Florida’s condominium laws will undergo a top-to-bottom review by a task force established by the Florida Bar Association after the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside.
Condo regulations in Florida have come under close scrutiny since the tragedy in Surfside on June 24, with at least 46 people confirmed dead and 94 still unaccounted for as of midday Wednesday. While investigators warn it could be months before a cause of the collapse is known, attention has turned to the decisions made — or not made — by city officials, consultants, developers and the residents and board members of Champlain Towers South.
“What we’re looking at are specific changes to prevent that from happening again,” William Sklar, an adjunct faculty member of the University of Miami’s law school and task force chair told The Post. “We also want to be realistic relative to the needs of unit owners, and we don’t want to dissuade [board members] from service.” Navigating those competing interests, Sklar and others acknowledged, is a complex mission. What lures many to condos in the first place is precisely what can eventually undermine them: Shared responsibility for maintenance with the perks of private ownership.
‘I anticipate a lot of push-pull’
Despite the detailed, extensive condo laws in Florida, several real estate experts said the rules are often easy to manipulate or have toothless enforcement.
“Condos are so critical to our local economy, but the state does nothing to bring clarity to it because it’s a cash cow,” said Peter Zalewski, a Florida condo industry analyst. “No one wants to kill the market prices.”
Condo owners and developers aren’t the only ones who may be skittish of changes: Politicians eager to enact tougher oversight in the wake of Surfside are still responsive to the will of voters, said Peggy Rolando, a Miami-based real estate lawyer and co-chair of the Florida Bar Association’s Condominium and Planned Development Committee.
“In Florida, condo owners are a hugely powerful political force,” Rolando said. Board meetings of well-heeled condo associations warrant campaign stops, and some buildings are even large enough to be their own voting precinct, she said.
Even tightening regulations in the name of building safety is likely to face resistance. Experts agreed the current rules that give condo owners significant leeway to defer costly maintenance can lead to a worst-case scenario in which a building becomes too unsafe to inhabit and too expensive to repair.
At the same time, they recognized putting off pricey fixes is sometimes a matter of short-term economic survival. In a place like South Florida, affordable housing is scarce, and many residents are fixed-income retirees who can’t easily absorb sudden spikes in homeowner fees.
“I anticipate a lot of push-pull,” Rolando said. “There’s an expression in South Florida that ‘you’re throwing grandma off the balcony’: If you’re passing laws saying ‘you must fully fund reserves for the entire building’ and price people out of their homes, you’re going to have a very unhappy constituency.”
Scrutiny on volunteer condo boards
After the collapse in Surfside, attention — and blame — quickly settled on the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association.
The association is the subject of at least 10 lawsuits filed since the building fell. In each of the complaints, residents detail what they say are oversights and failures of the condo board to act on crucial maintenance they argue contributed to the building’s structural instability.
But a Washington Post investigation found that while plans for repairs dragged on for years even as the building’s 40-year safety certification was coming due, dozens of unit owners in the condo balked at the estimated repair costs, which eventually tallied $15 million. In April 2019, dozens of owners signed a letter raising last-minute objections to the repair plans and asked for a lower assessment. A few months later, five of the seven board members quit.
The tension exhibited by the fallen tower’s condo association underscores why a condo building’s troubles don’t start and end with its board of directors, said Peter M. Dunbar, a longtime legal expert in Florida real estate who has written several reference books on Florida condominium law and management used by the state.
Florida condo board seats are volunteer roles in which elected members are not required to have any specialized training or vetting, even in buildings where board members are responsible for reserve accounts worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars and approve maintenance for complex amenities like elevators and swimming pools.
New board members have 90 days to take an elective course approved by the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes Complaints/Investigations or simply file a statement saying they have read the condominium’s rules and legal documents and understand their duties as a board member, Dunbar said.
“The lack of knowledge is not often where I find the biggest concerns,” Dunbar said. “You may know what you’re supposed to be doing, but are you doing it in a timely fashion, and are you doing it to the extent it’s required? To me, that’s a bigger issue.”
Anyone who serves as a director of an association has what Florida law states is a “fiduciary duty” to the association, or an obligation to act in the association’s best interests where maintenance, finances, quality of life and property value are concerned. In other words, Dunbar said, board members don’t have to know how to fix everything; they just need to hire the right people to assess what needs fixing and then act on those recommendations.
“But because they’re elected, they also have the pressures of their constituents,” Dunbar said. “The difference for the volunteer board is, you can do your best, and a resident can still say, ‘I don’t want to pay,’ and recall you.”
Public battles over personal budgets
Condo board members face personal liability if they’re found to have acted negligently or criminally in an individual capacity. But most problems that befall condo associations are not from nefarious board members or tightfisted unit owners, said Rolando, the Florida Bar Association’s Condominium and Planned Development Committee co-chair.
More often, personal circumstances or simple human nature cloud decision-making.
“There are very, very few associations that have really extensive, comprehensive reserve structures,” she said. “But if you know your neighbor just lost their job, or just sent their kid off to college, what are you going to do? You have an obligation to do the right thing for the association. But you have people who don’t want to or can’t afford to do the right thing.”
Documents from the Champlain Towers South Condo Association revealed infighting among neighbors as building repairs grew more urgent and more costly; one neighbor recounted toxic board meetings that would devolve into “screaming and yelling.”
The tension can erode the quality of life in a building where board members and condo owners pass one another every day in the lobby, by the pool or walking the dog, Rolando said.
“I have a lot of sympathy for board members because I think it’s rewarding that you can do something that improves your community and has a direct impact,” she added. “But it’s also enormously demanding, unpaid and thankless. I guess it’s like being a mom or something.”
The Florida legislature requires condo associations to have financial reserves for painting, roof repair, paving and any item of deferred maintenance that exceeds $10,000, Rolando said.
Rolando said she sympathizes with unit owners who face unmanageable costs that can balloon from years of neglected or delayed maintenance.
“Mandatory reserves are probably the right thing to do fiscally. But when you’re dealing with human beings with myriad financial issues, do you want to force people into a situation where they can’t afford to pay and will have to sell their unit?” Rolando said. “There are no good answers.”
Transparency and tougher rules
Members of the new safety task force hinted that changes to safety certifications and inspection schedules are likely to meet the least resistance.
Sklar, the task force co-chair, suggested that South Florida’s 40-year safety recertification program could be significantly narrowed to 10, 25 or 30 years and that it could be applied uniformly statewide; right now, it applies only to Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
Other considerations include expanding inspections to include geological and hydrological factors affecting building stability and structure, and periodic and comprehensive reviews of specific building elements such as concrete, rebar and electrical.
Sklar said the law allowing condo owners to hold an annual vote and waive fully funding the association’s reserves will need to be re-examined as well.
The task force will also consider ways the government can help residents who can’t afford the reserves or maybe bought into a lower-cost building or live on a fixed income.
“We may review if there’s a low-cost, government-backed, subsidized financing available,” he told The Post.
Zalewski, the condo industry analyst, said he hopes the task force also considers making real estate transactions more transparent and favorable to buyers. Under Florida law, a prospective condo buyer has a 15-day right of rescission, or ability to pull out of a pending condo purchase, if they are buying directly from a developer; if the purchase is made from an existing condo owner, the period shrinks to three days.
Zalewski, who is critical of the three-day rescission period, said that amount of time does not give a prospective buyer an adequate period to do the research and inspections that could prevent them from buying into a condo building that has hidden costs lurking down the road.
“The three days doesn’t make sense if you’re worried about the buyer,” he said. “It would change the market overnight because it would force everyone to be on the up and up.”
The Florida Legislature has revised the procedures for collecting delinquent assessments, which add additional steps and delays for the owner to pay before legal action can commence and/or attorney’s fees can be recovered. 
I pray for the families that have suffered a loss and/or still don’t know for sure if a loved one is among the rubble. I also pray that the Boards of Directors of every condominium understand the immense power they have to potentially save lives by making sure the property is always safe and sound. Too many times you hear about not being able to afford necessary repairs. Too many times the can is kicked down the road. The reserves are waived for the umpteenth year again and again and again. I’m not saying that this definitely happened here at the Champlain Towers. I am saying what I said at the top: buildings just don’t fall down. But every board everywhere has the solemn obligation to make sure something like this never happens again.
The truth be told the law that requires recertifications after 40 years and then again every 10 years after that is not a state law. or Miami/Dade County and Broward County law.
