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HERE TODAY --- GONE
TOMORROW
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published
May 19, 2014
Although you may not know it, your
condominium could be terminated by a vote of the owners. This
simply means that the provisions of your Declaration of
Condominium would no longer apply and you can in effect be
forced out of the property.
All declarations of condominium contain a
section regarding how the condominium may be terminated.
Generally speaking, those condominiums that were built prior to
2007 have language in them that require as much as a 100% vote
of the owners in order to terminate the condominium. Needless to
say, that is pretty difficult to obtain.
However, in 2007, when the condominium market
really started to bottom out and in an attempt to again help
developers, The Florida Legislature enacted the following new
law:
3)
OPTIONAL TERMINATION.--Except as provided in subsection (2) or
unless the declaration provides for a lower percentage, the
condominium form of ownership of the property may be terminated
pursuant to a plan of termination approved by at least 80
percent of the total voting interests of the condominium if not
more than 10 percent of the total voting interests of the
condominium have rejected the plan of termination by negative
vote or by providing written objections thereto. This subsection
does not apply to condominiums in which 75 percent or more of
the units are timeshare units.
So what does this all mean to you? Well, let
me tell you what I am starting to see. There are some older
properties that are taking up some very prime real estate
locations. Developers are making huge offers to owners to sell
their units. And if that developer is able to get to the magic
80% number, the remaining 20% are gone and out the door,
regardless of whether or not they want to continue to live there
or not, regardless of whether or not they paid their dues and
regardless of whether or not they have lived there their whole
lives.
So how much do you get if you’re forced out?
The “plan of termination” that gets filed in the County where
the property is located can simply require that you get paid the
fair market value of your property as determined by the current
value given to the property by the County Appraiser’s Office. As
we know, those values are often very low.
I’ll leave it to Jan to tell you how this all
happened. Just now that the term “the comfort and safety” of
your own home may be a fallacy if an eager beaver developer
comes knocking on the doors of all your neighbors.
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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 is currently entering his 20th year as a
Florida
lawyer practicing |
community association law and is the owner of
Glazer and Associates, P.A. an eight attorney law firm in
Orlando
and Hollywood. For the past two years 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 7,500 Floridians. He is certified as a
Circuit Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has
mediated dozens of disputes between associations and unit
owners. Finally, he recently argued the Cohn v. Grand
Condominium case before The Florida Supreme Court, which is
perhaps the single most important association law case decided
by the court in a decade.
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