With Florida homeowners soon facing costly repairs after the collapse of the Surfside apartment complex, Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed a solution to avert a catastrophic real estate crisis.
Champlain Tower South in the Miami suburb of Surfside collapsed in 2021, killing 98 people. The disaster prompted state lawmakers to pass legislation in May 2022 that would require all three-story buildings plus apartments that are 30 years or older to undergo an inspection by a qualified architect or engineer.
If ‘significant structural decline‘ is found, the owner of the apartment is responsible for the repairs and must come up with significant amounts of money within a year to repair his property.
Devastated residents of the Mariners Bay Condos in North Miami left last summer to avoid paying $100,000 in fees associated with the new law, CBS reported.
Thousands of remaining homeowners are also trying to avoid the looming December 31 deadline, with some offering their homes for sale at 40 percent off. One expert is calling it “a mass exodus caused by fear.”
DeSantis now wants to put an end to this panic selling by offering a low- or no-interest loan program for people struggling with high repair costs. Newsweek reported.
Pictured: The aftermath of the 2021 Surfside apartment complex collapse, a disaster that killed 98 people
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is proposing a low- or no-interest loan program to help apartment owners forced to pay for costly repairs under new law
“I think there are a number of things that need to happen,” DeSantis said this month during a Miami Lakes roundtable. “I don’t know that any fix is going to prevent something from happening. [another] ‘Surfside, that’s just the reality.’
He continued: ‘Why would we want to force people to choose to leave based on repairs that may need to be done, but may not be done right now, or that can be done over a longer period of time so you can better recover the costs?’
DailyMail.com has reached out to the governor’s office for comment on his plans.
At the same meeting, DeSantis said he “doesn’t want to see people kicked out of a unit because they have a devastating rating.”
“The bottom line is we want Floridians to have a safe but affordable place to live. And we have a case here where we need to provide some assistance,” he said.
DeSantis held another round table discussion Thursday morning with apartment owners in Pinellas County and expressed his earlier sentiments.
Experts say a state-run relief program is needed, especially since some 360,000 homeowners in South Florida alone (land of the apartment building boom) may not be able to afford the repairs that the new law would entail.
This comes at a time when residents are already dealing with a double whammy: sky-high homeowners’ association fees and exorbitant insurance premiums, a result of the increased number of natural disasters over the past decade.
A two-bedroom apartment in this high-rise building in Saint Petersburg, Florida, has dropped from $1.2 million to $715,000 amid a massive fire sale
ISG World reported that there were 20,293 condos for sale in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade in the second quarter of this year (pictured: Fort Lauderdale in Broward County)
Kupchan, a broker for One Sotheby’s International Realty, told DailyMail.com this month that he believes the Florida housing market is in serious danger.
“In the worst case, many homeowners associations could go bankrupt because they can no longer afford the costs of necessary repairs and maintenance,” Kuplan said.
According to ISG World, there were 20,293 condos for sale in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade in the second quarter of this year, up from 8,353 in 2023.
Stephanie Berman-Eisenberg, president and CEO of Carrfour Supportive Housing, praised DeSantis for recognizing the severity of the problem but also stressed that any potential solution must be implemented quickly.
“Governor DeSantis has rightly recognized the urgency of addressing Florida’s growing condominium crisis. But action is urgent because without help, some residents could be displaced or priced out of their homes,” Berman-Eisenberg told Newsweek.
Berman-Eisenberg The affordable housing crisis is especially pronounced in Miami, one of the highest cost-of-living areas in the country
DeSantis won’t be able to address the housing crisis by the end of December without the blessing of State Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (pictured). So far, she has resisted calls to reconvene the Legislature to amend the new condo law.
She added that the affordable housing crisis is especially acute in Miami, one of the areas in the country with the highest cost of living.
“Miami alone has a severe shortage of affordable housing, and additional financial pressure from mandatory appraisals and repairs could exacerbate the housing crisis,” she said.
However, DeSantis is running into a major problem.
Because the Legislature is not in session and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo has refused to reconvene the session until March of next year, he cannot amend the state’s apartment complex law until the end of December.
“This is not something that we can put off until March or April of next year,” DeSantis said. “I think there are a lot of deadlines coming up and we need to have a plan to keep people in their units if they want to.”