General Discussion

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.