Florida special Assessments

Those articles should have prompted you to do more googling - you would have run into articles like this:

https://warrenaverett.com/insights/condominium-requirements/#:~:text=Associations%20existing%20on%20or%20before,at%20least%20every%2010%20years.

Now, does this mean there's a special assessment in your future? Who knows? Has your community been doing regular reserve studies? Is it funding reserves according to the recommendations? Have the common areas been maintained regularly? Have assessment increases kept up with inflation?

If you're not already doing so, start paying attention to your board meetings minutes and attend some meetings to see how your community is going to address this.

Condominum and co-op buildings less than three stories or less are exempted from SIRS.

As for reserves, it used to be that condos could vote to waive reserve contributions. As of December 31, 2024, associations may no longer waive their reserve contributions. That doesn't mean that the reserves must be fully funded, but the condo has to show that they are on track to collect enough money to pay for items on the reserve study (at a minimum, roofs, painting and pavement) by the end of their remaining useful life.

This is causing problems for a lot of condo associations. One of our condo sub-associations is basically broke because they waived their reserve contributions for so long. They have a loan for insurance payments, a large loan for roof replacement (they didn't even have enough to pay the deductible for the insurance claim), they didn't reserve money for repaving driveways they are responsible for and now they discovered that the board had deferred maintenance on their backflow preventers and most of them are inoperable. The fire marshal is demanding they have to be replaced. They have a huge special assessment coming up, and their monthly assessements are going to skyrocket as they try and catch up on their reserve funding.

So.....is it "3 story or higher?" Or, "less than 3 stories?"

The "less than" / "three or more than" yada depends on whether the speaker is addressing when a SIRS is not required and when it is required, of course.

In my opinion the reason for the SIRS exemption for less than three stories is political.

Structural failures in two story buildings and even one story buildings certainly can and have killed. It's just that the "pile driver" effect (for one) is less with fewer stories.

I figure politicians were trying to minimize the cost burden to associations but still show their concern about safety. Rightly so in Florida's frequently brutal climate.

As insurance is being flatly denied more and more, I do wonder about how much a role "denial" is playing.

"Everything will be all right in the end. If it is not all right, it is not yet the end."

That's interesting. I never considered the parking underneath the building. I know many condos in our area near the beach are raised up so there is parking underneath and high water won't reach the residential part.

Isn't a "story," a "story" no matter what it contains? The words do not "residential story," or, do they?

Hmmmm. Maybe a "story" has a certain minimum height, say 8 feet above ground?

That part would probably require too much news print - and you need that space for advertising, so there's that. When I took journalism classes 1000 years ago, we were told the headline and the first three paragraphs were what people generally paid attention to before going to something else, thus the need for the inverted pyramid style of writing. There's also the problem of critical thinking not being taught at all in the schools - better to sit in an echo chamber and listen to people rant and rave without offering solutions and blaming everything on marginalized people. Or God (all of them).

Nonetheless, I hope this board realizes up and quitting won’t make the problem go away – if they’d done their job, the owners would have known about the lack of reserves. I don’t know why grown ups can’t ack like it and just tell the truth. It does hurt and people will be angry (who wouldn’t be if told to cough up $60K in a year). I’m also wonder if those same homeowners who came out in droves were the same ones who howe doer assessment increases (you know that had to happen at least once). Someone here once said “play stupid games, win stupid prizes and this is the result of that.

Now these homeowners are going to have to find another group willing to crunch the numbers and then reveal to everyone else how bad things are. I wouldn’t accept $60K at face value unless someone gave me some specifics to review. The longer they put this off, the more they risk $60K increasing to $70K or more.

I really feel sorry for Florida HOAs and fear this will have a ripple effect across the rest of the country, thanks to wildfires out west, floods (also out west and in the south), tornados in my neck of the woods, and between the prices of everything going up, along with insurance, I can understand why some of my relatives said the hell with it and are living in apartments today. They may have to deal with crazy rent increases (one reason why we have an affordable housing crisis now), but dealing with property taxes and what not is someone else’s problem. Until it isn’t

I continue to say transparency and continuing education is everything in a HOA – you are all business partners and everyone needs to understand what’s at stake. At a minimum, bard members need to understand it’s not just about their pocketbook, it’s everyone’s pocketbook. Homeowners have to understand if they want those precious property values to increase, it requires that you take care of the house – it’s a drag to deal with repairs, contractors and all that, but do you really want to deal with leaking roofs to save a few bucks? It’s not pleasant, but I’d rather have people grumble to my face as opposed to springing this type of news on them. Even if you don’t live in a HOA, the insurance issue will hit you sooner or later (because it always does), and your home is still aging and you have to deal with increased costs in maintenances, taxes and all that.

I looked at some of the comments from that article – how many of you co-sign with this one:

I'm on the board of an HOA. More often than not there are more board members at open meetings than residents. Only about 40% bother to vote during board elections and virtually no one outside the board and even some members have no clue about our financial condition because they plain don't care.

As long as the pool and golf course are open, they think everything is fine.

It's very much like the country as a whole, everybody has an opinion but virtually nobody is willing to pay attention, it's easier to just blame the HOA or the government for everything.

Pay attention and vote or shut up!

I’d add reading, attending meetings and asking questions -there are some things I don’t think AI will ever be able to do as well as the human brain, but that’s just me.