Article
Courtesy of The Tampa Bay Times
By
Mary Ellen Klas
Published March 14, 2022
|
|
TALLAHASSEE — In the end, legislators couldn’t face the
prospect of forcing thousands of condominium owners across Florida to be
subjected to massive fees for repairs of their aging buildings.
A late-session amendment to a condo reform bill by the Senate on Thursday
included strict new inspections of aging condominium buildings but removed
the requirements for condominiums to hold money in reserve to pay for
repairs.
The House sponsor of
the measure, Rep. Danny Perez, R-Miami, declared the change
unacceptable, warning that it would not help avoid future
tragedies like the collapse of Champlain Towers South in
Surfside last June. He and the Senate sponsor, Sen. Jennifer
Bradley, declared the effort dead for the session.
“We believe in the House that the bill we passed off the
House floor was going to get us as close as ever to making
sure that the incident that took place at Surfside never
happened again,” said Perez. He said that while he was
confident “that the Senate is in agreement with the fact
that something has to be done, unfortunately, this couldn’t
be the year that we do it.”
The assessment facing condo owners at Champlain Towers South
for its 40-year recertification exceeded $15 million. After
postponing major repairs and arguing over costs, owners were
hit with massive special assessments.
Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said that Perez “has been a
good-faith partner” but they couldn’t resolve their
differences before the regular session was scheduled to end
on Friday. |
|
The partial collapse of Champlain Towers South condo
in Surfside, Fla., in 2021 led to calls for inspection changes.
|
“While both sides
worked diligently to create a product to address the
Surfside tragedy, unfortunately, agreement could not be
reached on all issues,” Bradley said Friday, adding that she
looks forward to working on the issue next year.
The Legislature’s failure leaves the state’s uneven
condominium inspections laws in place. Real estate experts
say that insurance companies and financial institutions will
now impose reserve requirements on buildings, stepping in
where state officials have been absent.
2 million people live in condos older than 30 years
There are an estimated 2 million people living in more than 912,000
condominium units that are 30 years old or older. Of the 1.5 million condo
units in Florida, another 131,773 are 20 to 30 years old, and more than
105,000 condo units are more than 50 years old.
But under current law, only Miami-Dade and Broward counties and some
individual cities require regular inspections of condos to ascertain their
structural integrity. The proposed legislation would have attempted to
change that.
SB 1702, sponsored by Bradley, and SB 7042 by the Senate Regulated
Industries Committee, and HB 7069 by Perez and the House Pandemics and
Public Emergencies Committee, both incorporated recommendations for more
frequent building inspections, as outlined by the Surfside Working Group’s
Florida Building Professionals Recommendations.
The proposals not only imposed increased financial and inspection
requirements but made the information a public record to allow new home
buyers, existing homeowners and public officials to keep the condo
associations accountable.
“We hope to encourage condominium associations to be intentional in repairs
and stave off structural issues, take care of maintenance and make sure unit
owners are aware of the condition of the building and the state of
reserves,’’ Bradley said earlier this week.
But they couldn’t resolve how to address the most thorny issue for most
condominium associations: How to get condo owners to pay for repairs when
they are identified by inspectors. Current law allows condominium
associations’ boards to waive the requirement that they hold money in
reserve for building repairs and state regulators do not keep track of which
ones have reserves and which do not.
While the House want to end the waiver, the Senate was reluctant to go that
far.
“The goal would be to put them on a good course of financial health, not to
shock the system,’’ Bradley said.
On Thursday, Bradley stripped all provisions relating to reserve
requirements from her bill, and the Senate passed it 38-0.
Sen. Gary Farmer, a Lighthouse Point Democrat, said later he changed his
vote to no. He said the state should be creating risk pools to alleviate the
financial hit to condominium associations in financially constrained
communities.
“There are sensible approaches we could take,’’ he said. “Clearly, the
condos are not in a financial position to bear the brunt of something like
this. I’ve got older condos in Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Pompano Beach
who are income constrained and income limited, and they paid off the condo
long ago. So they’re limited in their income and they can’t afford a big
assessment.”
Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, said the House bill went too far,
because it risked bankrupting “60- and 70-year-olds, in condos, to come up
with a $10 million reserve requirement.”
He said he was confident that the insurance and mortgage companies are going
to require inspections going forward.
“I have faith that even if the Legislature did nothing this year on that
issue, the insurance industry as a whole is going to require enough
inspections to ensure that the condos are safe,’’ Brandes said.
Engineer asks legislators not to give up
Allen Douglas, executive director of the Florida Engineering Society and
American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida, urged legislators not
to give up yet. Lawmakers have extended the session until Monday to complete
the budget.
“The tragic collapse at Surfside is solid proof that Florida desperately
needs to update and strengthen its building safety regulations,’’ he said.
He cited a poll by Mason-Dixon research that found that 85 percent of all
voters surveyed said they support “requiring periodic inspections of all
multi-family residential units in Florida.”
“Lawmakers still have time to address this important issue, which would be
of great comfort to the nearly 2 million people living in condo units that
are 30 years or older,’’ Douglas said.
Under the House proposal, condominium associations would be required to
conduct reserve studies every decade to make sure they have the resources to
finance needed structural improvements. They also would be barred from
waiving a requirement that they put money in reserve to make structural
improvements, although they could continue to waive collecting reserve funds
for other improvements.
The bill also required that condos would have to be recertified after 30
years if they are three stories or higher, or are 25 years old and within 3
miles of the coast. Every 10 years after that, they must be recertified
again.
Under the Senate bill, if a condo is within 3 miles of coastline and was 20
years old by July 1, 2022, it will have to undergo a “milestone” inspection
by a Florida-licensed architect or engineer to determine the adequacy of the
structural components of the building in an attempt to determine the general
safety of the building. A similar inspection was required every seven years
thereafter. For all other condos, the inspection must occur by January 2025
if a building’s certificate of occupancy was issued on or before July 1,
1992, and every 10 years thereafter.
The Community Associations Institute, which represents condominium
associations, estimates there are 9.6 million Floridians living in buildings
with 48,500 community associations. As many as 20,000 condominium buildings
would have been impacted by the proposed legislation, and many owners or
residents of those buildings may be unaware of building conditions that
require immediate attention, the organization said in a news release.
Passing legislation aimed at increasing condominium safety was the
organization’s top priority, the group said. “Our advocates will continue
[those] efforts and support sensible laws.”
Perez said the issue remains a priority for lawmakers. “We’ll be back next
year," he said.
|