The disaster scene in Surfside. (Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department)
One of the top Republicans who has worked on condominium laws said Tuesday that Florida’s condo crisis has been a long simmering problem and is not just the result of legislation passed in the aftermath of the 2021 Surfside building collapse that left 98 people dead.
Senate Regulated Industries Chair Jennifer Bradley delivered that message during the committee’s first meeting for 2025, which featured a panel session with attorneys, real estate people, architects, and engineers operating in Florida’s condo market.
“This is not a new crisis, this is a crisis that has existed,” Bradley said. “Surfisde pulled back the curtain on that crisis. It’s a reality that no one wanted to exist but it was certainly one that the system undeniably allowed to exist.”
Experts who appeared before legislators on Tuesday marked the first step of reexamining the situation amid growing pressure from condo owners and Gov. Ron DeSantis to revisit the laws passed after the Surfside collapse. Those laws have led to a spike in condominium assessments.
But Bradley argued that condominium association boards have long been underfunded and that some buildings have not been maintained or inspected. She said that 65 of Florida’s 67 counties did not require any type of inspections for condominiums before the Surfside collapse. She pointed out that when condo owners purchase their dwellings, they become shareowners in the entire building,
Following Surfside, the Florida Legislature required “milestone inspections” for condos and cooperative buildings that are 25 or 30 years of age, depending on their proximity to water, with three or more floors in height and for any structural defects. Associations were required to conduct structural integrity reserves studies (SIRS), evaluating the buildings’ condition and future maintenance needs.
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A wallop
The combination of the milestone inspection and SIRS have packed a wallop with condo owners in the form of skyrocketing homeowners’ association special assessments to cover repairs to existing structural damage and to also ensure reserves needed to maintain the condominium in the future.
DeSantis has called the Legislature into a special session to address immigration and other issues, including condominium safety regulations and election law changes, in a special session that is scheduled to start on Jan. 27.
In his proclamation, DeSantis said, “Florida condominium market continues to face challenges including soaring costs related to assessments, repairs, and inspections,” and that it is necessary “for the Legislature to address these challenges to ensure that Florida residents can continue to afford to live in their homes.”
But the Legislature has rejected his call to meet in special session, noting in part that “condominium safety and ballot initiatives proposing constitutional amendments are complex subjects and should be considered during the regular session, not a truncated special session.”
What is fully funded
Matt Kuisle, regional executive director of Reserve Advisors, who was invited to participate in the panel, told senators that there is some confusion in the SIRS requirement over what “fully funded” means — whether it’s the amount needed to cover a repair, or whether its baseline funding, the amount needed to keep an association’s reserves from going below zero, or threshold funding, which is something between the two.
Bradley said standardizing the definition across the condo real estate marketplaces was a good idea and that, furthermore, she supports a baseline funding requirement.
Kuisle said he had conducted hundreds of SIRS for condo associations across the state and that in July he had to start turning condo associations down because he wouldn’t be able to conduct the SIRS in time — most were due Dec. 31.
Senate Majority Leader Jim Boyd asked Bradley whether the state would take action against condo associations that did not’ complete the studies on time, which Bradley said she was open to.
More meetings
Tuesday’s meeting was the first of many the Senate Regulated Industries Committee will have on the issue.
Bradley maintained that not all the ripple effects of the law have been negative. On the contrary, marketplace awareness of building safety and the hefty special assessments condo owners are facing to make them safe now and into the future is a good thing.
“That’s a good recognition of buyers in the state of Florida that every condo owner should have that recognition and say, ‘I want to live in a safe building. I’d like a building inspection. I’d like reserves in my unit that that’s a very reasonable’ — a very rational thought process for anybody who’s about to put their life savings into a condo, and we certainly reinforce that in the law.”
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