Article
Courtesy of Florida Politics
By
Anne Geggis
Published February 6, 2022
Buildings 30 years and older would be required to be
inspected under a pair of bills that advanced Tuesday.
Some aspects of state condo regulations have remained essentially unchanged
for 60 years. But on Tuesday, the Senate Regulated Industries Committee
passed two bills within a half-hour that would impose new rules on these
entities that have been mainly left to self-regulation.
With all deliberate speed — and in the shadow of the Surfside condo disaster
— SB 1702 and SPB 7042 won the unanimous approval of the committee.
Mandatory requirements for inspections and maintenance of existing buildings
would be added to the state code under these bills. Another inspection
requirement was repealed in 2010, shortly after its 2008 enactment.
SB 1702 would require multifamily buildings taller than three stories to get
inspected once they’ve been up for 30 years, then once every 10 years after
that. Buildings within three miles of the coastline would be inspected at
the 20-year-mark and every seven years after that.
The latter bill would require the same inspections at the same intervals and
include three-story buildings. SPB 7042 goes further in its proposed
regulations, adding rules about the information provided about condo
association reserves, inspection reports, and funding associations’ reserve
obligations.
“There are almost 1,600,000 condominiums in Florida, and of those, almost
106,000 are 50 years or older,” said Sen. Kathleen Passidomo. “This problem
is going to increase.”
Analysis of SB 1702 found that the legislation would mean increased costs
for apartments and condominium buildings. Broward and Miami-Dade counties
currently require inspections at a multifamily building’s 40-year mark.
These inspections typically cost as much as $20,000 to $40,000 for the
inspection of a 15- to 20-story condominium, and between $2,000 and $4,000
for the inspection of a small commercial building. Any remedial work to
address issues identified during the examination would add to that cost.
Sen. Darryl Rousson wanted to know whether there were enough building
inspectors, licensed architects or authorized engineers to fulfill the
demand for inspections this legislation would create.
Passidomo said the inspection industry is already gearing up to respond.
“We’ve got some of our great universities producing engineers and architects
and I think this will get more people interested in the profession,” she
said.
Whitney Dutton, owner of the Dutton Group at ReMax First in Fort Lauderdale,
predicted that if these bills come into law, out-of-state owners who might
not visit their condo regularly could see big increases in maintenance fees
or significant, new looming assessments.
“It’s going to increase inventory for sure,” Dutton said. “A lot of these
out-of-state owners who haven’t been to their condo in years, or don’t go
regularly, might decide to sell and cash out. We could see a sizable
sell-off in certain buildings.”
Neither bill has companion legislation in the House. It was the first stop
for the bill that also included reserve funding requirements, and the second
stop for the bill that focused primarily on inspections. The Senate
Community Affairs Committee approved SB 1702 last week.
Travis Moore, a lobbyist for Community Associations Institute, said he was
not sure there could be anything more critical this Session than this
legislation.
“We need to make sure that what happened in June never happens again,” he
said.
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