With all due respect to the thousands of condominium owners in the state of Florida who may find themselves financially burdened because of Florida’s HB 1021 there is one small voice in the wilderness that has been trying to warn people of the pitfalls of owning a condominium in a “vertical community:”
DeSantis signs condo bill. Some unit owners are threatening to sue.
That one small voice is CIDAnalytics, the very same small voice that has been trying to warn the home-buying public, and the real estate sales profession that the U.S. would reach a chaotic tipping point in or around the year 2020 at which time a high percentage of the HOAs, and by logical extension, the homes within those HOAs, would be at least 20 years of age. And like a hanging Chad left over from the 2000 Florida election, a high percentage of the homes and HOAs that are at least 20 years, are much older than that!
Inquiring Minds Want to Know
So, what’s the rumpus, inquiring minds want to know? Consider the following:
- 20 years of age is a significant milestone in the lifecycle of any building, especially buildings that contain residential living space that is oriented in a vertical fashion such as a mid or high-rise condominium building.
- If that 20-year-old building is located next to salt water, or even reasonably close to a saltwater environment, the issues presented by long-term maintenance, repair, and replacement of certain building elements are magnified exponentially.
- If that 20-year-old building is cheaply built, or poorly maintained, these issues are magnified again.
- If that building is not 20 years old, but 30 or 40 years old, as was the case with the Champlain Tower South Condominium (CTSC), the situation could become catastrophic overnight, as the world saw with its own eyes in the early morning of June 24, 2021.
A Day of Infamy
Not unlike FDR’s Day of Infamy almost 80 years before it, the dramatic collapse of the CTSC on June 24, 2021, was precipitated by warnings that could have easily prevented the death of 98 people and countless MILLIONS in economic losses, if anyone had been paying attention,
Not unlike the warning signs that precipitated the collapse of the CTSC, the controversial Florida HB 1021, recently signed into law by Gov. Rick DeSantis, is not the first time the state of Florida has attempted to regulate condominiums or the owners of high-rise buildings.
Nor is the June 2021 CTSC collapse the first time a multi-story building in Florida has collapsed under its own weight! At least one occupied multi-story building in Florida, owned by the USGOV no less, collapsed on August 5, 1974, killing 7 DEA employees in the process, 49 YEARS before the ill-fated CTSC!
Continuing this pattern of inaction and ineptitude the Florida legislature DID attempt to regulate multi-story building owners with the passage of a 2008 law that required mandatory inspections of existing buildings greater than 3-stories in height by a licensed structural engineer or architect, but the law was quickly repealed after pressure from developers, condominium associations, and other interested parties that have come to be known as the “condo lobby.”
As a result, the building officials in sleepy little Surfside, FL had little in the way of leverage to force the CTCS Board of Directors to spend the $16M experts had estimated it would cost to repair the building. Instead, foot-dragging ensued after structural engineering firm Morabito Consultants delivered their Structural Field Survey Report to the CTSC Board AND local building officials in October of 2018 – 2-1/2 years before the collapse.
Subsidence, You Say?
On June 24, 2021, at 3:44 pm, within hours of the collapse, a controversial report was released in which Florida International University (FIU) Professor Shimon Wdowinski confirmed that his research had detected subsidence of the land around the CTSC building between 1993 and 1999.
FIU professor: Collapsed Surfside building showed signs of subsidence in ‘90s
In others, a recognized expert had conducted research 31 years before the collapse that confirmed the land around the CTSC was sinking, and potentially at risk of caving in.
Again, no action was taken for 31 years regarding the CTSC building itself or any comprehensive regulatory reform designed to prevent such a calamity anywhere in the state of Florida.
A Hell of a State of Affairs
As my long-since departed grandfather would have said, “That’s a hell of a state of affairs!” And indeed, the old man would have been right. Not only for the events precipitating the CTSC collapse but the current state of the condominium market in the state of Florida. Even worse, is that the same issues will be confronted by condominium owners throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, or EVERYWHERE that mid and high-rise condominiums are built.
BOTTOM LINE
Housing people with limited financial means in high-rise buildings is a VERY bad idea, especially when those same people with limited financial resources are also the stewards of the organization that is responsible for maintaining the building.
If you are Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos or an NBA star with a hundred million dollar contract, buy all the condos you want because you CAN afford the true cost of owning this ridiculous form of housing! For everybody else a condo in a mid or high-rise building is a ticking financial time bomb! ESPECIALLY if the building is sitting next to a beach!
