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CONDO OWNERS – YOU SHOULD BE OUTRAGED
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published April 13, 2015
We often times blog about how a Board member or a manager
stole a few thousand dollars from the association and how they
should be prosecuted for it.
If someone should be prosecuted for stealing a few
thousand dollars, what should happen to the people that steal 16
million dollars from condo owners over the last five years?
Ask your esteemed
Florida
legislators, because it’s them that stole your money.
Florida Statute 718.501 reads as follows:
Each
condominium association which operates more than two units shall
pay to the division an annual fee in the amount of $4 for each
residential unit in condominiums operated by the association. If
the fee is not paid by March 1, the association shall be
assessed a penalty of 10 percent of the amount due, and the
association will not have standing to maintain or defend any
action in the courts of this state until the amount due, plus
any penalty, is paid.
All
fees shall be deposited in the Division of
Florida
Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes Trust Fund as
provided by law.
As
all of you know, the fees collected from each of you are placed
into this Trust Fund, and must be used to help administer the
Division of Condominiums, Timeshares and Mobile Homes.
The monies should be spent on resources, arbitrators,
investigators, staff, educational materials, seminars and more.
Despite
the fact that these monies are allocated to the DBPR each and
every year, it is not getting spent in its entirety and each
year there is a huge surplus of a few million dollars.
Instead of reducing or suspending the collection of these
fees from condominium unit owners, or returning your money to
you, The Florida Legislature has a better idea……..JUST KEEP
IT AND SWEEP THESE FUNDS INTO THE GENERAL REVENUE FUND.
That’s
right. Condo owners
are in effect paying monies to the state that were supposed to
be spent on them. The
funds are not being spent on them and instead are going to
whatever else the state wants to allocate those funds to.
I
guess in all fairness, it was time for condo owners to take a
punch too. After
all, The Florida Legislature won’t provide any protection for
HOA owners and took away developer warranties from HOAs.
Now at least everyone is getting beat up a little bit.
It’s not enough that The Florida Legislature lets banks
and “bulk” buyers who are really “developers” ride
roughshod over condominiums in every county of our state.
Now, they are taking it further and actually reaching
into your pockets, taking your money and spending your money on
someone other than you even though the law requires that they
spend it on you.
How
about this? If
you’re outraged and want this theft to stop, respond to this
e-mail and demand that it stops.
If we get a lot of responses, I’ll submit it to The
Florida Legislature and keep the fight going.
If we don’t get responses, you apparently don’t care
much about getting stolen from and feel free to leave your
credit card information and bank account numbers below for all
to see.
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About
HOA & Condo Blog
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Eric
Glazer graduated from the University of Miami School of
Law in 1992 after receiving a B.A. from NYU. He has
practiced community
association
law for more than 2
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decades
and is the owner of Glazer and Associates, P.A. a seven eight
attorney law firm with offices in Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and
Naples.
The
firm also has satellite offices in Tampa and Fort Myers.
Since 2009, Eric has been the host of Condo Craze and
HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show on 850 WFTL.
See:
www.condocrazeandhoas.com.
He
is the first attorney in the State of Florida that designed a
course that certifies condominium residents as eligible to serve
on a condominium Board of Directors and has now certified more
than 8,000 Floridians all across the state. He is certified as a
Circuit Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has
mediated dozens of disputes between associations and unit
owners. Eric also devotes significant time to advancing
legislation in the best interest of Florida community
association members.
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