Defective drywall banished, owners see Whitney as “risen phoenix”

Article Courtesy of Palm Beach Post
By Jeff Ostrowski   

Published May 13, 2016

  

WEST PALM BEACH — First came the stench of rotten eggs. Next were the mysterious malfunctions of air conditioning units, microwaves and televisions.
  
Unit owners at the Whitney condominium discovered the culprit was sulfur-laden drywall from China. Then they endured years of uncertainty, including a legal battle followed by months of construction.
 
Now, after a $30 million renovation of the Whitney that forced residents to move out for months, the eight-story condo in downtown West Palm Beach looks nearly new.
  

The old drywall is gone. The hallway carpet is spotless, upgraded insulation is in place and walls inside and out have been repainted.

“The building itself is better than when it was brand new,” said Barry O’Brien, a Realtor who’s the landlord of one unit in the Whitney and lives in another condo that he and his wife rent. “You walk through the hallways, and it’s quieter.”

The Whitney isn’t the only property in South Florida that lived a drywall nightmare — more than 2,000 Florida homeowners filed complaints about defective drywall — but the condo serves as a case study in just how complicated fixing the problem could be.

“We went through a lot of pain,” said Stewart Murphy, a unit owner and treasurer of the Whitney’s condo association.

Member’s lounge inside the newly renovated Whitney, a downtown West Palm Beach condo located at 410 Evernia St.


   
During the depths of the drywall scare, in 2011, one Whitney unit went for the fire-sale price of $80,000. The original buyer had paid $444,900 in 2007. Another bargain-hunter snapped up a Whitney unit for $90,000 in 2011, less than a quarter of its 2007 price

Now, though, the stigma of defective drywall has begun to lift. In the highest price paid in years at the Whitney, a 2,000-square-foot unit on the seventh floor sold in late April for $535,000. The same apartment fetched $669,900 in 2007, showing just how hard condo prices crashed.

For all the headaches caused by the defective building materials at the Whitney, owners say they’re pleased with the renovation. A legal settlement covered not just the costs of reconstruction but also the expenses incurred by residents who were forced to move out for six months.

“It was taken down to the studs,” said unit owner Thomas Fegyveresi. “It’s basically a new building.”

During the real estate bubble, downtown West Palm Beach saw a building frenzy that created thousands of new condo units. No condos have been built in years, and some see that as an advantage for the Whitney.

“This is the newest old building downtown,” Murphy said.

The Whitney isn’t that old — the first owners took possession of their units in 2007, at the height of the real estate bubble. It was perhaps the worst possible moment to finish construction of a new building.

At the time, American-made drywall was in short supply, sapped by demand from the U.S. building boom and the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Faced with a shortage, many builders imported Chinese drywall.

The product proved to be laden with sulfur, which wafted out of the Whitney’s walls and quickly corroded copper pipes and wire. At first, Whitney residents couldn’t fathom why their air conditioning units kept breaking down, or why their microwave buttons stopped working. Some even saw their television screens malfunction and their silver jewelry tarnish.

As part of the renovation, the Whitney has new AC units and refrigerators, along with new patio furniture on a rooftop deck and new lights in the halls.

The defective drywall has been banished from the Whitney, but the hangover from the housing crash still lingers. Fully 140 of the 210 units at the Whitney are owned by Uso Norge, a New York investor that bought the units out of foreclosure.

Uso Norge has slowly raised rental prices — two-bedroom units now rent for $1,700 to $2,300 a month — and, sensing a rebound in values, the landlord has put a few of its units on the market.

Unit owners hope that, after years of inconvenience and plunging property values, their investment finally will pay off.

“It’s a risen phoenix,” Fegyveresi said.

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