‘Surfside changed everything’: 5 years later, Miami condo market hasn’t recovered
Five years ago, Florida’s millions of condo dwellers awoke to a new reality.
The Champlain Towers South building in Surfside had collapsed in the pre-dawn hours of June 24, 2021 — a generational tragedy that claimed 98 lives and forced anyone living in a large condo building to confront an existential question: What if mine’s next?
Such disasters needed to be prevented, and the Florida Legislature’s answer was to require condo associations to complete inspections, calculate what they’d need to save for future repairs, actually save that money rather than defer building up their financial reserves — as many associations had long done — and complete necessary maintenance.
The legislation marked a massive shift in how condos are regulated, making the Surfside collapse “this generation’s Hurricane Andrew,” said local condo market analyst Peter Zalewski, referring to the deadly 1992 hurricane that occasioned an overhaul of Florida’s building codes.
Suddenly, the bill for decades of can-kicking by condo associations on reserve savings and structural repair spending came due — in some cases, in as little as two years.
Condo owners, particularly those in older buildings, quickly felt the impact. The party was over in the Condo Capital of the World, and the economic hangover was beginning to set in.
READ MORE: Trapped by high costs and buyer’s market, South Florida condo owners are hurting
Long a homeownership rite of passage for many Floridians and snowbirds — condos had been an affordable route to homeownership, especially for fixed-income retirees — many people’s homes quickly became all-consuming money pits to be escaped as soon as possible.
“Surfside changed everything,” said Zalewski.
What changed?
Multimillion-dollar special assessments, mandatory reserve spending and dizzying association fees have defined the nauseating last half-decade for many Florida condo owners.
The Legislature passed a landmark bill in 2022 that slapped sweeping requirements on condo buildings that were at least three stories tall. Upon turning 30 — or 25, if within 5 miles of the coast — all such structures were obliged to complete safety inspections.
That applied to most of the local condo stock. As of 2023, three-quarters of South Florida condos — in Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach counties — were built in or before 1993, according to estimates from the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.
Inspections are now mandatory every decade for all buildings, meaning condo owners can probably expect decennial special assessments, said Zalewski.
Though originally slotted for the end of 2024, structural integrity reserve studies — estimates of how much condo associations would need to save to pay for critical repairs in the future — were slightly postponed for most associations.
And while they were implemented in the name of structural safety, those requirements have driven up monthly costs for owners. Median association fees for condos in Miami-Dade have increased by more than 70% since 2016, according to Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center. Between the start of 2022 and 2025 alone, association fees for condos with at least three stories increased by 42%, the Center estimates.
The Miami metro area now claims the most expensive homeowners association fees in the country, according to an analysis by Realtor.com. Those fees — the median of which was $617 in greater Miami last year — amount to roughly 27% of the typical mortgage payment. And of the 10 U.S. metropolitan areas with the costliest HOA fees, seven are in Florida, Realtor.com’s study shows.
Part of what’s driving up those association fees are insurance costs. The Metropolitan Center compiled data from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation and found that, for condo associations in Miami-Dade, commercial multi-peril premiums — insurance that condo associations pay to cover physical damage and liability — cost $175,000, on average, at the start of 2021. That figure jumped to $462,000 by the end of 2024, a 164% increase.
And that doesn’t include the rising cost of homeowners insurance policies that individual owners usually need to take out in order to qualify for financing. Those premium averages hit $2,300 at the end of 2024, up from $1,600 three years prior — a 44% spike.
All that “has fundamentally changed the math for buyers,” said Nick Miceli, Southeast Metro regional president at TD Bank. For many owners and would-be buyers, a condo’s sticker price is no longer the biggest concern, Miceli said; it’s whether they can afford the monthly fees, insurance and the risk of future assessments.
The aftermath
And so some condo owners have found themselves trapped between struggling to afford the rising cost of staying in their home and not being able to absorb the price cut that would be necessary to offload their unit.
Still, some are trying — and many to no avail.
As of May, there was about 12 months of condo inventory on the market — meaning it would take roughly a year to sell all available condos at the current pace of sales. Basically, there’s a supply glut. A balanced market typically has six to nine months of inventory.
Meanwhile, median sale prices were down 3.5% on the year, according to the Miami Association of Realtors.
All that is to say, the Miami condo market currently favors the buyer. And Zalewski, the market analyst, estimates it won’t fully correct until 2030, or perhaps even 2032.
What’s next?
Viewed more holistically, the condo cost issue is another straw on the back of a local economy struggling under the weight of a burgeoning affordability crisis.
But one man’s affordability crisis is another’s affordability opportunity. The market is flooded with supply, and interest rates — and, with them, mortgage rates — could very well go up again before they come back down, making this a potentially “golden opportunity” for well-informed buyers, said Zalewski.
“This is the opportunity that Millennials and Gen Z have been asking for in terms of being able to buy,” he said.
But there are caveats. Buyers should make sure any condo they’re looking to purchase has a signed inspection that was done by a licensed architect or engineer, he said. They should also ensure that the condo association has a funding source for any structural repairs, that the seller covers any special assessments and that the unit’s price tag is no more than 100 times what the place would fetch in a month on the rental market.
Still, Zalewski added, “condo ownership does not make sense today unless a buyer is ‘stealing’ the unit at a dramatic discount.”
“It is much better to rent, as the cost is significantly less,” he said.
This story was produced with financial support from supporters including The Green Family Foundation Trust and Ken O’Keefe, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
