then maybe that is a sign.

What's the alternative? Continuing free lunch for some, served with a side of negligent homicide? I will pass on that, I don't know about everyone else.

That these are old structures built under a different set of building codes. For the most part existing structures are grandfathered in when new codes are put in place.

A second problem arises when your HOA monthly charge is too small to build up cash reserves for major upkeep issues. The reasons are many why the fees are low but they are voted on by the owners. It can be especially bag in newer complexes where there are majority landlord owners who want their expenses to be the bare minimum.

Can you imagine everyone being told they have to make major changes to their own homes every time building codes are revised?

I was a fire inspector when I retired.
Remodel work was to new code if you didn't involve more than 25% of the existing structure.

It would be impossible to force all buildings to comply with code changes as they came out.

$135 per month isn't all that much. Here in California, I've heard of much, much higher HOA fees.

so it looks like a typo.

As an aside, I will mention that, back in 2010, property owners in locations such as Palm Coast (a city on the East Coast of Florida, about eighty miles northeast of Orlando) walked away from their mortgages and their properties. Squatters took over the abandoned residential properties until the recovering market eventually caused them to be ousted.

The upper margin of the middle class Florida real estate market has seen its share of upheavals in the past twenty years.

Walking away from a property.
And not paying a mortgage.

I would hate to buy property in such an unstable location.
But it does sound like property can be bought on the cheap.

In the early part of 2010, her biggest worry was that there were so many vacant homes and squatters in Palm Coast that she did not feel safe. Fortunately, the real estate market and the economy in general improved by the end of 2010. Her investment more than doubled in value.

She had to be able to sustain a possible big loss.
In the event the value kept plummeting.

And yes it was not a safe living situation for a while.

plenty of people had sky-high mortgages, lost their jobs, and just walked away. They took a loss and hit to their credit scores and ability to secure financing in future.

Corporations like private equity firms bought up plenty of cheap real estate back then and some still hold them today in some markets. They charge high rents.

Thanks for the info!

But it might be a good squatter opportunity. I think I can rent out my paid for home in PHX for about $3200 per month, per Zillow. With Social Security, I could live nicely squatting in a waterfront condo in FL.

And you have to live with other squatters while you wait for the sheriff.

Rents are crazy aren't they.

(As a side note have you heard anything local about the Nancy Guthrie case?)

No news.

No one is hearing anything back channel either it appears.

... because they don't do anything for anyone; they just demand fees from residents for the privilege of being told what they cannot do, and the board members pay themselves a tidy sum to act like little Hitlers.

rather than have a bunch of commies run their own building or a group of little homes by themselves.

Some people seem to miss the fact that there is no “them”in a condo. It is only you and your fellow owners. If something is being done wrongly, it is you and your fellow condo owners who are doing it wrongly. So instead of a landlord charging too much, you and your fellow condo owners are charging yourselves too little. Only too human. But not evil.

And board members receive no pay for being on the board . Any condo owner can themselves run for board positions. And should do so!

... as he told it to me. He did not hold the board in high esteem, and neither did a number of his neighbors. His was not the only horror story I've heard over the years.
We live in a very small rural village, and 20-odd years ago a newcomer who was welcomed with casseroles and whatnot quickly tried to establish a homeowners association. He was told in no uncertain terms that we all had gotten along fine without one for years, so forget it. Then he got belligerent. BIG mistake. He was gone in less than a year.
I can understand that it's a bit different when people are living cheek-by-jowl in an apartment complex, but there are way too many tales of woe where a certain kind of personality tries to lord it over everyone else, thus engendering a lot of animosity.

every year or two, and can be thrown out if they are seen as too much one thing or another. The problem is that most people are unwilling to take on the burdens and responsibilities of board membership themselves, preferring to stay home and watch TV and bitch about the people —usually those who need the ego strokes — who do put themselves forward to stand for the board. All just ordinary human behavior.

And — Homeowners Associations rarely come about through someone moving into a community of individual home owners and organizing them like a union. Homeowner Associations are created by the builder and developer. People may hate and resent their Homeowners Associations, but they hate and resent them less than they hate and resent their neighbors who prop cars up on cement blocks and let weeds and bicycles and wheelbarrows grow in their front yards. If that were not the case developers would not bother setting up homeowners associations, and would just let the prospective buyers deal with the results on their own.

There is a huge difference between condo HOAs - which are absolutely necessary when you share walls, roofs, and infrastructure - and single family neighborhood HOAs.


I personally wouldn’t live in a neighborhood HOA but I understand how some people might prefer an HOA.

Those are there to keep the housing stock looking good so you don't have run down properties devaluing yours.
Can they be a pain? Yes. But you can vote out people you don't like. If you can get the voters off their asses.

Grounds maintenance

For my $540 per year I DON'T have to help cut the grass in the common areas...and they pretty much leave you alone.

Board members are elected and serve with no pay. Perhaps some expenses. Elected by the owners of the development.
The HOA I was a member of had to bring a full accounting yearly to the membership. Including all exterior maintenance, garbage, community water, road repair and maintenance, club house and pool. Estimates for the next year's budget. Estimated on major repair work to structures, roofs and paint and their potential cost. Plus keep a reserve fund for emergencies and major repair work. Without a reserve fund assessments have to be levied.

You couldn’t pay me to live in a pestilential hellhole like Florida.

Until Disney moved in. Now it is a disaster.

Too many people, too little water and too congested.

I'm 5th generation Floridian. If it wasn't for having deep roots and being elderly I would move out.

would know that you are right about the paradise part.

I loved the state when as a young person I realized that even poor people could have a high quality of life there — back in the 1970s.
You can blame Disney but I’d also blame the shift from decades of fine democratic governors like Askew and Graham replaced with hucksters and losers like Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis.

Florida used to be fun 😁

Ron DeSantis. Homeowners insurance through the roof, if you can even get it. Traffic gridlock. General unaffordability. What's not to like?

And yet, people continue to pile onto that sandbar. Similarly, I wonder why people in the millions would pile into what's essentially the greater Sonoran Desert, i.e., Phoenix. Humans are a strange species.

I love the Florida Fish and Game regulation on fishing for Oscar - a very large cichlid often kept as an aquarium pet until people realize how big they get and how hard they are on your filters...

No minimum size limit. No bag limit. No closed season. It's illegal to practice catch-and-release fishing with Oscars. They WANT you to catch as many as you possibly can and eat them because they don't breed like rabbits - rabbits are celibate compared to these damned things - and they'll very quickly strip a body of water of any other fish in there.

Manatees.

Give me cloudy Pacific Northwest skies any day.

I love the winter.

I treat a lot of patients for depression. But only one that I can think of has been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective.

About condo buildings. If there aren’t strong laws mandating that they maintain safety, it’s only human nature that people will put off raising their HOA fees. Americans do not live within their means.

laws about maintenance and regular inspections of systems.

the sellers of course want their money for selling their properties and the banks, insurers, etc. all want their fees too. Someone in this whole mess (perhaps the sellers, covering up the whole mess until they can pawn off their defective properties?) should pay. The state, is kind of worthless, coming after the fact when all is said and done w/, and left a whole of want of be sellers holding a very expensive, unsellable property. And their insurance fund that the state has is running fast out of resources if it isn't already.

And the state will still get its property taxes, the insurers will still get their insurance fees, and the original sellers will walk away free from the mess to being w/...did they know what was going to happen?

At one time, it was a dream of mine to buy a condo in FL. God, by all that is mighty and good, no more. I'll never buy another condo anywhere else in ANY state for that matter.

I guess to be really safe, just rent very temporarily a place in FL, don't buy (FL is not the only place either, I say this for did some of those escaping the FL mess escape w/ their mess and are trying to sell bad properties elsewhere).

These structures won't last without constant maintenance. They are made of concrete and steel, with elevators and complex plumbing and ductwork. They are essentially commercial buildings, sold as residences. They need expert management and full-time maintenance teams, with routine inspections to spot any problems. Businesses pay for that service; it's a known cost factor in their expense calculations. Residential property owners often don't have the awareness or the expertise to realize the necessity of this system or the willingness to bear the cost.

moved to FL some five or so years ago, to 'keep' an eye on their rental property, how they are doing. W/ so much going on, in the FL real estate market, a normal person like me would have gotten themselves into issues right off the top, in buying a tiny slice of FL. I'm glad I didn't, I'll just rent for a month somewhere for a while in FL now.

and maintenance in general that should have been done over the years ?

I can't figure out what the issue is here . Of course things will be more expensive but is it a huge difference and don't people want their homes to be safe ?

I know people usually bought in Florida becsuse it was cheaper so it could be that.

Don't be responsible, cut taxes and live like there's no tomorrow, don't fund infrastructure and necessary upkeep, and just hope you die before it all falls apart.

Looks like the game of musical chairs just stopped for the owners of those condos.

Sorry. P

meant cutting corners and fighting zoning laws. Anyone with a working brain new disaster was imminent.

of there over thirty years ago when I could no longer live with the rampant overdevelopment,
I am so grateful to be away from there.
I could see since the late seventies, the building of condominiums increased and the planning was less thought out and soon quality of construction fell as well.
It’s your typical boom/bust cycle with greed
(of course!) being the main driver.
Had some great times there as a kid though!

I always wanted to, but never had the chanced. Wouldn't do it now if someone paid me. I don't think it's going to be a problem for much longer, tho. Climate change is coming at us fast and furious. I do believe it's all going to be underwater before too much longer. While I feel for the Democrats and the normal people trying to live there, I hope against all hope the first thing that goes underwater is that pest infested hellhole mar a lago!

we lived on the outskirts of Winter Park, a suburb of Orlando. My dad was in construction. It was apparent that after Disney came, there was virtually no urban planning. Development was chaotic and unregulated. It was a great place to grow up. I got a very good public education, for the most part. But I left in 67 and I've no desire to go back, even for high school reunions.

That article is typical Dailymail bullshit though. Sprinkling of facts, lots of hyperbole, fake "examples."

and the price isn't crazy high, then sell quick...YMMV
m

in other condo associations in the same community that have not.

A friend of mine’s uncle had a condo somewhere on the west coast of Florida and he got a special assessment of $400k for structural repairs. He asked her if they would buy him out, so they did (they can well afford it.)

One lived there, the other was visiting to take care of their ailing father. Both were physicians, one a cardiologist in Florida, the other an orthopedic surgeon at a VA facility in Alabama.
It was devastating.

My heart goes out to those poor parents

... mostly swamp to begin with, was it not? Mother Nature always has the last word in such matters.

Those remaining will either be the wealthy who couldn't care less about the cost of living, and those peons that don't have enough money to buy gas to leave the state. Even Disney World will go belly up because people simply won't be able to afford the cost tickets, accommodations, and food.

I grew up in south FL in the 50s and 60s. It was a nice place then. When I graduated from high school ( I was very lucky because at that time Miami-Dade county had what was recognized as one of the best educational systems in the country. The Repugs destroyed all that.), I left and never looked back.

The Florida property would be a loss but the company would continue.

Though I think Dubai is not a great idea unless thry build a dome over the whole thing.

Banks wouldn’t finance most FL condos 15 years ago after the 2008 crash. They usually require them to meet FHA lending guidelines which something like over 90% of condos in Florida don’t. The ones that do are typically new construction.

Even if someone went in with cash to avoid the mortgage issues, that is still a huge hurdle.

Indeed I did predict it.

For the record, I am close to this issue. I have lived in South Florida for 40 years and am in the Engineering industry. I have worked in Search and Rescue with FEMA for 30 of those years and I spent several weeks onsite in Surfside immediately after the event.

Insurance has been an issue for all properties in Florida but the real problems with condos boil down to two things.

A) Stricter laws after Surfside require certain expenses to be budgeted and held in reserve. Since many condos didn't have this, they have had to over-collect to reach those minimum levels

B) The rules on engineering inspection changed in ways that don't seem crazy but have had a drastic effect. There was a change to how often the inspections were require (40yr->30yr) plus the requirement for many condos to undergo an inspection rightaway. But the real underlying problem has been the marketplace for those inspections. The price for those inspections shot up. Partly because there was more demand. But mainly because Surfside was a wake-up call that there was a lot of liability in those inspections. The number of individuals willing to do them for the old prices went way down and the ones remaining were way more thorough than before. More importantly, the lability involved means the engineers are understandably much more conservative than they used to be resulting in more requested repairs. The condos don't really have a choice but to comply since they need those certifications to remain open. The whole system has ratcheted up the cost.

I actually do feel sorry for many condo owners getting caught up in this. Mostly for the ones that already owned before Surfside. They really had no way to know that this would be the new reality. I even feel bad for the association officers who are forced to be the bad guys here based on things out of their control. There are certainly bad ones but for the most part they are just owners volunteering their time to help run their buildings.

the humongous numbers of individuals and corporations that bought all the properties that housed all the visiting foreigners and New Yorkers that used to come down and rent for six months every winter.....No one came to visit from foreign countries and especially Canada this past winter and there are a ton on un-rented units, especially in Miami.......

Yea hahhhhhhh

They're the reason rents and prices keep skyrocketing. What used to rent for $1100 five years ago is now inching toward $2K--and I'm talking older 1- or 2BR apts, trailers, and duplexes. Meanwhile, the job market is FUBAR, agriculture is spiraling (say goodbye to your orange juice because groves are going out of business along with fewer workers). The only people who'll be able to afford living here will soon be the oligarchs--and good luck to them finding peons to provide the mundane things they need done for them because we're being priced out of the equation. 🤨

I don't know many of them are owned by individuals personally.

It's virtually everything--even 1960s mobile homes because snowbirds bailed/died and no one wants to pay $2K/mo for a spot in a crap trailer park even if the POS tin can costs a pittance.

Snowbirds are staying away in droves, the housing is unaffordable, and the job market is crumbling.

Hell, *I'd* GTFO of here except I just lost my job and can't imagine a way out at this point. (I'm sure my opinion is coloured by my current freakout...)

The wealthy have been gobbling everything up.....Condos, Townhouses, Apartments, and single family residences for more than a decade........And many of the Wealthy and Uber Wealthy are abandoning stocks and other investments to buy the housing along with Land purchases.......

I have wondered if the wealthy pulling out of the stock market is a harbinger of where our economy is headed.....(everyone's investments and retirement funds are invested in the stock market).....One major dip in the market would wipe out an incredible amount of what the middle class owns, and destroy the retirement funds......of tens of millions of retired........AND don't forget the Republicans are trying to destroy SSI also.......and Medicare and Medicaid..........