Posted on 06/27/2021 8:33:55 AM PDT by TheWriterTX
There is a lot of misinformation floating around FR on the Miami condominium collapse. As a high-rise condominium manager, this story hit home. So here is a quick primer to help people combat fake news.
First, this is not an apartment complex. In an apartment complex, an investor or group of investors owns the building and everyone is a transient tenant. It is a for-profit business. If there are major repairs needed, landlords can raise the rents to cover repairs.
This is a condominium. Each unit has a separate owner, they purchase it with a mortgage or cash.
Every month, unit pay assessments to cover the operational expenses of the building (water, electric, maintenance, staff, grounds, pool, portering, systems, etc.). The condominium functions under a non-profit Association.
Each year, the owners have an Annual Meeting to vote for a Board of Directors. The same way we elect representatives to make laws and spending decisions on our behalf, so too does this community.
It is important to note that condominiums and homeowners associations are self-funded. They only have the money that the owners give it. If there is a big, expensive repair needed, and the association does not have enough money set aside to do it, then the Board must call for a special assessment to raise the money. The special assessment is in addition to the regular monthly assessments and must be approved by the owners (usually 67% must vote yes).
If the manager brought this to the board and the board did not move ahead, the liability is now on the board and there is nothing the building manager can do other than resign. If the board brought this issue to the communuty and the owners did not vote to approve, there is nothing the building manager could do other than resign. The liability falls back on the individual owners for refusing to fix it.
Approximately 2.5 years ago, the building had a structural engineer evaluate spalling, cracking in the underground parking garage, and building envelope issues. The report warned then that major repairs were needed and that structural integrity was compromised.
The building manager should have recommended and the board should have voted to approve having the engineering firm create a scope and then gone out to bid ASAP while calling for a massive special assessment. If they did not, they are in trouble.
Another issue that was impacting this building was land movement. Parts of the building were shifting at different degrees. All of these were putting stressors on the building envelope, as evidenced by external cracks and lawsuits for water intrusion.
So, the long and short is this:
1. There were warning signs the building was in trouble.
2. There were engineer reports the building was in trouble.
3. This was not some McAfee conspiracy theory controlled demo false flag event.
4. If the manager raised the alarm and the board/community did nothing, the manager is not liable.
5. If the board raised the alarm and the owners did nothing, the owners are liable to each other. Let the lawsuit party begin.
6. Buildings are evaluated every 40 years by law. Annual building inspections typically only deal with fire life safety equipment, boikers, chillers, elebators and other components, not structural. That may change in light of this event.
7. People blaming DeSantis are delusional. Give them a dime and tell them to buy a clue.
yes, I believe the insurance company will be very reluctant to pay any damages for the building itself.
“Did ANYONE have an obligation to report the problems to the city (like maybe the engineer)?”
Good question. Can anyone who is a Florida Licensed Professional Engineer speak to this? Common sense would suggest that if a structural engineer found items that threatened collapse, that the engineer would copy his report to the Chief Building Official, for CYA if nothing else.
In the unconfirmed story category — a youtube news report claims a structural repair project was about to begin. Give the complexity of what likely went wrong here, it is believable that it would take years from observing the external signs to a deeper investigation, to designing a feasible repair concept, to getting it developed and approved, to bidding, contracting and performing the repairs — with additional time added to get the condo owners to agree and put up the money. The building should have been evacuated long ago. That idea was probably not received happily by the owners.
In Broward and Dade county, I cannot recall even one apartment building going up on the coast in the 1970s-1980s.
100% hotels and condos.
Yet to be considered; should any multi-story building be allowed in areas with this type of soil? No matter how many pilings or how wide, or how securely sealed, etc., the end result is building on top of concrete or steel sticks in messy soil subject to weathering and erosion. Any disturbance is going to result in wider damage and require wider remediation.
Sounds logical, Florida has been a domicile destination for Americans everywhere for decades.
You can’t keep collecting management fees when you know there’s a structural problem. Period.
I saw live aerial shots of the damage at sunrise.
The pool was still there, with water in it, but the patio area between the pool and a small ground floor parking area had collapsed.
There was a two or three level underground parking garage below the residential section that collapsed.
The section that collapsed was about 100 feet north of the pool.
The condo was a “sinker.” It was a very big sinker, but no different than the thousands of other homes that are built each year. The special assessment could have cost the condo owners a million dollars to remedy. The HOA fees would then skyrocket and the value of the condo units would plummet. It may not have been economically feasible to remedy. Building on sand always presents challenges. As a child I would ask my father why no one lived in an abandoned house? His answer was simple, ”it’s a sinker.”
And you can’t keep collecting management fees when there’s no building...
“Concrete and rebar dont like salt”
Good point - salt increases the fun at least 10-fold.
The pool area was built OVER the parking garage there had been many structural problems with the pool area, this is what caused the entire to fail!! There is ONE bearing wall that seems to have saved the rest of the structure from toppling that bearing wall is right where the break is!! I went to a site that has pictures of the damage under the pool in the parking garage looks like bearing bandaids were put there but the damage there was NOT GOOD!!
Wrong.
A manager only can do what they are authorized to do by the Board, the documents, or statute. Period.
Management is a multifaceted bundle of services and no one knows how hard the manager may have been pushing to get this work done.
Me, I would have left the building or terminated the contract.
This is one excellent post. Thank you.
Thanks for the info. I was most curious about #6. I presumed that the state had some schedule for structural inspection and that schedule was almost certainly not annual or even bi-annual. But, 40-yaers? That seems...insufficient particularly for a building smack-dab in the middle of a hurricane zone.
I’m also curious if there is any obligation on the part of the inspector who discovered the problems with building movement and basement concrete issues to report the findings to the municipal inspection/regulatory authority in spite of the building not being outside the 40-yaer window.
If not, that may change as well.
Thank you for the post.
A number of different local/state and federal agencies on site have ready access to handheld bomb residue detectors. These detectors were surely used the very first night, and their use has likely continued during the search & rescue the excavation. If there were any any indications of HE residue, excavation would have been halted, at least temporarily, and the ATF would have taken over and assessed how/if to move forward with the search & recovery.
Yes, exactly.
In a world where people presume things happen instantly, a major structural repair such as this would have taken years to identify, plan, fund, and execute.
Sorta exactly my point. Rather than being solely a liability issue for condo owners, ultimately I believe that this will fall squarely at the feet of a county which refused to follow DeSantis on relinquishing lockdowns.
In particular, rather than DeSantis, the person at whose feet this lands is Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a name which should be national news by now...a Yale ‘educated’, democratic sycophant solidly opposed to DeSantis and Trump.
Some odd 150 people died on HER watch (Miami-Dade County should have been back to normal LONG ago) but nobody is yet asking THOSE questions...
(Biden was in FL mere days ago, and what did he & Cava discuss? ‘Gun violence’...gotta have those priorities, right??? /s Cava hooked up with NPR to discuss the tragedy, and NPR’s Steve Inskeep let Mayor Cava voice her ‘concerns’ and in mere moments steered the interview to...the prior day’s Biden visit and...
- drumroll -
...’gun violence’, about which they spoke longer than of the tragic loss of life in the collapse.
Again: Priorities. /s
They will be sued regardless of how they voted, if only to get a settlement. One theory that for sure will be advanced is that the property owner had an affirmative obligation to rent only if the property was safe and fit for human habitation.
Which counsel will pretty easily show it was not, given that it fell down into a great heap.
It's been reported on other media that there was in fact a substantial assessment (on the order of 100K per unit), which would have been about $15MM for the building. It's been described as "balcony repair", but that much money sounds more like structural remediation than some cosmetic repairs.
In any event, maintenance was obviously deferred for decades, regardless of what other contributing factors will be found by forensics.
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