Despite Gov. Ron DeSantis' promise that Florida's pricey new condo laws would be addressed by the end of the year, legislative leaders announced Tuesday that they won't tackle the issue until the regular session in March.
This means there won't be a condo-focused special session like Gov. DeSantis asked for.
"I have heard the call for a special session on condos just like the rest of us have," House Speaker Danny Perez (R-Miami) told reporters Tuesday morning, speaking minutes after he and a slew of other members were sworn in. "The question shouldn't be when, it should be what—what is the solution that people are offering to the issue of condos?"
Perez pointed to the million-dollar question: how can Florida ensure the safety of its 1.5 million condominiums—almost 90% of which are over 30 years old—while preventing residents from fronting the costs of routine security checks and special assessments, requirements passed after the quietly deficient Champlain Towers in Surfside collapsed and killed 98 people?
"It's an issue we will be discussing during the session," he continued, noting that solutions will be considered in the coming committee weeks and hopefully reached during the 2025 session. "[People are] very quick to pull the trigger on saying special session, but we should think about what is the topic and the solutions that we're trying to solve in that session."
New Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula) agreed, telling reporters Tuesday that while he agrees with the governor's "sense of urgency," revised condo laws are a "very complex issue" that will be taken up in the regular session.
That's not what DeSantis wanted.
After Champlain Towers suddenly crumpled in on itself in June 2021, the Legislature passed a series of laws requiring condominium associations to enact various security protocols. This includes a Jan. 1, 2025, deadline for engineers to inspect the buildings and provide an estimate of repair costs.
But condo owners are the ones burdened by those costs. Many have had their monthly fees and insurance costs skyrocketed since the safety laws were passed, with some in areas of Miami-Dade paying special assessments as high as $400,000. Other condo owners have been forced to sell their units due to high assessments compounded by staggering insurance rates, which have risen 102 percent in the last three years.
The dire situation led DeSantis to host two roundtables with various leaders and condo owners to hear out potential solutions, causing him to eventually pressure the Legislature for a special session before New Year's Day.
"This will be something that I'm making clear now: it's not going to be able to be pushed off," DeSantis said in September promising, "We're not gonna punt this till next year," and insisting that most of the legislators he's spoken to "want to do something by the end of the year."
A strong advocate for reforming condo laws, new Senate Minority Leader Jason Pizzo (D-Hollywood), told reporters Tuesday that he and Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R-Bradford) will be hosting a peer-review-style "large summit" with engineers, property managers, architects, attorneys, and other condo-involved stakeholders on Dec. 3 at Davie's FAU campus to speak on the crisis.
"Everybody's gonna get in a room, we're gonna hash it out with peer review and be able to move forward," Pizzo said.
