The Plight of Florida’s Condo Owners

If there were a Family Feud game where contestants had to think of a word to describe Florida, the word “flat” would probably be somewhere on the leaderboard, behind “hot,” “dangerous,” and “unhinged.” One story buildings are the norm, both in residential and commercial architecture. For kids who grew up in Florida, elevators are as exotic as snow, and stairs exist only at parks and in the most palatial of McMansions. Of its few high-rise buildings, many are condominiums, where residents own their apartments. Florida’s condominium unit owners are a diverse bunch. A few of them are multimillionaires who own property in multiple cities, and they chose condos in Miami instead of, say, private islands off of Florida’s coast either because of budgetary constraints or because they wanted something less conspicuous. Most are of more modest means, though. Some of them are young people who qualified for a mortgage that would buy a one-bedroom condo but not one that would buy a single-family home. Others are retirees who used the proceeds of the sale of their empty nest to buy an affordable condo. Buying a condo is a wise financial choice; you get the stability of home equity without the risk of a huge house with a mortgage payment that leaves you, at best, one minor financial emergency away from foreclosure. Condo owners face their own financial risks, though. If you are struggling to pay the unexpected debts associated with condo ownership, contact a Boca Raton debt lawyer.

If the Homeowners’ Insurance Doesn’t Get You, the Special Assessment Fees Will

The good news is that the mortgage payment on a condo is likely to be much lower than the rent on a similarly sized apartment. Likewise, your mortgage payment will not increase unless you have an adjustable-rate mortgage. Your utilities are included in the condo fee, which also pays for routine maintenance of common areas of the building. The condo fee increases slightly each year as the building ages and needs more maintenance, but the increase is small.

What catches condo owners off guard is homeowners’ insurance. A condo owner pays less than the owner of a free-standing house, because condos have better protection from hurricane damage, but no matter what kind of residence you own, the cost of homeowners’ insurance in Florida is steep.

The other curveball expense that condo unit owners face is special assessment fees. These are fees that condo buildings charge when they must make major repairs, such as replacing all the windows in the building. The News 7 Miami website recently published a story about a retired woman who moved to a condo in Florida, thinking it would be affordable, but the first year that she lived there, she had to pay $53,000 in special assessment fees.

Work With a Debt Lawyer About Condo-Associated Debt

A South Florida debt lawyer can help you get out of the debts you incurred paying special assessment fees for your condo unit.  Contact Nowack & Olson, PLLC in Boca Raton, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

wsvn.com/news/help-me-howard/woman-buys-condo-battles-special-assessments/