Does the current Florida homeowner’s insurance rate hikes affect condos?

Your Questions Answered

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Question:

Does the current Florida homeowner's insurance rate hikes affect condos?

Yes it affects condos.

Two main things going on in condo world:

1) Condo structure insurance is through the roof for the same reason as single family homeowner’s is. Big jumps in many monthly condo fees to cover this shortfall, plus rise in claims as many structures age with deferred maintenance.

2) You may have heard of the Surfside condo tower collapse that happened last year in Miami. Well there’s been some state regulatory changes that have happened because of that which is costing many towers a ton of money as they are now looking at engineering inspections to make sure they are also not going to collapse. This is overall a good thing but the immediate effect is condo assessments (i.e. one time payments to cover a massive expense) and/or increased monthly fees to stockpile the cash necessary to deal with this in the future. This state requirement I believe only applies to 3 stories or more, but that covers a lot of condos. And even those condos under 3 stories as well as townhomes are both old enough to develop major issues and have been given a closer look / concern by residents.

Anecdotally there’s also a number of condos around locally that are paying more attention to their structure after that. One in St Pete had to have the sliding glass doors screwed shut by management because the balconies were literally falling off. Others have deferred roof replacements, assessments for rotted beams, all sorts of things. Most constructions and condos are well over that 30 year mark and some even 60+.

Everyone likes to complain about high monthly condo fees, but if you see a condo that has tons of ameneties or is a tower but is only charging $200/mo then more than likely a huge bill is going to come due down the road. It’s not “condo board stealing our money” it’s “structures need money to be maintained… they do not survive indefinately with no maintenance and routinely need large projects.” 150k-200k roof replacement for medium sized condos is not unusual ini the least.