inside the building Nicolas beo one of the unit owners waiting for us he was packing his belongings he has to be out of the unit he owns tomorrow my property is not for sale I never put my property on the market I came to this apartment in my wedding dress with my husband got it married in downtown I made my children in this unit and I wanted to come and retire here it's heart-wrenching because if they can take that they can take anything magic coming home one day to your condo you own a condo in South Florida you've been in this condo for 30 years you paid $170 ,000 for a long long time ago you've loved this home where you get to watch the sunrise every single day one day just one day you come home and you notice that all the lights are off in the building that the lobby itself is dark that the elevators don't work so you're 65 and you decide hey I'm going to hike the stairs up 20 floors to my place and after you've arrived home after getting over the creepiness of walking down a long hallway to your property completely dark that it sets into you that you may actually be forced out of your home my friends there's a saga unfolding in the condo Market in Florida honestly and I'm not an attorney but looking at it this looks perfectly legal but my friends this phenomenon is going to start unfolding all across the state as many homeowners come to reckon with a massively shifting condo Market that stems from outlandish hidden cost which people across the state can no longer afford mixed with surprise assessments that are landing on owners out of nowhere some of which you'll see are hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit where people that in years past bought these properties for much less than they're selling for today get pushed into a situation where they can no longer afford it and now you're seeing an opportunistic investor that's now coming in and doing the unthinkable buying off enough owners where they can control the association and then in term dissolve it and shut the building down on top of those holdouts that resist selling to the investor in the first place my friends sometimes I have to tell stories just to be Sensational but this particular story absolutely terrifies me and if you own an older condo in Florida now or you're thinking about buying one or you're just interested in knowing what's going on in this particular crisis segment I'm going to walk you through how we got here at a massive new segment of victims that need to watch out for what is happening in this particular Marketplace and my friends if you appreciate the research jump down smash the like button it help the video and it means a lot to me for you doing it and if you like all things real estate consider subscribing to the channel so you don't miss out on my next video record high mortgage levels are starting to take their toll the mortgage rate is at 14 and 3/4% ask not what the great reset can do for you ask what you can do for the great reset so how do we get here number one we have a crisis unfolding and number two like any crisis there becomes opportunistic people who want to take advantage of a crisis situation and owners who are struggling within it so in Florida you have 100 100% more condos on the market than a year ago to give you context we have so much Supply on the market in the condominium Market it's a number that we haven't seen in 13 years we're talking numbers at the tail end of the GFC when there was an enormous amount of inventory yes it's piling up again now it's not a heads scratcher as to why number one there's massive high hidden cost of ownership a lot of condos are built on beautiful land Froning water and those are obviously at high risk of storms they tend to have high cost to Ure now Insurance on its own is very costly all around Florida no matter where you are it's even higher when a building or a home you live in are trying to ensure is that higher risk of wind or flood damage which a lot of condos are couple that with the fact that flota has one of the highest Shadow inventory numbers meaning we have a very high number of discretionary owned condos meaning this isn't people's primary home this is a second home this is high mounting cost on top of a place that they own somewhere in Connecticut or Washington or Michigan Ohio wherever this is not their main spot additional to insurance when you have a second home and prices make a massive runup like they have in the past few years particularly in the Southeast your property taxes shot through the roof there are stories all over of people's property taxes doubl in tripling as an example a condo owner from 5 years ago might have only had to pay $2 $3,000 a year in taxes those taxes now are probably 7 to $122,000 per year the cherry on top of all of this and what's really precipitating one of the biggest crisis in Florida real estate state is the high cost that older condo owners face in the face of new laws that were recently passed to prevent another condo Tower falling and killing people like recently happened a few years back in Miami this article goes on to talk about that increased insurance premiums even before these buildings having to cover the high cost of new maintenance related to new bills to make sure their condos don't collapse they already had massive sweeping insurance premiums that jacked up the h showa fees cost of Maintenance inflation of all kinds this man Howard has mentioned he's a condo owner of a Ventura Florida living out this nightmare he was interviewed by local 10 news says that his condo fees have jumped from ,500 to $33,000 a month then then he was hit with an assessment of $224,000 meaning that the $3,000 a month he's already paying they're going to divide this 224 Grand up over series of months and order that to be paid on top of it and a reminder it's an HOA it's tied to your deed the collection of which results in foreclosure if you do not pay or cannot pay another article this is just outrageous South Florida cond doors are dumping their homes after getting slapped with six figure assessments and again an assessment is a collective Bill the HOA then says hey you got to pay this lump sum you've got to catch it up on top top of your existing maintenance fees that you've already been paying the story continues Marie and her husband shelled out $490,000 for a 7th floor apartment with a Terrace and a balcony boasting incredible views of South Florida's biscan Bay in 2022 the couple then coughed up an additional 100 Grand to renovate their unit in the Cricut Club condam Tower installing beautiful Italian porcelain tile and marble and so on so forth two years later the couple got hit with a special assessment of over 600,000 it goes on to talk about the Surfside condo tragedy that killed 98 people which created new bills which forced the Cricket Club to recently propos a $30 million special assessment so the Cricket Club has to cover all the cost of the roofing the waterproofing the wind preparation all the things this building needs maybe some architectural work like the architect comes in and says hey this building will collapse like Sunrise did if you do not put new whatever steel beams whatever the securing items are but that is a $30 million bill for the old Cricket Club which then comes out to $134,000 on top of what these folks just paid when they bought in in 2021 and this story is phenomenal on its own no matter if you're talking about a person who bought their place 30 years ago for next to nothing or they bought it in 2021 like these people that paid almost 500k put another another 100 in then surpris their HOA Bill probably went up before the $130,000 assessment it's just Insanity that is crushing these people to the degree they're having to put these into the market and makes them highly motivated to sell it so long story short even people with paid off condos are having a Cascade of expenses that are crushing them and in turn they are putting these properties on the market now being specific this is radically hitting buildings that are higher than three stories and older than 30 years old or approaching that age and you may become surprised to know that's a lot of buildings Miami for instance has nearly 70% of all of its sales comes from a condominium or town home development it is a huge factor for their marketplace now stepping back you see the dynamic you have a percentage of these condo owners that are desperate to sell tons of them are hitting the market inventory is stacking up it's taking them longer and longer to sell while expenses are crushing them you also have to understand that in reality if a home home owner cannot pay their HOA bill this new assessment that could be a 100 Grand the HOA May then require them to pay that 100 Grand at $1,000 per month or two grand per month which might be a doubling or tripling of what they were paying before you have to understand that the HOA can then foreclose on that person for not paying their HOA bills we already know the state's not going to wait for you to pay their bill for property tax but it needs to be understood that if people go behind on all these high costs for these buildings they become extremely motivated to sell simply put what these investors are doing are swooping in hoping to buy enough properties in a building in order to dissolve it and demolish the building sounds crazy it's happening I'm going to show you case evidence right now take a look at a specific case covered by The Wall Street Journal a lady named Angelica Aila never wanted to sell her condo overlooking biscane Bay now this is in the Miami area she liked to watch the sunrise each morning from her balcony an investor comes in and then offers her nearly $700,000 which is more than triple what she paid when she bought the place 30 years prior but she rejected the offer as I told you in the opener the developer then acquired enough units to take control of the building and then terminated the condo association Paving the way for its demolition now the next step the investor then forces her out by a threat of turning off all services of the building including air conditioners elevators security and obviously maintenance and all kinds of other things forcing a v basically to move out and rent a room in a house further Inland now on top of that The Story Goes that she herself had to get a storage locker to hold her clothes and her personal belongings because the room that she leased out nearby was too small obviously to contain her personal items and think this through she doesn't sell her place she gets kicked out she starts renting a room she then has to hire an attorney so what's happened recently now because here's my understanding of this process is is that all of these buildings are governed by documentation all of the buildings have clear written rules about what can be done and can't be done with their Association in all likelihood an investor walks up is lawyered to the gills reviews all of this knows full well they can take an overriding authority to then crush the association and run out the holdouts eventually they know that this is a legal process that they can do up front they're not going in with some preconceived notion that hey we might need a plan B in case there's like five people we can't get rid of they know how this game will unfold but it just so happens that a court so far has upheld the right of the remaining owners to keep their place so this is Prime Property in in South Florida they are two of the owners who filed the lawsuit in miday in Miami day Court they are suing two roads development the real estate firm that now owns the building unit owners alleg they were manipulated deceived bullied and pressured to sell their units to the developer there is so much pain pain and anguish and attachment this is the letter they received informing them the Building Services would be discontinued Friday but this wasn't their first they had heard they needed to leave residents first learned of that as early as March of this year as you know the building is in need of significant deferred maintenance which precedes TRD bis Gan llc's completed acquisition of the property in December 2022 about 184 units at the property have been successfully vacated with the exception of six remaining units remaining as unlawful inhabitants of the property my property is not for sale I never put my property on the market I came to this apartment in my wedding dress with my husband got married in downtown I made my children in this unit and I wanted to come and retire here the building owner told me quote the last remaining residents of bisin 21 rejected above Market proposals for their units refused our offer to cover Hotel State as they transition from their former homes it's just heart-wrenching because if they can take that they can take anything so so far Angelica and her friends the holdouts have actually won a court case to stall the demolition of this building but the question becomes will the court precedent hold will it be very very hard in the future for investors who welcome the notion of taking some dilapidated building on some Premier spot of land that overlooks an amazing water view with the goal of getting everybody out destroying it and starting over this particular story is at a pivotal moment and we'll just have to see how it shakes out but let's say this is your situation you live in one of these buildings that's super prone to a buyout where a lot of the owners are getting restless and you yourself have no goal or intention of moving what should you do next number one know the law familiarize yourself with your own condo association's laws and also seek legal counsel on this particular situation as it relates to your building number two stay informed join a coalition of other people in your building that might face the same fate and have no intentions of moving regardless of those higher assessments higher taxes and higher insurance and yes all of that includes to attending your condo Association meetings if you're not already make sure you're there and available to help craft possibly some preventive measures to keep this from happening to the building you live in if you're one of the first owners that gets one of these offers assess your finances see if you might be better off taking an offer and moving right away obviously we've seen from recent case they definitely pay more to the earlier units than they do to the later ones this my friends is a crazy twist in an already insane Saga that I honestly did not expect to read but what do you think about it let's continue the conversation in the comments and we'll see you on the next one