Condos Are in Uncharted Territory

that warned of “major structural damage” to be dealt with in the “near future” does not ring any bells for most apartment owners. But the foot-dragging that followed that report, as the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association struggled to rally owners to pony up for a $15 million repair project? That speaks to a fundamental failure of condo governance—deferred maintenance and trouble raising money—that goes far beyond South Florida.

“Essentially what we’ve done is take some very sophisticated infrastructure and handed it off to laypeople, most of whom have no experience with maintaining it or determining the condition of it,” said Tyler Berding, a California lawyer whose firm works with hundreds of homeowners associations. The condo board is charged both with committing to repair work and raising the money to pay for it, often against the wishes of skeptical, penny-pinching neighbors.

“What happened in Florida is a rarity,” Berding said. “Or at least it has been up till now. The kind of legal structure that makes up a condominium … there just hasn’t been a lot of experience past the 40- or 50-year point.” We’re in uncharted territory because the condo is a relatively recent invention. The idea arrived in the states via the 1961 National Housing Act to encourage affordable homeownership in multifamily buildings, and every state quickly approved the concept. By the ’70s and ’80s, the country was routinely building more than 100,000 condos or co-op units every year. More than 10 million Americans live in condos or co-ops, run by more than 120,000 associations. Florida now has more than 1.

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