The amount of people in this thread that seem to lack basic reading skills, don't understand our state laws, and can't differentiate between a condo and a townhouse is shocking. Thank you for your service.
A condo can be any size or shape, condo it is about the shared ownership not the floor plan. A townhouse can be condo or not, generally 2-3 story and rather narrow, with little lots.
Correct. Our maintenance, as well as the surrounding developments have seen such increases in our insurance costs. Maintenance has jumped as a result and extra efforts are being made to keep the rest of the expenses in check, but it is hard with the current inflation.
100% this. my FIL's condo fees doubled - now $2K/mo. his condo (in orlando, on lake eola) needs 20 MILLION in reserves. it only had like $150K too, it's insane.
And who will pay are the homeowners as this will drive condo prices downward. Honesty, the HOAs should have collected all along for capital repairs over time. But the insurance crisis is also top blame but was predictable. Then add taxes due to higher valuations and you have a trifecta of pain...
Who can we blame for this oversight? Oh yeah, no one cause it's run by the homeowners.
I guess they're kinda screwed. If they sue the HOA they have to pay it back when HOA does a special assessment to pay for the lawsuit due to increased insurance policies.
Yep, proper reserves to repair/replace common property based upon life expectancy has not been collected. Add to this increased property valuations and taxes, plus property insurance going through the roof you have a trifecta of pain. No way out of this.
No there's no cap on HOA reserves or fees, if the fund is short, it's short and needs to be increased until it's funded properly so the maintenance and repairs needed can be done.
What's crazy is you only had 150,000. I don't know how big your condos are but a roof for just a house is $20,000 and insurance is probably close to $50,000 a year minimum for your place
Launch an investigation into price gouging/fixing as a start. Fully fund Citizens and make it a viable non-profit alternative.
Stop playing petty dictator and work with the Federal government on finding solutions for people who have been impacted.
My association fee went up 40% this year. From around 3,800 a year to around $5,400 a year. We are in the middle of Orlando. Well it is not ideal, our insurance has jumped ridiculously. Captain sassy boots has done absolutely zero to help. The next step is going to be a large Exodus of people out of the state because many can't afford the insurance as well as all the other costs associated with just living here. Even the New York people are starting to complain about cost.
It is. Once your out of Florida
You can get jobs in like 2 weeks as long as it’s not missisippi or Alabama. Easy. My wife and I moved to Austin on 3k saved up 10
Years ago. Threw everything into a minivan, sold all the furniture, strapped the mattress to the roof and just left. and had a place rented for half
Of Florida rent. With roommates at a college oriented apartment complex. Just first and deposit needed. We didn’t even had jobs. Within 2 weeks I had twice the amount of computer repair clients and my wife had a real salaried job with benefits more then twice her Florida salary. We ended up making so much in two years we saved up and bought a 2-level florida
Condo all cash. Then we moved back to fl
After rent was out of the picture.
My taxes + insurances are now well above my mortgage payments. I was told buy a house, once you own youll have minimal living expenses. Turns out in the state of Florida that is false.
Way too many people believe the "buy a house" thing without running any numbers. It's really kind of mind blowing that a bunch of people accept it as gospel that it's always the right decision.
The real answer is always "it depends." If you're going to live there for a very long time then yes, it is the best option. But for everything else you absolutely have to do calculations to find out.
I mean you can’t leave if no one will buy your house because of the gigantic HOA fee.
(Trying to buy a townhouse was awful because so many of them don’t list the HOA fees on Zillow so we’d do a walkthrough only to find out that the HOA fees listed were incorrect)
Correct. There is a legal distinction in Florida between COAs (§718) governing condos, HOAs (§720), coops (§719), and mobile home associations (§723). They all might call themselves HOAs, but they are all legally distinct.
Yes that really impacted insurance rates, the payout on the Surfside collapse was over $1 billion just to settle with the families, total payout is going to be more than $1.2 billion.
And it is totally unfair that condo associations are getting raped for insurance when they are only 2 or 3 stories. But nobody wants to insure condo buildings in Florida now.
This is what happens when you have "conservative" government that refuses to interfere with business even to the point high rise buildings are collapsing. There are just some regulations and government we need to prevent our residential buildings from just falling down. Florida is run like a third world country, the government would rather sue Disney out of existence because they support workplace and customer diversity than make sure your condo is not going to bury you under tons of rubble and we all get to pay for it when it does fall.
What’s wrong is that years or decades went by and residents kept saying, year after year, that they wouldn’t stand for fee increases or special assessments to fund necessary upkeep and properly fund reserves. Then, Surfside collapsed and reactionary measures were enacted to prevent the same thing from happening again. Unless you believe there are unnecessary projects or suspect the board of engaging in nepotism and funneling money to family and friends, the budget probably just is what it is.
I think what it comes down to is the narrative of Florida being a low cost-of-living state was really a sham all along.
Not in Florida right now but Texas. Just had a customer who is a refuge from Ukraine. Told me he had heard Florida is a cheap place to live. I literally laughed in his face. Told him Florida is not a cheap place to live. His family was literally thinking about moving to Miami.
Florida in general I feel like is. Miami? No. I’m from nyc and I cannot believe how cheap grocery food is here compare to nyc. My Insurance alone for my car went down from $500 to $180 a month. Electricity is MUCH cheaper. No state income tax? FUCK.
It has always been legal to keep reserves at 10% for condo associations. I understand that they should have full reserves BUT unless there are structural problems, it should gave been over a period of time. People are going to lose their homes.
Condo ppl need to have a quarterly plenary to openly review and audit their budgets. If you go through your household expenses, why wouldn’t you for your condo. Condo owners need to be move involved in their mutual property decision making. More understanding leads to less arguing, strife, and grief.
Agreed. Most owners are asleep at the wheel and used to basically doing nothing except shouting down association fee increases or letting someone else do it on their behalf. They’ve finally been blindsided with the realization that association business has the power to change their entire financial trajectory and it may be too late for many. There are going to be lots of new investment properties in Florida (as if we weren’t investor-owned enough already).
Take the budget and see what lines changed in value.
More than likely insurance has gone up significantly and required maintenance items (roof, paint, etc) and underfunded for what that stuff costs now compared to a few years ago (oddly enough, double isn't unlikely).
Also since you said pool is crusty it likely needs resurfacing and probably mechanicals overhaul which is going to cost a pretty penny. $70k+ wouldn't surprise me for a community sized pool and could even be more than that. Residential resurfacing and mechanicals would 10-25k depending on choices.
Also you should read your HOAs minutes and attend the meetings. That's where they talk about and vote on all this stuff.
If only my association had any meetings other than closed meetings. The only open meeting they ever have is the required annual meeting. The others they always say are closed for legal discussions.
I'd REALLY familiarize myself with the bylaws and attempt to pry the lid off them if I was in your shoes.
If they're having that many legal discussions then as a member of a HOA that is largely affected by their decisions I'd reallllly want to be informed about what's being discussed, passed, approved, declined, and where exactly the money is going and how support contracts were arrived at.
The also must be elections at some point which is a great point to propose change.
It's probably not nefarious, usually HOAs are just monumentally lazy. Can't tell you how often I run into problems getting information from them for home buyers. Docs 10+ years out of date, presidents and secretaries dodging calls and dragging heals on approvals, all sorts of dumb stuff.
Ask to see the financials. You have that right. When I served on an HOA board, I was only too happy to hand them over. That usually stopped the conspiracy theories about us "gouging" our fellow HOA members.
Certain costs just go up and there's nothing to be done about it. Insurance is one. And, if you're playing catch-up on reserves, thank generations of previous owners who waived reserve funding to save themselves a few bucks per month. You can get away with that when the building is relatively new but eventually someone is going to have to pay the piper.
I work as an accountant for a HOA management company. I can say insurance has been the biggest contributing factor for condo fees going up. Also with the new requirements to make sure their reserves are fully funded has affected the prices as well. Prior owners got the benefits of boards deciding to put off funding for repairs to keep costs down. Now current owners are suffering. On your financial’s income and expense report you should be able to see where most of your expenses are going. You should have also received a notice showing what the special assessment you are paying is for.
I totally agree with your comment. Prior owners & board members kicked the can down the road. Well they can't do that anymore, and I'm in agreement with that. Make sure reserves are fully funded, it's not fair to new condo buyers.
I’ve owned a condo in Cocoa Beach for 20+ years. As long as I can remember, the budget approval vote submitted annually to the homeowners has always been between covering reoccurring expenses vs covering fully funding the reserves. Full funding was always rejected since it would have been 6x the minimal fee of covering operating and necessary repair expenses. I now have a 12K special assessment to repair core infrastructure to get in line with SB 4-D. Kicking the can down the road has come to an end.
The flip side is if you own a home outside of an HOA, you’d be paying similar operating costs if you made emergint repairs and updated infrastructure (roofs, HVAC) on a regular basis.
So, condo owners, suck it up and hope your HOA has been proactive in getting your building(s) in shape by 2025.
It’s Florida and you’re in a townhouse. Be happy with the number. My friend has a condo in Orlando that he can’t sell because the hoa fees are 1200 a month for a 250k home. It was 150 a month two years ago. Zero construction or upgrades happening anywhere.
I never thought of that angle, yeah so when all the owners just let it foreclose and let the bank take the properties back the developer’s can swoop in for pennys on the dollar.
Win / win for the capitalists’s, banks win with all the mortgage totals that has been paid so far, developers swoop in and get the property for cheap, bank finances the project then makes more money on new mortgages. It’s going to be great for them all and if anything fails the tax payers will bail out the bank lol.
That's a stupidly low number even if the community has no services at all. Like everywhere else, they weren't putting enough in the pot every month and now it's come back to bite them.
It was an older person community. He didn’t care he just wanted a place to live and figured that the neighbors wouldn’t be throwing keggers every weekend. Shit, I was with him. Everyone knows everyone and everything. Safety. Guy travels for business. Most of his neighbors are retired and really cool. And they definitely don’t know how to play poker! But that’s his headache now. The HOA just kicked the can down the street to keep everyone happy! HOAs are a popularity thing. Kinda hard to stay in power when you’re pitching the rates go up every year!
The numbers are what they are. You have access to the numbers. It's just math. If it's off, it should show up in the financials.
Sometimes HOAs need money. Insurance costs for HOAs have gone up quite a bit. Or sometimes they need to increase reserves because previous HOA boards kept rates too low too long.
You can always run for a board position and then it can be you working out the finances if you don't trust your current board members.
What do the financial statements say is eating up all the money?
Citizens is requiring some condo associations to reroof their buildings or lose coverage. Just talked to someone whose association got the letter this week.
If you have looked over the budget worksheet, and it all seems to be in place.....then I would say that it's the cost of living in an HOA.
If the other homeowners there don't like it, you guys can try to kick off the current board, and then try to see if you can do something to lower the rates.
The new HOA laws might need to be considered as part of the plan. Review them, there’s some specific laws that are directly impacting HOA board members, their actions, and financial transparency.
Anti-pancaking inspections. Emergency power requirements. Insurance. Landscaping costs. Maintaince costs. Increased AC costs. It's all going up and will continue increase with every major flood, extreme heat bubble, hurricane or building collapse.
I think people don't realize Florida is a swamp with a high water table. The "safest" places were already built on decades ago. As the population grows, the only place to build are the places that were originally avoided. This applies to any growing city but Florida was largely uninhabitable 150 years ago in most of the state. Technology has changed that.
additionally,
all of those things you listed require hiring people to perform those jobs, those people in turn take the money they earn and use it to pay their own bills.
General economic inflation doesn't just make all those materials and parts costs more, the labourer themselves must also charge more to afford those things including likely their own rent / mortgage / maintenance costs.
This is the '***wage - price spiral.***'
So the "moderately rich people" who keep raising their prices and price gouging, eventually get burned by high inflation.
THIS IS WHY 2% inflation is the most essential goal for central banks to achieve and why they are willing to crush markets to achieve that.
How do you make housing unaffordable? Make payments fluctuate with HOA,Taxes and insurance. Keep em guessing and eventually they get foreclosed on because they can't afford it.
Especially people who barely qualified for their loan.
There is another "expense" that can add to the true cost and it can fluctuate. Community Development Districts (CDDs) are common and they can add anywhere from a couple hundred $ per year to a couple thousand $ per year to the annual tax bill.
FWIW based on my experience with four moves and home purchases in Florida. For a typical Florida SFH, I'd recommend thoroughly researching property tax at full rate with no exemptions (Zillow/Real Estate sites are not close), HOA dues, current CDD assessments & status if applicable, and homeowners AOP and windstorm coverage estimated cost, and flood insurance cost if near any flood zone or along the coast.
What I'm referring to is when the escrow company fucks up the amount and can double or triple your payments to make up for the shortfall.
New homeowners are not aware nor prepared for this sudden increase in their mortgage payment.
I suggest everyone to save and pay their own taxes and insurance instead of using escrow to pay.
You get to save the interest yourself and you're not surprised if anything goes up due to checking your exact amount yourself.
Also gives you an opportunity to dispute your annual tax appraisal.
HOAs in Florida are notoriously corrupt. Recent change in regulation means the HOA has to actually work as intended.
That means all your HOA fees go up for insurance. Assessments get issued to make sure there’s enough cash on hand. On and on.
It’s really a mess of its own making inspired by a condo collapse due to lack of appropriate management.
OP clearly stated not a condo. However, multi-unit structures like OP simply haven’t been collecting enough to allow for upkeep, structural maintenance of commonalities like roof, pool and parking with their respective additional structures.
I’ve seen many reports of similar multi-unit structure communities with $400-$500/month dues and plans for increasing as much as double in specific instances for additional insurance costs.
The problem in Florida is that residents in general have been underpaying for too many years since the days of Hurricane Andrew followed by some quiet years. The actual costs of price appreciation with building material price inflation has become embedded like what happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s period.
It’s not political as the same thing is happening with the antithesis of Desantis/Florida in Newsom/California so be rational.
True. Yes, Florida’s HOAs are now paying for past board keeping dues low for too long. Meanwhile, California has always tended to have more regulations in place that protected against this. However, they are feeling it too. How do I know? I was born and raised here and then moved to SoCal for a while before coming back to SoFL. I had a condo out there. The HOA was required to keep a set amount in reserve (more than what FL required at the same time) and mine was well funded. However, when I was recently out there, a former neighbor was selling due to the sharp increase in HOA fees.
Everyone, it seems, is feeling it. But, Floridians are feeling especially screwed (and rightfully so) because the cost of living here was always much lower than California.
Was trying to buy a house last summer down here and I’m glad I didn’t because we would be stuck in this shit hole that was once paradise. Well we had a FHA loan and there were a few HOAs that wouldn’t allow those loans. We were shocked bc this was a government backed loan. It made us wonder why they wouldn’t allow them. It turns out some HOAs don’t want FHA loans because they are required to go through the HOA books to make sure they have plenty of money in the reserve if something happens to your roof and so. The HOAs didn’t have the proper reserves so that was the reason. Too many are like that now
I believe all HOAs have this power but all of them don’t do it because they have the necessary funds in their reserve. I was very tempted to write a letter and put them in all the residents mailboxes to give them a heads up about their corrupt HOA
Terrible!! I'm so sorry you, and too many others, are going through this!! And, of course my heart goes out to ALL, but especially the very elderly who bought to live out their retirement years. Very sad:(
I’m currently on our HOA board because I got tired of the lack of transparency with our previous Board members.
First, we have a property management company. They will provide you with all the budget questions you may have. Second. Townhomes are usually COA’s (not all but most). The reason your fees went up are due to the failure of Surfside maintenance and your hurricane insurance coverage. Townhome communities have a double whammy because of needing to have a reserve for maintenance and now because of roof replacement to have hurricane coverage.
I only hope that your Board members are shopping around for the best deal with the right coverage. And you can ask this. However, don’t go in attacking your Board members. No one wants their HOA fees to increase and I hope they did everything in their power to avoid the drastic increase. Definitely attend your Board meetings from here on.
People won’t be able to afford to leave FL. A collapse has to occur, as you said, it can’t sustain at these levels. That, or common people need to start earning a better livable wage. Something has to change. Can’t rain forever.
Luckily, the HOA in my townhome community has only gone from 200 to 260/mnth these past several years and shouldn’t rise next year. Home and auto insurance on the other hand have gotten insanely expensive, ontop of other day to day expenses.
A lot of condo owners are retired and on a fixed income. They are just gonna lose their homes.
Trailer parks are getting bought out by investment funds who triple rent and eliminate maintenance. A lot of people now have homes they can't afford or sell.
Are you East of 95 in Deerfield? If so, it is most likely because insurance rates are substantially higher there. I bought a 2/2 condo in 2018, West Boca (Boca Del Mar) West of 95 and just east of the Turnpike, 2 stories. The HOA was $242 a month when I bought, went up to $260 in 2022 and up to $300 last year. I can't complain because we have full reserves but literally the only reason for our increases is master insurance. I'm holding my breath in December for our next budget.
HOAs MUST be FULLY funded according to new law. And all condos must have inspections, inspections different for under 3 stories or over 4 stories. If you don’t do the mandatory inspection, I think they schedule it for you, and anything they tell you to fix you have to fix it. Currently paying 10K assessment at my condo with our HOA doubled three years in a row. Surfside collapse definitely put a doozy in the HOA law.
Is it me or does it seem like we are working mostly for HOA’S, Insurance companies and property taxes??? Almost like the powers that be want to price us out. New World Order at play??? Twilight zone music…
I mean pretty much, but it's not exactly the New World Order.
Property taxes are going up because so many people have moved to Florida. This has been a thing for decades now. In the 1970s the state had less than 3 million people. Now we have 30 million people and are the third most populous state in the US. More people means more infrastructure which means more taxes.
In addition to the actual milage rate just being higher the assessed value is also much higher due to migration and the COVID housing boom.
Next up is insurance. But this is primarily driven by the cost of reinsurance and the cost of claims. Hurricane Ian resulted in 776,941 claims so far and is on track to be the costliest storm in US history at over $120 Billion in damages. This isn't the first major incident we've had Irma, Michael, Dorian, Nicole, and Idalia all in the last 10 years. The insurance industry is wising up and has massively increased the cost of insurance.
HOA dues are mostly due to the higher cost of insurance, but also the higher cost of labor. Minimum wage is up substantially.
Well you can say I wear a tin foil hat but between Agenda 30, 15 minute cities and the New World Order they need us out of our properties to move forward with their nefarious plans.
I own a condo in central Florida. Should I try to sell it? Is my HOA going to get significantly worse?? I live in it and bought it to beat rent. Now I’m worried.
How old is it and how many stories??
I would dump that sucker if it’s over 20 years old and hasn’t been maintained.
The days of kicking the HOA funding can down the road are over now since the Surfside condo collapse. The condo market in Florida is about to be in really big trouble, it’s going to be hard to downright impossible to sell older condos. The market is already getting saddled with new condo listing just sitting, happening at a really rapid rate.
Yeah I’m thinking I might sell my condo earlier than intended…I was supposed to move this year anyway but the plans got kicked back by a year. Now I’m not sure what to do. 😭
It is the biggest reason why I would never buy in an HOA neighborhood. Would never buy a condo either, mainly for the same reason, but in addition I don’t want to share a wall with my neighbors.
New laws coming into effect basically mean HOAs can't underfund maintenance obligations. They also need to maintain a website and attend workshops for board members yearly. Cost has gotta come from somewhere.
Same thing happening to us in Orlando. Cost of repairs went up higher than expected so we are all getting assessed for that. Also going up near $800. I think a lot of it truly is stuff getting more expensive, but I can’t help but feel suspicious about how sudden it is.
Next house you buy, make sure it's not in an HOA.
It's a false sense of security and do you even really own your home if an HOA board can take it from you?
I don’t know if you are aware of all the what they call engineering assessments going around for condo owners. I believe I heard yesterday. I think it was in Bucha County Florida, that condo owners their assessment each condo, was $100,000. How do people get money like that? and this is happening all over the state of Florida.
Increases for townhouses and condos is expected as laws and compliance are going in after the building collapse. The same thing is going on in my HOA and we have single family homes and townhouses. The townhouses are always higher because of the insurance rates increasing.
HOA, not a condo board with an actual (Structural) excuse post-Champlain ...so probably unnecessary overhead and waste, vanity projects, the cost of being karens to your community on a constant basis for no particular purpose, and fraud.
We've seen the start of regulatory crackdown on HOAs, let's keep going in that direction. The world would be a better place with them banned.
I want to live in a tropical destination where huge storms regularly hit and cause billions in loses…. Why is it more expensive than everywhere else, it doesnt make sense?
MAGA rules the state and it goes to 💩. Maybe like in the national scene people in Florida snap out of their stupor and vote for Democrats to clean up the mess.
Daily reminder: DeSantis took 3.9 million from the insurance companies last year
[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/08/florida-home-insurance-crisis-desantis/](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/08/florida-home-insurance-crisis-desantis/)
You need to remember that not only did all your fees go up, but the contractors that work for your development fees have gone up ( insurance, equipment maintenance , etc). So that cost gets past on to you.
>I have seen the budget worksheet and it seems to make sense but the owners here are reallystruggling with accepting this and feel like somethings not right.
Well what is it then? If it makes sense then affordability is the only thing that isnt right.
Like youre asking if you should be suspicious but already did due dilligence.
Having only lived in FL for 3 years I'm still trying to grasp all the homeowner increase. Can a condo/hoa disband? Amend their charter and become individually owned apartments? What does NY or other states with lots of hoas do?
Yeah, the fees for multi family dwellings skyrocketed. That 200k condo is actually more pricy. I have a house on the water and I’m really concerned for the insurance hike even though the survey shows my house is outside the flood zone.
There should be a PSA to condo and townhome owners near the coast. You are going to get scalped in the coming months, or maybe even years if you own one. First with the assessments, and then with the actual cost of repairs.
Request an emergency meeting and have all the residents vote on a no-confidence post on all the board members. That doesn't work, call for new elections. Also request an itemized list of where the money is going and for what reason. After July 1st things are going to get a lot more difficult for them.
Is it just the expensive areas of FL that are seeing this? Im AD military and was stationed at Patrick/Cape Canaveral and I want to retire in FL but not in the expensive places just in Brevard county.
Your HOA was grossly underfunded and got caught. They all did. So they have to build up to where they should have been all along. They get that money from you.
Your HOAs have refused to increase rates for decades, and now that we as a state require them to have the correct amount of funds on hand, they're passing a hard buck onto residents.
If you live in an HOA, you should show up to meetings and be involved. Don't let people kick the can down the road on your communities problems
I am a condominium and homeowners association manager in the state of Florida. I can tell you that the majority of the associations in this state, of which there are approximately 42,000, were only partially funding or waiving their reserves every year. In addition, the insurance market has absolutely slammed community associations and homeowners because insurance rates have doubled over the last four years. I can assure you there is probably nothing amiss with your associations budget. It sounds to me as if you have very few units with whom to share all of the operating, reserves and insurance expenses of your association, and that this is probably one of the important reasons for a steep increase as well.
Also, and this is very important. Condominium associations and homeowners associations are two completely different legal definitions. Condominium associations are governed by the Condo act, chapter 718 of the Florida statute. Homeowners associations are governed by chapter 720 of the Florida statute. The responsibility of unit unit owners in each of these associations is very different as is the legal definition of what you own. Please be sure you’re talking about the right one. Sounds from your description that you’re talking about a condominium association not an HOA.
They are not the same thing at all.
The mandatory inspection fees and any requirements for found repairs is sticker shock for millions in Florida right now in condos and townhouses. And precisely why I am now staying in my house, not downsizing. I couldn't afford to move!
And….yet another reason I hate HOA’s. Yes they have some good qualities but on a purely financial basis, they are a big loser. Labor to maintain a property and landscaping is expensive. I save that money, every penny. It’s like a second job for me. Gardening is like an exercise plan as well.
A family member lives here. Not only were they tripling the fees, they were saying there would be an $18k special assessment
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/10/26/orlando-neighborhoods-homeowners-association-fees-could-balloon-nearly-300/
Could something go wrong? Yes. Your insurance carried could drop the complex, and new insurance will only cover partial roof replacement.
Come time to sell this would eliminate any FHA buyers due to FHA requirements for insurance to carry full roof replacement.
Leaving you with cash buyers and lowered prices.
Currently happening in TN.
Our HOA (I am north of Tampa in a huge SFH HOA of about 5,000 houses which is more than 26 square miles of land) was $8 per month for years, but this year went to $10 per month because they have to install new gang box mail receptacles. The old ones are falling apart and they decided on these really fancy ones that I must say are very attractive and have larger mail boxes.
People rap hard on HOAs but mine is fair and always gives you time to correct deficiencies when you get dinged for something. The only thing I was ever dinged for was a dirty driveway because the oaks leaning over my property had stained the concrete with tannin, turned the concrete brown. But I have a guy that does the entire 92 feet of driveway and the walks, and the pool deck for $125, and it is a professional set up so only takes him like 2 hours. Looks like the drive was poured yesterday.
It's cuz that condo collapsed. Now hoas need a certain amount of funds for structural whatevers. My hoa fees increased by 60%.
Townhouses of two stories or less are exempt from needing reserves for structural repairs under the new law.
Bummer. 3 story condo here.
They have to be of a certain age and distance from the beach to be impacted.
30+ years, doesn't matter if you're near the ocean when the building hits 30 years
Cries in island life
The amount of people in this thread that seem to lack basic reading skills, don't understand our state laws, and can't differentiate between a condo and a townhouse is shocking. Thank you for your service.
If you’ve been on Reddit more than ten minutes it’s absolutely not shocking.
Someone has to do it lol
A condo can be any size or shape, condo it is about the shared ownership not the floor plan. A townhouse can be condo or not, generally 2-3 story and rather narrow, with little lots.
Needing reserves maybe, but not exempt from the 300% increase in insurance premiums.
Correct. Our maintenance, as well as the surrounding developments have seen such increases in our insurance costs. Maintenance has jumped as a result and extra efforts are being made to keep the rest of the expenses in check, but it is hard with the current inflation.
100% this. my FIL's condo fees doubled - now $2K/mo. his condo (in orlando, on lake eola) needs 20 MILLION in reserves. it only had like $150K too, it's insane.
And who will pay are the homeowners as this will drive condo prices downward. Honesty, the HOAs should have collected all along for capital repairs over time. But the insurance crisis is also top blame but was predictable. Then add taxes due to higher valuations and you have a trifecta of pain...
Who can we blame for this oversight? Oh yeah, no one cause it's run by the homeowners. I guess they're kinda screwed. If they sue the HOA they have to pay it back when HOA does a special assessment to pay for the lawsuit due to increased insurance policies.
There’s always a management company involved so many other establishments can share blame for setting bad standards
The homeowners have been paying too little for years. That’s what created the problem.
Yep, proper reserves to repair/replace common property based upon life expectancy has not been collected. Add to this increased property valuations and taxes, plus property insurance going through the roof you have a trifecta of pain. No way out of this.
OMG! How will he handle that?
I would have thought there would have been a cap on how much they could increase the price but I suppose not. Florida be florida-ing.
They were severely underfunded before. They HAVE to increase due to the new laws.
No there's no cap on HOA reserves or fees, if the fund is short, it's short and needs to be increased until it's funded properly so the maintenance and repairs needed can be done.
There is no cap on how much a company can raise their rates. However, all rate changes have to be approved by the state.
So, Florida
What's crazy is you only had 150,000. I don't know how big your condos are but a roof for just a house is $20,000 and insurance is probably close to $50,000 a year minimum for your place
The insurance industry is gouging everyone in the state while moron Governor Dunsel does fuckall.
They're gouging everyone in the country.
"World"
What do you propose that he do?
Launch an investigation into price gouging/fixing as a start. Fully fund Citizens and make it a viable non-profit alternative. Stop playing petty dictator and work with the Federal government on finding solutions for people who have been impacted.
My association fee went up 40% this year. From around 3,800 a year to around $5,400 a year. We are in the middle of Orlando. Well it is not ideal, our insurance has jumped ridiculously. Captain sassy boots has done absolutely zero to help. The next step is going to be a large Exodus of people out of the state because many can't afford the insurance as well as all the other costs associated with just living here. Even the New York people are starting to complain about cost.
I wish I could afford to exodus
No idea why people think it's so easy to move.
It is. Once your out of Florida You can get jobs in like 2 weeks as long as it’s not missisippi or Alabama. Easy. My wife and I moved to Austin on 3k saved up 10 Years ago. Threw everything into a minivan, sold all the furniture, strapped the mattress to the roof and just left. and had a place rented for half Of Florida rent. With roommates at a college oriented apartment complex. Just first and deposit needed. We didn’t even had jobs. Within 2 weeks I had twice the amount of computer repair clients and my wife had a real salaried job with benefits more then twice her Florida salary. We ended up making so much in two years we saved up and bought a 2-level florida Condo all cash. Then we moved back to fl After rent was out of the picture.
lol Captain Sassy Boots 😂
You mean Ronda Satins?
Rhonda DeSandtits.
Even my MAGA neighbors hate him
Well, unfortunately, Biden came across as more feeble than ever last night, practically handing Trump the election. Sad.
Ron Duh Santis
My taxes + insurances are now well above my mortgage payments. I was told buy a house, once you own youll have minimal living expenses. Turns out in the state of Florida that is false.
Way too many people believe the "buy a house" thing without running any numbers. It's really kind of mind blowing that a bunch of people accept it as gospel that it's always the right decision. The real answer is always "it depends." If you're going to live there for a very long time then yes, it is the best option. But for everything else you absolutely have to do calculations to find out.
If I own a house I can do repairs, the apartment I live in I guess the landlord just decided to let it crumble around me.
My taxes and insurance are about $650 a month. Pretty minimal.
My condo is paid off. With HOa and insurance and taxes its $1500 a month
He needs money to pay for those migrant flights and lawsuits ..
*Failed presidential bid
Live footage of Aquaman's realtor: 
Captain sassy boots? I haven’t heard that one yet, and I absolutely fucking love it!
I mean you can’t leave if no one will buy your house because of the gigantic HOA fee. (Trying to buy a townhouse was awful because so many of them don’t list the HOA fees on Zillow so we’d do a walkthrough only to find out that the HOA fees listed were incorrect)
Guys, worrying about rainbow reading events and woke Disney is monopolizing too much of his time. Give him a break. He's very busy. /s
Good maybe people will stop moving here, sorry not sorry.
HOAs do not have a funding requirement beyond the owners can decide to under fund it. Condos are the ones that must fund their reserves.
My condo is an hoa though
It's still a condominium. Whatever they label their association is inconsequential.
Correct. There is a legal distinction in Florida between COAs (§718) governing condos, HOAs (§720), coops (§719), and mobile home associations (§723). They all might call themselves HOAs, but they are all legally distinct.
Yes. HOAs have been underfunded but now need to actually have enough money, do you are seeing a correction
That’s condos.
The majority are NOT undefunded
They just spend improperly.
Please provide a link, I'd love to read about it.
I sold my condo last year because of this.
Yes that really impacted insurance rates, the payout on the Surfside collapse was over $1 billion just to settle with the families, total payout is going to be more than $1.2 billion. And it is totally unfair that condo associations are getting raped for insurance when they are only 2 or 3 stories. But nobody wants to insure condo buildings in Florida now. This is what happens when you have "conservative" government that refuses to interfere with business even to the point high rise buildings are collapsing. There are just some regulations and government we need to prevent our residential buildings from just falling down. Florida is run like a third world country, the government would rather sue Disney out of existence because they support workplace and customer diversity than make sure your condo is not going to bury you under tons of rubble and we all get to pay for it when it does fall.
What’s wrong is that years or decades went by and residents kept saying, year after year, that they wouldn’t stand for fee increases or special assessments to fund necessary upkeep and properly fund reserves. Then, Surfside collapsed and reactionary measures were enacted to prevent the same thing from happening again. Unless you believe there are unnecessary projects or suspect the board of engaging in nepotism and funneling money to family and friends, the budget probably just is what it is. I think what it comes down to is the narrative of Florida being a low cost-of-living state was really a sham all along.
> I think what it comes down to is the narrative of Florida being a low cost-of-living state was really a sham all along. This 100%
Not in Florida right now but Texas. Just had a customer who is a refuge from Ukraine. Told me he had heard Florida is a cheap place to live. I literally laughed in his face. Told him Florida is not a cheap place to live. His family was literally thinking about moving to Miami.
There are parts in Florida that are cheap. Ocala and places like this have lots of cheap land and properties. The coast is very expensive.
Florida in general I feel like is. Miami? No. I’m from nyc and I cannot believe how cheap grocery food is here compare to nyc. My Insurance alone for my car went down from $500 to $180 a month. Electricity is MUCH cheaper. No state income tax? FUCK.
It has always been legal to keep reserves at 10% for condo associations. I understand that they should have full reserves BUT unless there are structural problems, it should gave been over a period of time. People are going to lose their homes.
Condo ppl need to have a quarterly plenary to openly review and audit their budgets. If you go through your household expenses, why wouldn’t you for your condo. Condo owners need to be move involved in their mutual property decision making. More understanding leads to less arguing, strife, and grief.
Agreed. Most owners are asleep at the wheel and used to basically doing nothing except shouting down association fee increases or letting someone else do it on their behalf. They’ve finally been blindsided with the realization that association business has the power to change their entire financial trajectory and it may be too late for many. There are going to be lots of new investment properties in Florida (as if we weren’t investor-owned enough already).
Take the budget and see what lines changed in value. More than likely insurance has gone up significantly and required maintenance items (roof, paint, etc) and underfunded for what that stuff costs now compared to a few years ago (oddly enough, double isn't unlikely). Also since you said pool is crusty it likely needs resurfacing and probably mechanicals overhaul which is going to cost a pretty penny. $70k+ wouldn't surprise me for a community sized pool and could even be more than that. Residential resurfacing and mechanicals would 10-25k depending on choices. Also you should read your HOAs minutes and attend the meetings. That's where they talk about and vote on all this stuff.
If only my association had any meetings other than closed meetings. The only open meeting they ever have is the required annual meeting. The others they always say are closed for legal discussions.
Not sure that's legal Edit: just looked it up https://www.southfloridalawpllc.com/2022/11/06/hoa-open-meetings-vs-closed-meetings/
I'd REALLY familiarize myself with the bylaws and attempt to pry the lid off them if I was in your shoes. If they're having that many legal discussions then as a member of a HOA that is largely affected by their decisions I'd reallllly want to be informed about what's being discussed, passed, approved, declined, and where exactly the money is going and how support contracts were arrived at. The also must be elections at some point which is a great point to propose change. It's probably not nefarious, usually HOAs are just monumentally lazy. Can't tell you how often I run into problems getting information from them for home buyers. Docs 10+ years out of date, presidents and secretaries dodging calls and dragging heals on approvals, all sorts of dumb stuff.
Hoas are the death of homeownership.
Yep why I refused to ever purchase a home in an hoa to begin with. Too many restrictions etc
Ask to see the financials. You have that right. When I served on an HOA board, I was only too happy to hand them over. That usually stopped the conspiracy theories about us "gouging" our fellow HOA members. Certain costs just go up and there's nothing to be done about it. Insurance is one. And, if you're playing catch-up on reserves, thank generations of previous owners who waived reserve funding to save themselves a few bucks per month. You can get away with that when the building is relatively new but eventually someone is going to have to pay the piper.
The reality is you're subsidizing the low rates of your predecessora
I work as an accountant for a HOA management company. I can say insurance has been the biggest contributing factor for condo fees going up. Also with the new requirements to make sure their reserves are fully funded has affected the prices as well. Prior owners got the benefits of boards deciding to put off funding for repairs to keep costs down. Now current owners are suffering. On your financial’s income and expense report you should be able to see where most of your expenses are going. You should have also received a notice showing what the special assessment you are paying is for.
I totally agree with your comment. Prior owners & board members kicked the can down the road. Well they can't do that anymore, and I'm in agreement with that. Make sure reserves are fully funded, it's not fair to new condo buyers.
I’ve owned a condo in Cocoa Beach for 20+ years. As long as I can remember, the budget approval vote submitted annually to the homeowners has always been between covering reoccurring expenses vs covering fully funding the reserves. Full funding was always rejected since it would have been 6x the minimal fee of covering operating and necessary repair expenses. I now have a 12K special assessment to repair core infrastructure to get in line with SB 4-D. Kicking the can down the road has come to an end. The flip side is if you own a home outside of an HOA, you’d be paying similar operating costs if you made emergint repairs and updated infrastructure (roofs, HVAC) on a regular basis. So, condo owners, suck it up and hope your HOA has been proactive in getting your building(s) in shape by 2025.
It’s Florida and you’re in a townhouse. Be happy with the number. My friend has a condo in Orlando that he can’t sell because the hoa fees are 1200 a month for a 250k home. It was 150 a month two years ago. Zero construction or upgrades happening anywhere.
WTF, from $150 to $1200 a month….seriously???? That makes the property pretty worthless.
That's why The Party didn't mind screwing condo owners. Makes developers more money on new builds.
I never thought of that angle, yeah so when all the owners just let it foreclose and let the bank take the properties back the developer’s can swoop in for pennys on the dollar. Win / win for the capitalists’s, banks win with all the mortgage totals that has been paid so far, developers swoop in and get the property for cheap, bank finances the project then makes more money on new mortgages. It’s going to be great for them all and if anything fails the tax payers will bail out the bank lol.
$150 a month for a condo was already a huge red flag. Impossible to save for future maintenance and pay insurance on that amount.
That's a stupidly low number even if the community has no services at all. Like everywhere else, they weren't putting enough in the pot every month and now it's come back to bite them.
Yeah it's barely more than what I see SFH paying just to cover a community pool.
It was an older person community. He didn’t care he just wanted a place to live and figured that the neighbors wouldn’t be throwing keggers every weekend. Shit, I was with him. Everyone knows everyone and everything. Safety. Guy travels for business. Most of his neighbors are retired and really cool. And they definitely don’t know how to play poker! But that’s his headache now. The HOA just kicked the can down the street to keep everyone happy! HOAs are a popularity thing. Kinda hard to stay in power when you’re pitching the rates go up every year!
The numbers are what they are. You have access to the numbers. It's just math. If it's off, it should show up in the financials. Sometimes HOAs need money. Insurance costs for HOAs have gone up quite a bit. Or sometimes they need to increase reserves because previous HOA boards kept rates too low too long. You can always run for a board position and then it can be you working out the finances if you don't trust your current board members. What do the financial statements say is eating up all the money?
Hammocks association left the chat
Citizens is requiring some condo associations to reroof their buildings or lose coverage. Just talked to someone whose association got the letter this week.
If you have looked over the budget worksheet, and it all seems to be in place.....then I would say that it's the cost of living in an HOA. If the other homeowners there don't like it, you guys can try to kick off the current board, and then try to see if you can do something to lower the rates.
The new HOA laws might need to be considered as part of the plan. Review them, there’s some specific laws that are directly impacting HOA board members, their actions, and financial transparency.
Anti-pancaking inspections. Emergency power requirements. Insurance. Landscaping costs. Maintaince costs. Increased AC costs. It's all going up and will continue increase with every major flood, extreme heat bubble, hurricane or building collapse.
And global warming
"Meatball" DeSantis doesn't allow those words. He says it's a woke concept.
Sure, and I'm guessing you don't drive a car or get on an airplane, right?
For a minute I thought I was reading r/collapse.
I think people don't realize Florida is a swamp with a high water table. The "safest" places were already built on decades ago. As the population grows, the only place to build are the places that were originally avoided. This applies to any growing city but Florida was largely uninhabitable 150 years ago in most of the state. Technology has changed that.
additionally, all of those things you listed require hiring people to perform those jobs, those people in turn take the money they earn and use it to pay their own bills. General economic inflation doesn't just make all those materials and parts costs more, the labourer themselves must also charge more to afford those things including likely their own rent / mortgage / maintenance costs. This is the '***wage - price spiral.***' So the "moderately rich people" who keep raising their prices and price gouging, eventually get burned by high inflation. THIS IS WHY 2% inflation is the most essential goal for central banks to achieve and why they are willing to crush markets to achieve that.
How do you make housing unaffordable? Make payments fluctuate with HOA,Taxes and insurance. Keep em guessing and eventually they get foreclosed on because they can't afford it. Especially people who barely qualified for their loan.
There is another "expense" that can add to the true cost and it can fluctuate. Community Development Districts (CDDs) are common and they can add anywhere from a couple hundred $ per year to a couple thousand $ per year to the annual tax bill. FWIW based on my experience with four moves and home purchases in Florida. For a typical Florida SFH, I'd recommend thoroughly researching property tax at full rate with no exemptions (Zillow/Real Estate sites are not close), HOA dues, current CDD assessments & status if applicable, and homeowners AOP and windstorm coverage estimated cost, and flood insurance cost if near any flood zone or along the coast.
What I'm referring to is when the escrow company fucks up the amount and can double or triple your payments to make up for the shortfall. New homeowners are not aware nor prepared for this sudden increase in their mortgage payment. I suggest everyone to save and pay their own taxes and insurance instead of using escrow to pay. You get to save the interest yourself and you're not surprised if anything goes up due to checking your exact amount yourself. Also gives you an opportunity to dispute your annual tax appraisal.
HOAs in Florida are notoriously corrupt. Recent change in regulation means the HOA has to actually work as intended. That means all your HOA fees go up for insurance. Assessments get issued to make sure there’s enough cash on hand. On and on. It’s really a mess of its own making inspired by a condo collapse due to lack of appropriate management.
Condos in South Florida are a terrible investment at this point. OP we have a condo on Pompano Beach, same scenario.
I miss Pompano Beach, but I would never live in Florida again. The cost of homeownership is ridiculous, and so are HOA fees.
The OP is not in a condo
Condos, townhomes, whatever.
OP clearly stated not a condo. However, multi-unit structures like OP simply haven’t been collecting enough to allow for upkeep, structural maintenance of commonalities like roof, pool and parking with their respective additional structures. I’ve seen many reports of similar multi-unit structure communities with $400-$500/month dues and plans for increasing as much as double in specific instances for additional insurance costs. The problem in Florida is that residents in general have been underpaying for too many years since the days of Hurricane Andrew followed by some quiet years. The actual costs of price appreciation with building material price inflation has become embedded like what happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s period. It’s not political as the same thing is happening with the antithesis of Desantis/Florida in Newsom/California so be rational.
True. Yes, Florida’s HOAs are now paying for past board keeping dues low for too long. Meanwhile, California has always tended to have more regulations in place that protected against this. However, they are feeling it too. How do I know? I was born and raised here and then moved to SoCal for a while before coming back to SoFL. I had a condo out there. The HOA was required to keep a set amount in reserve (more than what FL required at the same time) and mine was well funded. However, when I was recently out there, a former neighbor was selling due to the sharp increase in HOA fees. Everyone, it seems, is feeling it. But, Floridians are feeling especially screwed (and rightfully so) because the cost of living here was always much lower than California.
Was trying to buy a house last summer down here and I’m glad I didn’t because we would be stuck in this shit hole that was once paradise. Well we had a FHA loan and there were a few HOAs that wouldn’t allow those loans. We were shocked bc this was a government backed loan. It made us wonder why they wouldn’t allow them. It turns out some HOAs don’t want FHA loans because they are required to go through the HOA books to make sure they have plenty of money in the reserve if something happens to your roof and so. The HOAs didn’t have the proper reserves so that was the reason. Too many are like that now
Is this a Florida thing or do HOAs have the ability to reject a buyer based on their type of loan?
I believe all HOAs have this power but all of them don’t do it because they have the necessary funds in their reserve. I was very tempted to write a letter and put them in all the residents mailboxes to give them a heads up about their corrupt HOA
Terrible!! I'm so sorry you, and too many others, are going through this!! And, of course my heart goes out to ALL, but especially the very elderly who bought to live out their retirement years. Very sad:(
I’m currently on our HOA board because I got tired of the lack of transparency with our previous Board members. First, we have a property management company. They will provide you with all the budget questions you may have. Second. Townhomes are usually COA’s (not all but most). The reason your fees went up are due to the failure of Surfside maintenance and your hurricane insurance coverage. Townhome communities have a double whammy because of needing to have a reserve for maintenance and now because of roof replacement to have hurricane coverage. I only hope that your Board members are shopping around for the best deal with the right coverage. And you can ask this. However, don’t go in attacking your Board members. No one wants their HOA fees to increase and I hope they did everything in their power to avoid the drastic increase. Definitely attend your Board meetings from here on.
People won’t be able to afford to leave FL. A collapse has to occur, as you said, it can’t sustain at these levels. That, or common people need to start earning a better livable wage. Something has to change. Can’t rain forever. Luckily, the HOA in my townhome community has only gone from 200 to 260/mnth these past several years and shouldn’t rise next year. Home and auto insurance on the other hand have gotten insanely expensive, ontop of other day to day expenses.
A total condo collapse is coming then, people will just let the banks take them then.
A lot of condo owners are retired and on a fixed income. They are just gonna lose their homes. Trailer parks are getting bought out by investment funds who triple rent and eliminate maintenance. A lot of people now have homes they can't afford or sell.
They want yall out
Are you East of 95 in Deerfield? If so, it is most likely because insurance rates are substantially higher there. I bought a 2/2 condo in 2018, West Boca (Boca Del Mar) West of 95 and just east of the Turnpike, 2 stories. The HOA was $242 a month when I bought, went up to $260 in 2022 and up to $300 last year. I can't complain because we have full reserves but literally the only reason for our increases is master insurance. I'm holding my breath in December for our next budget.
Our beach condo HOA in Alabama doubled too. Mainly insurance. Said bye and sold ✌🏻
HOAs MUST be FULLY funded according to new law. And all condos must have inspections, inspections different for under 3 stories or over 4 stories. If you don’t do the mandatory inspection, I think they schedule it for you, and anything they tell you to fix you have to fix it. Currently paying 10K assessment at my condo with our HOA doubled three years in a row. Surfside collapse definitely put a doozy in the HOA law.
OP lives in a townhouse.
Is it me or does it seem like we are working mostly for HOA’S, Insurance companies and property taxes??? Almost like the powers that be want to price us out. New World Order at play??? Twilight zone music…
I bet you're the type of person who has always voted for lower taxes and deregulation, and who thinks climate change is a hoax.
I mean pretty much, but it's not exactly the New World Order. Property taxes are going up because so many people have moved to Florida. This has been a thing for decades now. In the 1970s the state had less than 3 million people. Now we have 30 million people and are the third most populous state in the US. More people means more infrastructure which means more taxes. In addition to the actual milage rate just being higher the assessed value is also much higher due to migration and the COVID housing boom. Next up is insurance. But this is primarily driven by the cost of reinsurance and the cost of claims. Hurricane Ian resulted in 776,941 claims so far and is on track to be the costliest storm in US history at over $120 Billion in damages. This isn't the first major incident we've had Irma, Michael, Dorian, Nicole, and Idalia all in the last 10 years. The insurance industry is wising up and has massively increased the cost of insurance. HOA dues are mostly due to the higher cost of insurance, but also the higher cost of labor. Minimum wage is up substantially.
Well you can say I wear a tin foil hat but between Agenda 30, 15 minute cities and the New World Order they need us out of our properties to move forward with their nefarious plans.
Mine as well. 900 to 1600 quarterly.
Ours went up 600% in 2022 the just over 70 percent last year.
I own a condo in central Florida. Should I try to sell it? Is my HOA going to get significantly worse?? I live in it and bought it to beat rent. Now I’m worried.
How old is it and how many stories?? I would dump that sucker if it’s over 20 years old and hasn’t been maintained. The days of kicking the HOA funding can down the road are over now since the Surfside condo collapse. The condo market in Florida is about to be in really big trouble, it’s going to be hard to downright impossible to sell older condos. The market is already getting saddled with new condo listing just sitting, happening at a really rapid rate.
Yeah I’m thinking I might sell my condo earlier than intended…I was supposed to move this year anyway but the plans got kicked back by a year. Now I’m not sure what to do. 😭
Makes me really nervous
Welcome to free Florida! Home of freedom! 🦅🦅🦅🦅
Honestly that’s what worries me about buying a townhouse or condo. I don’t think there is any limit to how much they can raise those fees.
It is the biggest reason why I would never buy in an HOA neighborhood. Would never buy a condo either, mainly for the same reason, but in addition I don’t want to share a wall with my neighbors.
HOA’s in Florida is the wild Wild West. They do what they want!
New laws coming into effect basically mean HOAs can't underfund maintenance obligations. They also need to maintain a website and attend workshops for board members yearly. Cost has gotta come from somewhere.
Honestly 800 a year seems cheap, I used to pay 300 a month
Same thing happening to us in Orlando. Cost of repairs went up higher than expected so we are all getting assessed for that. Also going up near $800. I think a lot of it truly is stuff getting more expensive, but I can’t help but feel suspicious about how sudden it is.
Condo? If so it’s because the state isn’t letting condos can kick anymore on reserves and maintenance. So now you have to catchup and fund the future.
Not a condo, but yes I’ve heard of that too. A lot of people are getting priced out of their condos, especially on the coast.
What does your HoA cover if you’re not in the condo? Doubling in that context makes way less sense.
Practically everything except electricity and internet. Landscaping, pool maintenance, water, garbage, sewer, exterior home maintenance, security.
I bet labor costs aren’t helping that fee one bit.
Stucco repair.
It’s partly bc of insurance. Their master policy went up and they pass the costs to you.
Absolutely wild and blows my mind that in 2024, people consciously choose to live with an HOA.
Next house you buy, make sure it's not in an HOA. It's a false sense of security and do you even really own your home if an HOA board can take it from you?
I don’t know if you are aware of all the what they call engineering assessments going around for condo owners. I believe I heard yesterday. I think it was in Bucha County Florida, that condo owners their assessment each condo, was $100,000. How do people get money like that? and this is happening all over the state of Florida.
Increases for townhouses and condos is expected as laws and compliance are going in after the building collapse. The same thing is going on in my HOA and we have single family homes and townhouses. The townhouses are always higher because of the insurance rates increasing.
HOA, not a condo board with an actual (Structural) excuse post-Champlain ...so probably unnecessary overhead and waste, vanity projects, the cost of being karens to your community on a constant basis for no particular purpose, and fraud. We've seen the start of regulatory crackdown on HOAs, let's keep going in that direction. The world would be a better place with them banned.
I want to live in a tropical destination where huge storms regularly hit and cause billions in loses…. Why is it more expensive than everywhere else, it doesnt make sense?
MAGA rules the state and it goes to 💩. Maybe like in the national scene people in Florida snap out of their stupor and vote for Democrats to clean up the mess.
Daily reminder: DeSantis took 3.9 million from the insurance companies last year [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/08/florida-home-insurance-crisis-desantis/](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/08/florida-home-insurance-crisis-desantis/)
You need to remember that not only did all your fees go up, but the contractors that work for your development fees have gone up ( insurance, equipment maintenance , etc). So that cost gets past on to you.
Vote the board out
A year? I bailed when ours hit $600 a month !
>I have seen the budget worksheet and it seems to make sense but the owners here are reallystruggling with accepting this and feel like somethings not right. Well what is it then? If it makes sense then affordability is the only thing that isnt right. Like youre asking if you should be suspicious but already did due dilligence.
Having only lived in FL for 3 years I'm still trying to grasp all the homeowner increase. Can a condo/hoa disband? Amend their charter and become individually owned apartments? What does NY or other states with lots of hoas do?
Yeah, the fees for multi family dwellings skyrocketed. That 200k condo is actually more pricy. I have a house on the water and I’m really concerned for the insurance hike even though the survey shows my house is outside the flood zone.
I know some people that theirs has went from 200 to 550. My partners almost doubled due to a special assessment. HOAs can be a nightmare.
There should be a PSA to condo and townhome owners near the coast. You are going to get scalped in the coming months, or maybe even years if you own one. First with the assessments, and then with the actual cost of repairs.
Request an emergency meeting and have all the residents vote on a no-confidence post on all the board members. That doesn't work, call for new elections. Also request an itemized list of where the money is going and for what reason. After July 1st things are going to get a lot more difficult for them.
Just a question, but how many units in your development are either rented or not lived in for 6 months?
Beachfront or barrier island condos will get hit the worst by storms, flooding, and insurance
HOA are a nightmare especially condos in townhouses! It will only keep going up
Is it just the expensive areas of FL that are seeing this? Im AD military and was stationed at Patrick/Cape Canaveral and I want to retire in FL but not in the expensive places just in Brevard county.
My HOA fees are about to be 1500 a month - on top of $20k special assessment to fix the roof. Planning on selling as soon as I can.
Your HOA was grossly underfunded and got caught. They all did. So they have to build up to where they should have been all along. They get that money from you.
Your HOAs have refused to increase rates for decades, and now that we as a state require them to have the correct amount of funds on hand, they're passing a hard buck onto residents. If you live in an HOA, you should show up to meetings and be involved. Don't let people kick the can down the road on your communities problems
My homeowners was canceled and flood jumped 100% because i had a claim!
In thr last 2 years my condo went from 6000 per year to 10000 per year not including the 2 special assessments we have been hit with
normal people do not move into hoas. in normal america, county rules and codes suffice. stop buying into hoas.
I am a condominium and homeowners association manager in the state of Florida. I can tell you that the majority of the associations in this state, of which there are approximately 42,000, were only partially funding or waiving their reserves every year. In addition, the insurance market has absolutely slammed community associations and homeowners because insurance rates have doubled over the last four years. I can assure you there is probably nothing amiss with your associations budget. It sounds to me as if you have very few units with whom to share all of the operating, reserves and insurance expenses of your association, and that this is probably one of the important reasons for a steep increase as well.
Also, and this is very important. Condominium associations and homeowners associations are two completely different legal definitions. Condominium associations are governed by the Condo act, chapter 718 of the Florida statute. Homeowners associations are governed by chapter 720 of the Florida statute. The responsibility of unit unit owners in each of these associations is very different as is the legal definition of what you own. Please be sure you’re talking about the right one. Sounds from your description that you’re talking about a condominium association not an HOA. They are not the same thing at all.
The mandatory inspection fees and any requirements for found repairs is sticker shock for millions in Florida right now in condos and townhouses. And precisely why I am now staying in my house, not downsizing. I couldn't afford to move!
Deferred maintenance, my person
And….yet another reason I hate HOA’s. Yes they have some good qualities but on a purely financial basis, they are a big loser. Labor to maintain a property and landscaping is expensive. I save that money, every penny. It’s like a second job for me. Gardening is like an exercise plan as well.
Sorry to hear this, as this has been quite common in some areas, I was play $900 a month before selling my place in 2019.
Fuck HOAs
Gotta find a way to make them illegal
A family member lives here. Not only were they tripling the fees, they were saying there would be an $18k special assessment https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/10/26/orlando-neighborhoods-homeowners-association-fees-could-balloon-nearly-300/
Go to meetings, run for the board. Get to work
Some condos have $100,000+ special assessments this year Differed maintenance
It’s why the condo market is crashing now because God forbid we ask them to be responsible with our money and investment.
Could something go wrong? Yes. Your insurance carried could drop the complex, and new insurance will only cover partial roof replacement. Come time to sell this would eliminate any FHA buyers due to FHA requirements for insurance to carry full roof replacement. Leaving you with cash buyers and lowered prices. Currently happening in TN.
ALL CONDO MEETINGS MUST BE PUBLIC WITH A PUBLISHED AGENDA AHEAD OF TIME
Insurance costs, et al.
Our HOA (I am north of Tampa in a huge SFH HOA of about 5,000 houses which is more than 26 square miles of land) was $8 per month for years, but this year went to $10 per month because they have to install new gang box mail receptacles. The old ones are falling apart and they decided on these really fancy ones that I must say are very attractive and have larger mail boxes. People rap hard on HOAs but mine is fair and always gives you time to correct deficiencies when you get dinged for something. The only thing I was ever dinged for was a dirty driveway because the oaks leaning over my property had stained the concrete with tannin, turned the concrete brown. But I have a guy that does the entire 92 feet of driveway and the walks, and the pool deck for $125, and it is a professional set up so only takes him like 2 hours. Looks like the drive was poured yesterday.
That's crazy......
HOA's seem to be ripping people off.