ORMOND BEACH – There are now just six months left before the state-wide deadline for condo buildings to get their mandatory engineering assessments done. In Volusia County, this costs over $100,000 per condo owner at one building.
 

These assessments became law following the collapse of the Surfside condo collapse in South Florida back in 2021. Now, any building over three stories and 30 years old has to have them done. Parks Huffstetler called News 6 after seeing coverage of another condo building in the Orlando area. He said he is a snowbird and dealing with the high cost of the fees at his condo in SurfSide Club South in Ormond Beach. “Now it’s over $100,000 per owner,” Huffstetler said. “The hope is, when we get the restoration part done, then the units will be worth more and I can sell. Right now, we’re stuck.”

Huffstetler bought his condo in late 2021 and said he was not told about the upcoming assessment fees.

Another resident in the building, Janet Stone, said she is in the same boat and felt a bit blindsided.

“I’m a retired teacher so we don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars set aside somewhere that we can contribute so it put me in a position where I had to return to work,” she said.

The assessments have to be done by December 31, 2024, and there are two parts to it.

The first part is an overall inspection of the structure which requires paying engineers to inspect and then fix what the engineers found wrong. Many condo associations News 6 has spoken to did not have this budgeted in their reserves, so it’s on each unit owner to now make up the difference.

The other part is the condo association must prove their financial reserves are fully funded for future maintenance, which is also bumping up monthly HOA fees for each unit owner.

This comes on top of skyrocketing insurance prices for condominiums and, along the coast, repairs from the 2022 hurricanes.

“We have buildings where it’s every few weeks we get a call of ‘I just have got to sell I can’t afford to do this,’” Krista Goodrich said.

Goodrich, a vacation rental property manager in Volusia and Flagler counties, said she is seeing firsthand how this is hitting the condo market.

“The inventory has certainly increased of what’s available on the market and I think that’s going to stay for a while because people are very fearful of buying a property that’s got a giant assessment on it,” she said.

If they can manage to keep it, owners like Stone said at least this is ensuring the building’s longevity.

“The cost is prohibitive but it makes a difference,” she said.