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JUST
WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published September 29, 2014
It appears as if the foreclosure crisis is coming to a
close. You made it
through. You
survived. You were
one of the few that paid the mortgage payments each month, paid
your taxes, paid your assessments, paid your insurance and you
were nothing short of a model unit owner.
Sorry…….you still have to go.
A developer wants your property.
Florida
Statute 718.117 provides for termination of a condominium.
The statute was amended in 2007 to now allow 80% of the
owners to agree to terminate by agreeing to a “plan of
termination.” As
long as no more than 10% of the owners oppose the plan of
termination, the condominium will in fact, cease to exist as a
condominium. So,
once the developer owns 80% of all of the units, preventing a
termination of the condominium is very difficult.
But that’s not the worst part.
The
question becomes…..so what does the developer have to pay me
if he wants my unit? The
answer is, the fair market value of the unit as determined by an
appraiser selected by the association or…the value as
determined by the county property appraiser.
Now, we all know that the county property appraiser’s
numbers are typically less than what the property is worth.
But, that’s not the problem either.
Let’s say that you purchased your unit a few years ago,
when prices were high. Let’s
say you paid $200,000.00 and still owe $180,000.00 to the bank.
The fair market value of your property is now only
$120,000.00 so you are upside down.
The developer can force you to accept $120,000.00 as
payment in full. This
would go directly to your mortgage company.
But, even after paying the $120,000.00 to the bank, you
will still owe them $60,000.00.
You now lost your home and still owe the bank a lot of
money.
That
is the current state of the law in
Florida
. It shouldn’t surprise you though.
Statute after statute protects the developers, whether
it’s taking away warranties from HOAs or allowing developers
to retain control over communities, this state is developer
friendly to the extreme.
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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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