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Find Blog Articles for Florida’s Condo, HOA and the Management Industry.
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Tags: Board of Directors, Condo and HOA, Management News
With respect to item 7 above, Kaye Bender Rembaum has become aware of at least one service provider that will bring in engineering professionals to make a physical inspection of the entire community to assess the conditions and establish a record for all such conditions prior to any storm. The assessment will also identify conditions that may have resulted from Hurricane Irma from 2017, for which claims were not made or even found and may still be claimed. In many instances, conditions of significant damage may not be readily apparent to the layperson, but to a qualified professional, very obvious. Quite often, such an inspection can result in substantial additional insurance claims for the association to recover. It is not unusual for an insurance carrier to reject initial claims following a major storm, citing to maintenance or pre-existing conditions as the basis for the denial. The team of experts performing the assessment has assisted several communities overcome such rejections and ultimately receive additional settlement proceeds to make further repairs to the premises. While there is no guaranty of such a result, without making such an assessment, the board will never know and certainly have no further recovery. Most importantly, this inspection and assessment is undertaken at no charge to the association by this company, and with no obligation to the association!
Tags: Condo and HOA Law, Members Articles
Cohen Law Group would like to remind all Property Managers and CAMs that our firm has handled thousands and thousands of property damage insurance claims in Florida. We have decades of experience handling hurricane claims that have been denied, delayed, or reduced.
If you are unsure if your property sustained damage as a result of Hurricane Idalia you should ask for an inspection by a qualified contractor, estimator or building inspector to assess whether hurricane-force winds damaged or compromised the roofing system and building envelope. Many companies offer this initial inspection free of charge. Given the complexities of a large loss claim, consider consulting with an attorney experienced in handling commercial insurance claims for condominiums and homeowner’s associations.
Here’s more information on how we can help you:
Cohen Law Group is certified through the state of Florida for Property Manager and CAM Continuing Education Credits/Classes. We have a one to three-hour CE class called “A CAMs/Property Managers Guide to Property Damage Insurance Claims”
We can schedule a free lunch and learn with your CAMs and will provide an overview of our suggestions and strategies as well as some examples of our vast experience with Residential Property Damage and Commercial Large Loss.
If your residential, commercial, or industrial properties have property damage, our Insurance Claims Attorneys can help with everything from A-Z on hurricane claims.
Please call us today at 850-318-7474
immediately after a hurricane:
You have 1 year from the date of loss to report the claim. Please do not hesitate in reporting the claim immediately as you are aware there is storm damage. Believing the damages are below your deductible is not a defense to this and the insurance company will use every day you wait against you later.
Thoroughly document all emergency repairs before and after they are completed. Insurance companies will try to get out of paying for these services if they believe they do not have sufficient information.
If you are displaced from your home or property, please keep all invoices and receipts showing costs that you incur. Likewise, if you have any damaged personal property, please take photographs of it before you throw it away.
Insurance companies cannot cancel your policy while you have an open claim. You should speak to an attorney to understand your rights. Insurance companies will routinely request that you sign documents and give statements to them that can and will be used against you later.
489.147 Prohibited property insurance practices.—
(1) As used in this section, the term:
(a) “Prohibited advertisement” means any written or electronic communication by a contractor which encourages, instructs, or induces a consumer to contact a contractor or public adjuster for the purpose of making an insurance claim for roof damage, if such communication does not state in a font size of at least 12 points and at least half as large as the largest font size used in the communication that:
1. The consumer is responsible for payment of any insurance deductible;
2. It is insurance fraud punishable as a felony of the third degree for a contractor to knowingly or willfully, and with intent to injure, defraud, or deceive, pay, waive, or rebate all or part of an insurance deductible applicable to payment to the contractor for repairs to a property covered by a property insurance policy; and
3. It is insurance fraud punishable as a felony of the third degree to intentionally file an insurance claim containing any false, incomplete, or misleading information.
Harvey V. Cohen, President
At Cohen Law Group, It’s About Justice!
It’s more than a slogan, it’s our firm’s mantra. We are zealous in protecting your rights. We offer 24-hour availability through our answering service. Call us today.
(850)318-7474
Members of SFPMA – https://sfpma.com/listing/cohen-law-group/
Tags: Condo and HOA, Insurance, Management News, Members Articles
There is an eerie quietness that can often be felt after a disaster like a hurricane of flash flooding, the time after the rain has stopped but the sun still hasn’t returned. Returning to business as usual after your community has faced a natural disaster can be difficult, the responsibilities can seem endless but there are some steps you can take to ensure that your community is as strong and thriving as before.
2023 has been a challenging year in every regard, not the least of which has been related to the Atlantic Hurricane Season, the most active since 2005. With over 23 named storms, including eight hurricanes and over 24 tropical or subtropical cyclones, it’s easy to see why so many are patiently waiting for the storm season to come to a close. Officially over on November 30th, the damage done to many communities will continue to affect homeowners and HOA board members alike. We’ve previously discussed implementing a disaster plan for your community but what comes after the storm can be just as important.
Failure to immediately mitigate post storm damage can have detrimental consequences for homeowners and the community in general, which is why it’s tantamount that you are prepared to take quick decisive action after a storm and know the steps involved. Please check with your communities insurance agent and your licensed community staff to determine if your state has any specific laws regarding the association and its responsibilities after a natural disaster.
Following a storm, whether it be a hurricane or simple hail damage, communicating with homeowners is by far the most important and often overlooked step that the community association can take. Often an emotional and overwhelming time for any resident, damage to the homes in your community can take many forms and can be addressed in various ways so it’s important for your board to keep an open line of communication with your owners so they are aware what steps are being taken by your association and what they will need to be responsible for in the aftermath.
In some states the board’s first challenge may be to understand whether to look to the communities Declarations and Bylaws or to the State and Local laws to determine who is responsible for what. In Florida for instance, the Florida Condominium Act can assign certain responsibilities to the association that they would not normally be involved with and can be in direct opposition to existing declarations at the community. We highly recommend communicating regularly with members of your licensed local community staff and your insurance providers to ensure that you are doing all of the right things to ensure your communities return to harmony.
You may want to start with the simple process of inspecting your community for damages. Buildings suffering damage should have been secured from further water intrusion, through temporary roofs, boarded windows, and sliding glass doors, which will need to be replaced. Construction debris from the storm should have been be removed or at least contained.
Every unit should have been inspected by the Association, preferably on several occasions, to ensure that there is no moisture to the interior of the units. Moisture detected, on areas such as wet carpets or soggy drywall, should have been removed. The drying process can typically be accomplished through interior climate manipulation through dehumidification, heating and/or air conditioning. The association’s insurance adjuster should be involved throughout the dry-out process. For more complex water intrusion dry out, an outside neutral party should also be involved.
Every association and unit owner should have contacted their insurance carriers to file insurance claims. Associations should ensure that every insurance carrier with potential responsibility has been put on notice. At this point, if the adjuster has not yet visited the premises, this should be immediately addressed with your insurance agent. Your insurance adjuster will attempt to document the site, but the association should document existing conditions by taking pictures and video of the damage.
After all units have been inspected for damage and the appropriate representatives have been notified you can begin the process of finding contractors or storm damage experts to help start the repairs Associations with buildings that have incurred moderate to significant damage should retain an independent consultant such as an architect or engineer, with no financial stake in developing the repair specifications. Often, this will be an architect or structural engineer, and may even be a type of qualified consultant for particular items. Condominium documents often require a reconstruction plan to be prepared by an architect or engineer.
Contractors should be appropriately licensed in your state for the type of work they will be performing, carry adequate insurance, and so forth. Although time is of the essence in moving forward with hurricane damage repair projects, a great deal of money is involved and the association can best protect itself by ensuring that there is appropriate legal review of any contracts or other documents. General contractors and many specialty contractors must be registered with the state. Licenses and complaints against such entities can often be checked online or can be requested from your community management company if they are providing the contractors.
In the event that homeowners have damages that pose additional risk or could lead to additional losses, it’s important to make some emergency repairs. Again knowing that communication and documentation are vital, try to document all of the necessary repairs and the steps taken to make those repairs, using photographs and dated records can help in the event that there is any dispute on the timeline or the necessity of the repair with insurance later.
In many cases the emergency repairs can be temporary and may require additional maintenance when the insurance company has settled on a permanent solution. These temporary repairs can include things like using a tarp on a leaking roof or adding plywood to broken doors and windows, and the cost may initially come out of the owners pockets but can be reimbursed at a later date by the insurance company.
Throughout this article and the process of rebuilding one thing remains constant, the need to be continually consulting with your insurance company and the experts they employee. Dealing with damage to your home is never pleasant and it can become almost impossible when the board needs to deal with their own home damage plus the overall community health and rebuilding. It is important to determine who insures which portion of the condominium property because the statute provides that the person or entity that insures the property is also the person or entity who repairs that portion of the property. Generally, any portion of the condominium property that must be insured by the association and which is damaged by a casualty or insurable event, will be repaired by the condominium association and the costs of such repair will be assessed as a common expense against all unit owners. Unit owners are responsible for repairing any portions of the condominium property that it is required to insure and the cost of such repairs to be paid by the owner of the unit that suffered the damage.
In conclusion, if your condominium suffers damage due to a hurricane or another storm event, the association will need to consult with its insurance agent and its legal counsel to determine if the damage suffered was due to a casualty, or insurable event, and thereafter decide who will need to repair the damage and pay for the costs of such repair. Prompt action must be taken to protect the condominium property and the association. If your association needs further guidance on this issue, it should consult with its attorney or the knowledgeable management staff.
The Florida hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA), this year is predicted to be another above-normal season.
The Hurricane season starts on June 1 but it’s never too early to prepare. Damage from a hurricane can be costly for all businesses and can pose hazards for you and your employees. Fortunately, there are ways that you can fortify your business against a hurricane to minimize losses and reduce risks for workers.
As part of “Planning Ahead” for a Disaster, the SBA encourages you to consider taking these simple steps to prepare: Assess your risk; Create a plan, Execute your plan. Statistics show that 25% of small businesses don’t re-open after a disaster. Visit the SBA’s Prepare for Emergencies website to learn more about how to prepare and recover if a disaster strikes.
NOOA officials also encourage consumers to take the following steps:
Visit the National Hurricane Center’s website at hurricanes.gov throughout the season to stay current on watches and warnings.
Insurers often engage in strategies meant to challenge the patience of the policyholder and thereby force the policyholder to accept a lower payout, or to simply resign themselves to no payout. For example, an insurer may excessively delay the processing of the claim, arguing that the delays are due to ongoing investigation of the damage. By doing so, they hope that you — under pressure to fix the roof and no doubt overwhelmed by the proceedings— will simply move forward without waiting for the insurer and potentially give up on dealing with the hassle they created.
Partial payouts — in which the policyholder is offered an inadequate sum, but a sum nonetheless — are another way in which insurers try to goad policyholders into accepting less than what they’re owed under the policy at issue.
It’s worth noting that Florida law may entitle policyholders to bring an independent “bad faith” action against the insurer (which could even lead to punitive damages) if the insurer failed to investigate and pay the claim in a timely manner, or failed to evaluate the claim fairly under the circumstances. Simply put, if there was no valid justification for the denial, then our Fort Lauderdale roof damage attorneys may be able to sue and recover damages pursuant to a bad faith claim.
In homeowner’s insurance policies, payouts for roof damage may be limited due to coverage exclusions.
For example, a roof damage claim may be covered if it is caused by a thunderstorm, but not if it is caused by a hurricane.
Such strict categorization for roof damage coverage often leads to a dispute, particularly if the event leading up to the roof damage at-issue is somewhat muddled — if your roof is damaged in a hurricane (which is covered by the policy), the insurer might claim that it was not actually the wind force of the hurricane itself, but a falling tree that caused the roof damage. You can successfully counter this argument by showing how the hurricane directly caused the tree to fall on your roof.
Here at Maus Law Firm, our South Florida property damage attorneys have decades of experience representing the interests of policyholders whose real estate property has been harmed, whether due to a storm, fire, or some other unexpected event — including those which cause damage to the roof structure.
We understand the unique challenges that are faced by policyholders who are attempting to secure an adequate payout through submitting a roof damage claim, and are standing by to assist such policyholders in pursuing litigation against their insurers.
Ready to speak to a property damage lawyer at our firm? Call us at 1-855-999-5297 or complete an intake form through our website to schedule a free and confidential consultation today.
The State of Florida is no stranger to hurricanes and other natural disasters.Living in paradise doesn’t come without some risks associated with Mother Nature. The question is never just if our communities, homes and families will be impacted by a windstorm event, but when they will, and how we will prepare for and recover from that event.
In addition to our in-house legal services, Becker owns and operates Association Adjusting, a licensed and insured public adjusting firm led by Joseph “Joe Connelly (#E157037). Mr. Connelly has served as Executive Board Officer for the Florida Association of Public Adjusters (FAPIA).
Recognized as an authority in the community association industry, Association Adjusting has the expertise and experience to help community associations achieve the most favorable outcome possible. Our team of public adjusters, led by Mr. Connelly, provides clients with only the highest level of professionalism and excellence – whether you’re dealing with a claim that stems from hurricane damage, water damage, theft, fire, mold, roof leak, or any other type of calamity, our singular goal is to ensure your interests are always protected.
The first step toward developing and implementing a disaster plan is identifying the potential consequences of a disaster. The second step is to develop and implement a plan to mitigate the impact of a disaster to the fullest extent possible.
Federal Emergency Management Agency for federal disaster response and recovery information
National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for information about federal flood insurance
Information about Flood Insurance
Flood Resources: National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)
Contact Information: Phone: 1-888-FLOOD29 or 1-888-356-6329
Filing a Flood Insurance Claim
Premium Discounts for Hurricane Loss Mitigation
Notice of Premium Discounts for Hurricane Loss Mitigation
Uniform Mitigation Verification Inspection Form
Are you prepared for Hurricane Season?
Preparing for Natural Disasters, and Recovering from them
Disaster Preparedness at Home: Filter Out the Damage
Disaster Prep & Self Storage – What You Need to Know
Emergency Preparedness for People Requiring Special Assistance
Humane Society – Protect Your Pets
Becker provides access to information on this website page as a public service. Although reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that all electronic information made available is current, complete and accurate, Becker does not warrant or represent that this information is current, complete and accurate. All information is subject to change on a regular basis, without notice. Becker assumes no responsibility for any errors in the information provided, nor assumes any liability for any damages incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of the website page. The inclusion of, or linking to, other website URLs does not imply our endorsement of, nor responsibility for, those web sites, but has been done as a convenience to our website visitors.
Tags: Condo and HOA, Condo and HOA Insurance, Damage Restoration, Law and Legal, Management News, Member Highlights
SFPMA & Members are ready to Handle Storm Damage & Claims for Condo and HOA Properties!
SFPMA has a team of Legal Experts, adjusters, estimators and claim specialists for the benefit of the Condo and HOA’s who sustained damage from the storms and fire, water or mold.
With the know-how and experience to analyze, evaluate, and negotiate the best settlement for your Insurance Claim!
The team’s decades of combined legal experience provide the Katzman Chandler family of clients with cutting edge solutions to routine issues, as well as novel and/or complex legal matters faced by our Community Association clients and their voluntary Boards of Directors.
Our Transactional Attorneys are often relied upon by the media, as well as public policy makers, to sort out issues relating to the Community Association lifestyle. Each member of the Transactional Team brings a unique skill set and perspective to this diverse practice and understands how best to assist Boards in functioning in an age of ever growing state regulation and changing legal requirements.
Our Transactional Legal Services for Associations involve a combination of several specialty areas including, but not limited to, Real Property Law, Corporate Law, Litigation, Contract Law, and Insurance Law. Whether we are reviewing your contracts, amending your documents, rendering a bank loan opinion or enforcing your Community’s covenants against violators; our ultimate goal remains the same – to deliver information, counsel and answers in an easy to understand format with personalized service and attention to detail that you can rely on time and again.
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By Eric Glazer, Esq.
Board members I’m telling you now……..be careful. I’m seeing it already. Unit owners are starting to freak out over the passage of huge assessments to cover the costs of mandatory inspections, mandatory repairs and massive increases in insurance rates.
As we know, we’re not talking about pesky increases to the monthly cost of living in your home. We are talking about increases that will cause many to no longer be able to afford to live in their home at all. We are talking about increases that will force people to sell and no longer live in the condominium that they have lived in for perhaps decades.
Notwithstanding the fact that none of these increases are the result of anything the Board members did or didn’t do, board members know who is likely to be blamed for this financial disaster many unit owners find themselves in ——the Board members. So what else is new?
Board members are used to being blamed when things go wrong even though it’s not their fault. That comes with the territory. They get yelled and screamed at, the meeting ends and then it’s usually over. Maybe there’s some nasty e-mail that float around the community. This time it’s different.
Even if unit owners come to the realization and accept that they can’t afford to live in the condo any longer, the question is….so where can they go? Every condo seems to be in the same shape. Or if owners choose to move to a place that’s simply newer and not yet required to perform these inspections and repairs, you can bet they cost a lot more money than where they currently live. There’s simply no place to turn to.
When there is desperation and fear, people become irrational and often times violent and that is why I honestly fear for the safety of condominium board members throughout the state. This is not a knock on the millions of law abiding condominium owners throughout the state. They were thrown into this position because The Florida Legislature failed all of you. Instead of always requiring condominium owners to put away money for a rainy day, The Florida Legislature cow-towed to the whims of developers, law firms and other special interest groups who always lobbied against mandatory reserves. The only reason why mandatory reserves are now required is because 98 innocent men, women and children died at The Champlain Towers in Surfside as a result of not having nearly enough money on hand to make obviously needed structural repairs in their condominium.
So Board members……….you didn’t volunteer in your community to get punched out or worse at your board meetings. My advice is….when you know you’re about to pass a special assessment at a meeting, and at that meeting people are going to be going crazy……protect yourselves. Make sure there are police or at least security at the meeting. Better be safe than sorry.
WE WILL TAKE YOUR CALLS AND ANSWER YOUR CONDO AND HOA QUESTIONS THROUGHOUT THE HOUR. CALL US AT 877-850-8585 DURING THE SHOW.
Tags: Board of Directors, Condo and HOA, Management NewsMake primary, SFPMA Members News
SFPMA works throughout the State of Florida, we are a multi-member organization for the Condo, HOA and Property Management industry. Through knowledge based Articles, Events and our Members Directory, Clients find the right information to make an informed decisions for their Florida properties.