Friday, September 17, 2010

Banks win delay in demolition of abandoned Fort Lauderdale condo complex

Debris is strewn across the 58-unit complex along the north fork of the New River. The doors and windows have been stripped away. Vandals have destroyed walls and ripped out copper wiring and plumbing. The city has been paying for metal shutters to keep away squatters.
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Ever wonder what happens when an association goes defunct? It is not pretty.
And what happens to all those property values that were being protected?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So involuntary membership corporations did not protect the value of the property they burdened?

Surely if one looks across the nation at the plummeting values (which have not bottomed out) of homes/condos burdened by HOA/condo corporation there is ample evidence that HOA/condo corporations do not preserve property value - despite the facade that a trade-lobby group of HOA vendors has tried to maintain for 30 years.

In any event such a metric is hardly reason to justify wholesale derogation of constitutional rights of people who "owned" such property. If you can't get rid of the HOA/condo then you have to get rid of the property that it burdens.

This condo is experiencing a fitting end and the city deserves to be footing the bill. After all the cities have been promoting condominiums in every square foot of urban area because of the high density horizontal tax base (i.e., the tax per horizontal square foot of dirt is very high because you've got vertical real estate).

Maybe cities will learn before too long that they are creating planned ghettoes.

Fred Pilot said...

The property value preservation propaganda line is really more applicable to detached PUD HOAs and not condos.

Condo aren't even arguably part of Privatopia -- privately governed local government units. Condos are a species of real property with a shared ownership structure rather than a private form of local government.

As for preserving condo property values, they have their unique challenges. As I have noted on this blog, those who typically buy into them (first and last time buyers) have personal financial goals that are incompatible with prudent financial management and preservation of the condo complex.

Anonymous said...

Apparently, from the story, the complex had been converted from rental apartments to condos during the mid decade condo conversion craze.

In addition to buying into what is likely a 20 year old building, the "owners" here are also encumbered with an HOA!

Is it no wonder that this complex is now a crumbling ghetto? Just as government funded public housing, particularly the hi-rise variety, has proved to be a social and economic failure, so too, the condo conversion is yet another utopian dream that failed.

Perhaps lenders will grasp that condominiums, particularly those converted from rental apartments, are a poor risk. I don't count on cities or other government entities to learn that CIDs of any kind, particularly condos, and most particularly converted condos, are future ghettos.

At any rate, this will no doubt be the first of many such conversions to meet the bulldozer.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like what Tony Soprano's crew did with those urban housing rehabilitation units in one of the episodes of the show.