker, the firm that advised the Champlain Towers South association prior to the collapse, responded.

“There’s no doubt that construction issues are important, and obviously at the center of the collapse, that’s it,” said Mezer, who wasn’t on the task force but is in leadership of the broader Bar section. “But there’s also the management and administration of condominiums, where we have been waiving reserves, kicking the can down the road, ignoring the needed maintenance and operational things to make the buildings safe, comfortable, to maintain the values and things.”

He added: “So that’s really what this is. This is not to stop the collapse. I agree with you 100%.”

Lobeck followed up: “It has nothing to do with Surfside?”

“It has nothing to do with Surfside,” Mezer said.