Page 10 - CooperatorNewsSouth FLorida 2021

then lost, depending on the contours of the
management agreement, this could con-
stitute a breach of contract or negligence.
We do see cases wherein managers did not
keep records to the extent that they were
supposed to, and that absolutely can lead
to breach of contract or negligence. At that
point, you can go to court to force them to
turn over information, but if they had never
kept it in the first place, then you have to
recreate it. The condo documents will be
recorded at the registry, so you have to go
and pull those offline. You’ll know what
bank was used, so you’ll be able to regain
some financial records. But you’ll have a lot
of things still missing: general ledgers for
unit owners, vendor information... There
are many pieces you’d have to put togeth-
er, which would be really tough for a new
management company, and even worse for
an association attempting to self-manage.”
(Avoiding) Anger (via) Management
While all of this may sound daunting to
an inexperienced board, it should be par for
the course for an effective manager. In fact,
many managerial companies now utilize
various digital apps and services that can
help streamline record-keeping in a way
that allows boards to access pertinent infor-
mation with a few simple clicks.
Bonita Vandall, vice president of man-
agement services with The Vanguard Man-
agement Group, Inc. in Tampa, Florida,
discusses how her company navigates the
digital landscape:
“We consider ourselves to be mostly pa-
perless, and as such store all of the docu-
ments for our communities in an eBridge
filing system. We honestly do not even have
physical filing cabinets in our offices. Ev-
erything from lease and sale applications, to
drivers’ licenses, to social security numbers,
we save in the eBridge, and we consider that
to be quite secure.
“In Florida, statutes 718, 719, and 720
dictate what can be saved and discarded
and in what time frame. We provide this
information to our boards to allow them to
get rid of any old records they want to—and
can legally—discard.
“If an association were to sever ties with
us for whatever reason, we would provide
them or their new management company
with a flash drive of all official records. If
a board changes over, we hold board ori-
entation classes to go over the documents,
policies, and statutes governing their com-
munities.”
Whether an association prefers an ex-
tensive digital catalog of records—like the
eBridge interface used by Vanguard—or
something more old-fashioned, the hard-
ships and headaches that can ensue when a
board FAILS to adequately maintain its files
are extensive. Properly collecting, storing,
and passing along data are imperative to an
association’s functionality; it is not an area
where costs should be cut, whenever pos-
sible.
n
Mike Odenthal is a regular contributor to
CooperatorNews.
10 COOPERATORNEWS SOUTH FLORIDA
—FALL 2021
SOFL.COOPERATORNEWS.COM
KEEPING AN...
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40-YEAR ...
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due. At that point, the property owner will
have 90 days to find a structural engineer
to complete an inspection of the building
and submit a report to either the city or the
county. The report will indicate what parts
of the building (if any) need to be repaired
or replaced. The property owner will then
have another 180 days to complete the nec-
essary repair work. Following the complet-
ed repairs, the structural engineer will then
prepare another report verifying that the
initial findings have been remedied.
Buildings on or near the ocean are es-
pecially vulnerable because they are con-
stantly exposed to the increased effects of
saltwater oxidation and corrosion, as well
as minor concrete and masonry cracks.
Stucco left exposed to the elements can
cause rebar to expand up to seven times
its original size, exerting a force of 10,000
pounds per square-inch (PSI). This condi-
tion—commonly referred to as spalling—
can necessitate extremely expensive con-
crete restoration. Hundreds of thousands
of dollars can be saved in building repair
costs alone by following a regular mainte-
nance schedule, applying early detection
methods, and practicing aggressive preven-
tion techniques.
Failure to submit the required recer-
tification report will result in the issu-
ance of a Civil Violation Notice or ticket
without further notice to your board or
management, and referral of this matter
to the Unsafe Structures Unit for the ini-
tiation of condemnation proceedings. You
may be liable for payment of a fine up to
$10,510—and in addition, you must pay all
enforcement costs incurred by the depart-
ment once unsafe structures enforcement
proceedings commence. Even more alarm-
ing, upon issuance of an unsafe structure
Notice of Violation, the building must be
vacated, and you may ultimately have to
demolish the building.
In the case of the 40-year Building Safe-
ty Inspection Program, no news does not
necessarily mean good news. Even if you
have not yet received a Notice of Required
Inspection by the code compliance depart-
ment of your county or city, it is the prop-
erty owner’s responsibility to acquire the
initial 40- or 50-year recertification and to
recertify the building every 10 years there-
after.
If you want to verify the age of your
building, your town or city should have a
folio number for your building that will
provide this information. If your build-
ing is not 40 years old, you are not legally
required to do anything. Historically, the
Property Appraiser’s Office transmitted
the building age information via a “prop-
erty record card.” A property record card
was produced annually for each property
making up the local tax roll. Prior to the
advent of electronic data, the property ap-
praiser’s office would literally deliver a box
of property record cards to each municipal-
ity annually. Sometime in the early 1970s,
the information on the hard copy property
record cards was transferred into a com-
puterized records system called the Virtual
Storage Access Method (VSAM), which
generated an annual property record card
that included the year a given structure was
built. Building officials could then request a
special report of buildings in their jurisdic-
tions that were of a certain age. However,
even if this specific information was not
requested, each municipality would have
building age information by virtue of them
receiving a copy of the tax roll every year.
The property appraiser’s office considers
the Certificate of Occupancy status of new-
ly constructed buildings, as this signals that
the value of the structure (as distinguished
from the land) be added to the tax rolls.
However, while the recertification certifies
that a building is safe for continued occu-
pancy, that status is not relevant to the of-
ficial record-keeping responsibilities of the
property appraiser’s office. While the lack
of “year built” information on a property
record card may have affected the City’s
notification to the County since the early
1980s that a recertification inspection was
due, building owners are still responsible
for complying with the safety inspection
program.
An owner’s or association’s approach
to preventative maintenance and to fore-
casting capital improvement costs is of
paramount importance in prolonging the
useful life of the infrastructure and critical
building components.
n
Barney Weinkle is a Managing Direc-
tor of AKAM Living Services, Inc. based in
Miami. He may be reached at: bweinkle@
akam.com
discount on some of your association’s larg-
er projects. Just be careful when updating
your reserve plan, as discounts available
now will likely not be repeatable in future
years.
Final Thoughts
No matter what your association’s cur-
rent situation, the fact remains that robust,
well managed reserves are a crucial com-
ponent to its long-term financial solvency
and physical integrity. So gather informa-
tion. Confer with your legal counsel. While
documenting your process, conserve re-
serve cash by prioritizing and only spend-
ing where the projects have true merit,
reallocate cash going into the reserves or
al amount. I called and wrote to the water
company and the HOA on the same letter,
so that both parties would receive the same
information. The water company respond-
ed and said it found out that someone had
tampered with the water meter governing
the irrigation. The HOA said it does not do
the irrigation, but the yearly budget shows
that it has.
I never once said I would not pay—I just
wanted a corrected coupon book. To this
day, I have been sued, and forced to either
pay attorney’s fees or have my home sold
at auction.
—Extricating Myself
from This Dilemma
A
“Unlike a bank foreclosure,”
says attorney Donna Berger
of Becker & Poliakoff, which
has offices throughout Florida, “there are
very few defenses to an association’s fore-
closure action, but proof of payment is a
solid defense. If an association or manage-
ment company has failed to properly credit
an owner’s account for sums paid timely,
then that mistake may be raised as a de-
fense to the foreclosure action. Unfortu-
nately, once a file is transferred to an attor-
ney’s office, attorney’s fees and costs will be
added to the ledger along with any interest
and late fees which have been accruing. It is
advisable to respond immediately to a late
notice, and certainly continuing to pay is
the only course of action an owner can fol-
low to avoid foreclosure. Whenever there
are monetary disputes, the ‘delinquent’
owner must realize that paying some but
not all of the amounts being demanded
will only result in the file moving forward
to foreclosure. It is important to speak to
Q&A
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TAPPING RESERVES...
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already in them (remember to create a re-
payment plan), or save cash by negotiating
with vendors to get some reserve projects
done now. No matter what route you take,
make decisions that are in good faith, in the
best interests of the association, and after
investigating your options. It may turn out
that one of those options may be a new and
valuable use of reserves.
n
Robert Nordlund is founder and CEO of
Association Reserves (www.ReserveStudy.
com), and a registered professional engineer.
He was involved in creating the 1998 Na-
tional Reserve Study Standards and is a past
chairman of Community Associations In-
stitute’s (CAI’s) Reserve Professionals Com-
mittee, past chairman of the Association
of Professional Reserve Analysts, and past
president of the CAI Greater Los Angeles
Chapter. He regularly writes on the topic of
reserve studies and is a frequent speaker in
industry-sponsored seminars and presenta-
tions throughout the United States.
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