A ‘Mornings with Maria’ panel discusses how Florida’s newest safety requirements for high-rise condos and apartments will impact homeowners.
Last May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis passed legislation mandating emergency reserve funds for condominiums statewide after the tragic collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South in Surfside.
While lawmakers hope the condo law overhaul will protect residents from similar events, some market experts have warned that the mandatory reserves could destroy Floridians’ wallets.
“These costs, they get passed on to the consumer in one way or another,” Pinion Enterprises founder and CEO Joe Pinion said on “Mornings with Maria” Monday. “Here comes the budget buster: this stipulation [was] put in place by Gov. DeSantis to secure lives, but it’s going to end up bankrupting a lot of people that didn’t see this 50% hit coming.”
Florida’s Senate Bill SB 4-D includes requirements for preventative maintenance and construction inspections on buildings three stories or higher, and for condo associations to collect and maintain structural integrity reserve studies and funds.
Associations are required to perform a reserve cost analysis every 10 years for repair costs that meet or exceed $10,000. Associations must then mail their structural integrity studies to condo owners, who will contribute to the reserve together through an association-approved payment plan.
Florida’s condominium law overhaul could “end up bankrupting a lot of people,” Pinion Equities founder and CEO Joe Pinion said on “Mornings with Maria” Monday, January 16, 2023. (Getty Images)
To fund a reserve pool of money, 50% or more of the total cost for a condo’s repairs must be maintained.
Pinion explained how this could financially hurt landlords and Airbnb hosts, who may now have to pay additional housing costs under the new law.
“You’re talking about people who have the Airbnb that they thought, ‘Oh, all these people with their Airbnb business, this would be great, I was going to rent this property or I’m going to own this property, and then the actual income is going to eclipse what I have to either pay for that monthly rent or that monthly mortgage,’” the CEO explained.
Macro Trends Advisors founding partner Mitch Roschelle also cautioned that the reserves law will “create a dichotomy” between high-rise condos and single-family homes in Florida.
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“It’s going to make single-family homes potentially more desirable because you can control your own destiny,” Roschelle said. “The other thing that we’re seeing in Florida… after the Surfside catastrophe, people don’t want to be on condominium boards anymore because it’s a tremendous amount of liability.”
“You’re volunteering to give back to your community, basically, and you’re potentially liable if you decided not to repair the seawall when it was supposed to be repaired,” he continued. “So there’s going to be a lot of shakeups down in Florida.”
Champlain Towers was 40 years old and in need of major repairs when it collapsed on June 24, 2021. It’s led to officials looking at the need to ensure other aging structures are safe, as 98 people were killed in the tragedy.
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At the time, the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of the Florida bar task force said 912,376 Florida condo units housing more than 2 million people are at least 30 years old, including more than 105,000 older than 50 years and nearly 328,000 built between 40 and 50 years ago.
Overall, Florida is reportedly home to more than 1.5 million condo units operated by 27,599 condo associations, an Associated Press report said.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
MONTREAL – The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers says Montreal-area home sales rose 9.3 per cent in August compared with the same month last year, with levels slightly higher than the historical average for this time of year.
The association says home sales in the region totalled 2,991 for the month, up from 2,737 in August 2023.
The median price for all housing types was up year-over-year, led by a six per cent increase for the price of a plex at $763,000 last month.
The median price for a single-family home rose 5.2 per cent to $590,000 and the median price for a condominium rose 4.4 per cent to $407,100.
QPAREB market analysis director Charles Brant says the strength of the Montreal resale market contrasts with declines in many other Canadian cities struggling with higher levels of household debt, lower savings and diminishing purchasing power.
Active listings for August jumped 18 per cent compared with a year earlier to 17,200, while new listings rose 1.7 per cent to 4,840.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2024.
