MIAMI — Ten years ago, Howard and Sheila Konetz bought themselves a Florida dream: an 1,820-square-foot condo in a leafy gated community north of Miami, complete with access to a country club, tennis courts and swimming pools. The $478,500 purchase would usher them into blissful semiretirement, they thought. With enough cash in the bank, the couple didn’t need a mortgage and downsized from their house in Miami Beach.
Seven years later, on June 24, 2021, the Champlain Towers South condo building in the nearby town of Surfside partially collapsed when its corroded concrete and steel supports buckled, killing 98 people. Florida lawmakers responded by requiring condominiums that are at least 30 years old to undergo inspections, make critical improvements and amass reserve funds for future repairs.
Suddenly, the Konetzes found themselves facing a $224,000 bill — their share of a special assessment to renovate and repair their 36-year-old building. Unable to secure a loan or sell the unit, the couple now fear bankruptcy.
“I don’t want to end up on the street, but, consequently, that’s what will happen,” said Howard Konetz, who is in his 70s. “All of our money is tied up in this albatross.”
The deadline for the required building inspections is Dec. 31. Proponents of the legislation say it’s necessary to prevent another tragedy, since many of these buildings have avoided funding structural repairs for decades. But for the people living in them — many of them retirees or second-home owners — the dream of living in Florida has curdled into a financial nightmare.
About 1 million condo units meet the age requirement under Senate Bill 4-D, leaving owners with a stark choice: pay up, sell or go into foreclosure. Retirees on pensions or fixed incomes often cannot afford the renovations, which are meant to shore up the entire building. And would-be buyers are avoiding older buildings because of the assessments. All the while, insurance premiums for condo associations are rising in the face of strengthening storms such as Hurricane Helene, which devastated the Gulf Coast of Florida last week.
“The crisis is coming,” said state Rep. Vicki Lopez, who represents parts of Miami and helped spearhead the condo reforms. “It’s like watching a tidal wave.”
Before the tragedy at the Champlain complex, Florida condos faced minimal oversight. In 1981, when the three-building development was completed, the town of Surfside had only a part-time building inspector, and both the architect and structural engineer had been disciplined previously for flawed projects. But with more snowbirds arriving each winter, the town added more condos to welcome them.
By 2021, only two of Florida’s 67 counties mandated that buildings 40 years and older undergo inspections and renovations to pass what’s known as a recertification. And even those rules proved weak. Condo boards often failed to amass sufficient financial reserves. “Many waived reserve requirements because there were retirees on the board, and other people in the condo were retirees,” Lopez said. “They kicked the can down the road.”
Along with condo buildings that are at 30 years old and at least three stories tall, the law targets those 25 years and older within 3 miles of the coast. Boards must now collect fees from residents to create a savings fund for building upkeep. The preceding inspection determines how much they must raise for the next decade of critical structural components, such as roofs and balconies. The process will repeat every decade.
The requirements are “coming all at once,” said Alexander Argento, a vice president of operations for AKAM, a property management firm with offices in Florida. “It’s very stressful.”
In 2009, Thereza Teixeira paid $146,000 for a 1,565-square-foot unit at the waterfront Plaza Del Prado condo in Aventura, just north of Miami. The condo would be a smart investment, she thought: Interest rates were low after the housing bubble had burst, and the 20-story building, from 1971, was conveniently located next to Biscayne Boulevard, one of Miami-Dade County’s main arteries.
“The condo was a goal of mine,” said Teixeira, 61. “It was the first large purchase that I made on my own, and it showed that I had made it.”
But she hadn’t factored the building’s age into her decision. Last year, the condo board’s new assessment forced Teixeira to come up with an extra $338 a month. Her property maintenance bills, now $1,390 a month, are $500 more than her mortgage payment. She has been forced her to take on extra work in addition to her day job taking care of vacation homes while their owners are gone, and she has slowed down contributions to her retirement account.
The condo is “like a bad marriage,” she said. “It’s too expensive to divorce your husband.”
Across Florida, condo listings are soaring along with the special assessments, and sales are declining, according to data from Redfin. Prices are dipping as a result, with mortgage lenders hesitant to give loans to buyers who can’t cover those assessments. Almost 90% of units on the market across South Florida are in buildings 30 years or older, according to data from the Aventura-based real estate firm ISG World.
“The statute is pricing a lot of people out of the condo market,” said Joseph Hernandez, a Miami-based real estate lawyer at Bilzin Sumberg. “It’s going to be very expensive to pay the monthly maintenance — but it should have always been that way.”
Among those losing out are the Konetzes, who live on a fixed income. Their condo association failed to sufficiently save, they say. (Representatives for the condo association did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) Now, each owner must pay according to the size of their unit. The total bill, which includes charges for the building and the surrounding master community, amounts to $11.4 million.
Although not all the items are critical, such as landscaping, the couple must still pay the full $224,000 bill to comply with the association’s rules. They can pay it down in one lump sum, offer one-third and pay the rest in installments, or pay it in 240 installments with interest.
“I don’t know where we’re going to live,” Howard Konetz said. “Our funds that we had put away to pay everything are dwindling rapidly.”
Two years ago, the Konetzes listed their two-bedroom in the Williams Island master community in Aventura, asking $659,000. Despite dropping the asking price by $160,000, they still haven’t received an offer. A lawsuit against their association is unlikely to result in a payout, according to Hernandez.
The law could change the calculus for generations of people with aspirations of a home in Florida. “In no way is the law a good thing for the economy,” said Ken Johnson, a real estate economist at the University of Mississippi. “All else being equal, a condo on the Alabama side is now more valuable than one on the Florida side.”
Regular maintenance is especially important in Florida, where buildings must withstand hurricanes, flooding and corrosive salt water. Just last year, residents of the Majestic Isle condominium, built in 1960 in nearby North Bay Village, were forced to evacuate after an inspection found that the building was structurally unsafe.
State lawmakers have resisted softening the statutes. Although Gov. Ron DeSantis said last month that “at some point over the next 3 1/2 months, something will be done” about skyrocketing fees, he and Kathleen Passidomo, president of the Florida senate, rebuffed calls to convene a special session to hash out a solution.
Solutions for strapped condo owners, while limited, do exist. Since 2022, Miami-Dade County has offered interest-free loans of up to $50,000 for special assessments tied to condominium recertifications. Although the program is not a long-term fix — it isn’t available to second-home owners and has limited funding — it has saved Marianne Meischeid.
After decades working in New York selling medical equipment, Meischeid, 74, retired to Surfside three years ago. Two decades prior, she had bought her 918-square-foot unit in the oceanfront Four Winds building, four blocks from the Champlain complex, for $170,100.
“I always wanted to retire on the beach, and Surfside is a small town,” she said. “You can walk everywhere, just like in Manhattan.”
This year, after her condo association quoted her nearly $39,000 to help renovate the 12-story condominium, Meischeid didn’t know how she would pay. High interest rates made a traditional bank loan unappealing. Moving also was not ideal.
Her fears subsided a bit in May when she was approved for Miami-Dade’s Condominium Special Assessment Program. Under the plan, Meischeid must repay the loan in $80 monthly installments spread over 40 years. But even with the public assistance, her costs continue to mount. She anticipates her monthly building fees will double to $1,600 next year because of a new home insurance policy.
“It’s still going to be one hard year, 2025,” she said.
Another solution for condo boards is to sell the entire building to developers, who often target waterfront properties to make space for new luxury structures. Since 2022, two high-profile developers, Naftali Group and Continuum Co., have tried to purchase Meischeid’s building, each offering more than $100 million.
“It’s going to be financially unsustainable if you’ve got, every couple years, $50,000, $70,000, $100,000 special assessments,” said Hernandez, who has represented condo owners in sales to developers. “Buyouts become the only logical solution.”
But buyouts, which require the consensus of most owners, are often acrimonious and result in lawsuits. Meischeid has no intention to sell, but she worries she may have no choice. Last week, Continuum submitted a new offer to acquire her building. The bid came as the second set of payments for the special assessment were coming due, even as several of Meischeid’s neighbors had yet to pay the first bill. The Four Winds condo association is threatening legal action to collect the payments.
Despite the financial pressure, struggling condo owners understand the need to respond to the Surfside tragedy and the problems it augurs for Florida condos. The new rules, and the money needed to comply, will keep their buildings standing, but perhaps at the cost of losing their homes.
Said Teixeira: “We’re going to have a safer building afterward. But getting there will be tough.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2024 The New York Times
