Grandparents owned one where the board deferred thousands in repairs until it became hundreds of thousands.
Transparency is one part, but also independent oversight and enforcement of the work necessary.
With the current system, the condo board decides that repairs are needed, assesses fees, and makes the repairs. The fees are either paid immediately by the condo owners, or the HOA puts a lien on the condo. Local laws require larger buildings to be inspected on some scehdule... in New York I think there's a type of inspection (FSPM: fire safety and property maintenance) that is required every three years, for all multi-tenant residential buildings.
From what I can tell, the big problem is that the condo board is just made up of people who own the condos, and the bylaws of individual HOAs require certain actions by the condo board to be approved by the owners.
The other problem is that Florida has weaker laws for condos than other states.
The condo board is already required to perform repairs to keep the building up to code.
A collapsed condo building disagrees.
That's a really cutesy way of putting it.
My take on this is that the building codes in Florida are perhaps too lax, although I'm not an expert on building codes. From the reports I've been reading, the relevant inspections were to be done on a 40-year interval, and the building lasted less than 40 years (so its first inspection, in service, was never conducted).
This, to me, indicates that if the building was ever up to code, the code was too lax. If the maintenance was done to code, then the code was too lax.
You need an independent party that can force life safety repairs when necessary (which, in this most recent case, should’ve been Surfside’s building dept), and longer term, some development will likely be entirely off limits due to financial unsustainability (as you elude to).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matr...
- Long term problems can outlast the tenure of any board member.
- Board members are volunteering. What sort of "accountability" is appropriate?
Can you pin millions in liability on whichever unit owner threw their hat into an election in the year preceding some terrible outcome? Why would anyone be a board member then?
Even setting aside the issue of incentives in the short term versus long term, by the time leaders and voters will be gone, the voters are usually not willing to pay higher taxes or condo fees, nor are they even in a position to properly evaluate and prioritize problems.
And the contractor building the place knows it...