Curated News
By: NewsRamp Editorial Staff
September 30, 2026
Condo Owners Face Special Assessments After Florida Reserve Deadline
TLDR
- Perez Mayoral helps South Florida condo owners challenge improper special assessments and reserve fund misuse to gain a legal advantage.
- Florida laws SB 4-D and HB 913 require milestone inspections and reserve studies, allowing boards to fund reserves via assessments or loans.
- Perez Mayoral defends owners against unfair condo assessments, ensuring justice and safer communities after the Surfside tragedy.
- After the Surfside collapse, Florida condo owners face huge special assessments, but a Coral Gables law firm says some charges are challengeable.
Impact - Why it Matters
The end of Florida’s extended reserve study deadline is hitting individual condo owners directly, with large special assessments arriving across South Florida. For owners in older buildings, especially in areas like Coral Gables, the financial stakes are immediate: assessments can run into thousands of dollars per unit, and some may be improperly adopted or based on mismanaged funds. Because boards now have more flexibility to levy assessments or take out loans, owners need to understand their rights under their association’s governing documents. Legal challenges can succeed when associations fail to provide required notice, misuse reserve money, or selectively enforce rules. Knowing these rights early can mean the difference between paying an unlawful charge and fighting it. This news matters because it affects home affordability, property values, and the balance of power between condo owners and the boards that govern them.
Summary
South Florida condominium owners are confronting a wave of special assessments as Florida’s extended deadline for reserve studies passed at the end of 2025. The push follows the 2021 Surfside collapse, which prompted state lawmakers to enact SB 4-D in 2022, requiring older buildings to complete milestone structural inspections and reserve studies. In 2025, HB 913 revised those obligations, extending the reserve study deadline, raising the reserve threshold for covered components, and allowing associations to fund reserves through special assessments, loans, or lines of credit with owner approval. While framed as relief, the law largely gives boards more ways to raise or borrow money, and the cost still falls on owners.
At Perez Mayoral, P.A., a Coral Gables real estate firm that represents owners rather than associations, these bills are generating new questions about what owners can be made to pay and what they can challenge. Older buildings in communities like Coral Gables are especially exposed because years of deferred maintenance are surfacing at once. Not every assessment is proper, and not every board follows the association’s declaration, also known as the governing documents or rules and regulations. Owners may have grounds to push back when their association adopts assessments without required notice or votes, mismanages reserve funds, ignores repairs while charging owners for neglect, or enforces rules selectively. “Some of these charges are legitimate, and some are not,” said Erik A. Perez, co-founder of Perez Mayoral, P.A. “Owners have real rights here, and the earlier they understand them, the more options they have.”
Perez Mayoral, P.A. is a South Florida litigation firm devoted to representing homeowners and unit owners against their associations, never the associations themselves. From multiple office locations throughout the state, it handles association litigation, improper assessments, denied repairs, and real estate disputes statewide. Owners with legal questions are encouraged to reach out and request a consultation with the firm.
Source Statement
This curated news summary relied on content distributed by 24-7 Press Release. Read the original source here, Condo Owners Face Special Assessments After Florida Reserve Deadline
