Does A Florida Association Have To Carry Insurance On A Condominium Property?

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The association is required under statute to do so and basically it’s to cover the common areas and the limited common areas. There is a specific exclusion on what they have to carry and that exclusion is based upon personal items that are within the unit or are within the limited common elements. So they don’t have to have insurance to provide for if there is like a screening area that is a limited common element and there is patio furniture there, there doesn’t have to be insurance that the association provides for that, for roofs or floors, other areas that need to be maintained and if there is a sufficient reserve in place for those or even if there isn’t a sufficient reserve, there still has to be insurance under the statute that’s held by the association. The flipside is kind of interesting.

There was a proposal in 2010 that would require unit owners to carry property insurance and that did not get passed. However, there are other parts of the statute that reference insurance that is necessarily held by the owner. So there are implications that insurance is actually required even though there is not an explicit mandate that was put into the amendment that did not pass that said that owners have to be required to carry that insurance. So the association is required to carry it for the common elements and only for the common elements but it does include the personal property within the common element of use itself. For owners, it’s up in the air.

There are some parts in the statute that indicates there has to be insurance held by the owner but there is no specific requirement under the statute that says an owner has to have that type of insurance.

How Can We Address Parking Disputes In A Condominium Association?

It’s a common problem and people have to understand that these associations are created by developers and the developers really are looking for the most part, at being able to meet the bare requirements in order to have their development passed by the governing authorities and one of those issues is parking and how much parking has to be available for the entire complex. A lot of times, those requirements by the governing agencies are not very favorable to the owners that are going to end up occupying the association. So that comes up quite a bit. One of the things that it’s important to have an attorney for is that I’ve had scenarios where prospective owners who buy a unit have actually been told by the seller that they actually own an assigned parking space.

Then I’ve had those same owners, when they get title insurance that says you bought the house and the sale contract includes the parking space and you can even get the association to say that we can go ahead and prove it but if there is nothing in the recorded documents that shows ownership or a bill of sale which wouldn’t necessarily be recorded but that would be available either through not just the owner but every owner since the developer sold the unit. So you have to look at that very carefully and that’s why it’s important to hire an attorney to look at those areas before you purchase it because you may think you are purchasing an assigned spot but you may not be purchasing an assigned parking space. So, the best way is to have an attorney look at it that understands what the criteria is going to be to convince a judge if the issue comes up that you really do own this parking space or at least you have possessory rights to that parking space and you have those exclusively.

If there is none of that and it’s just a free for all, the only thing you can do at that point is to make sure that the original building was built to code and had the parking spaces that it needed to have and hope that you are still within the statute of limitations if there is a problem to sue the developer for the parking. Other than that, there is not a whole lot that a member can do about limited parking.

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