After 1980s condo was deemed unsafe, one question remains: Make costly repairs or sell?

Residents have been slowly clearing out of Heron Pond Condominiums’ 304 units since last fall, after the city of Pembroke Pines declared 13 of the property’s 19 buildings to be structurally unsound.

In July, the last remaining residents received notice that they, too, needed to vacate the 1980s-era complex. By Thursday, all occupants must move out of the condo, which has been in disrepair for years.

Signs of that mass exodus were clear earlier this month: Few cars were parked outside the property, located off Pines Boulevard. Evacuation orders were still taped on a handful of doors, and support beams were holding up walkways and balconies.

After the deadly 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, the Florida Legislature enacted laws to better ensure the safety of condominiums. Under one of them, condo associations with buildings three stories and higher must take a look at their reserves and determine how much they need to put aside for maintenance. Buildings 30 years or older will also have to undergo a structural inspection.

With only two stories, Heron Pond isn’t among the properties affected by the new state law. But its history of failing to maintain the property and make costly repairs over the years puts it in good company in Florida, said Suzanne Hollander, a real estate professor at Florida International University. While condo living became more common in the 1970s and 1980s, it was largely unpopular among unit owners to set money aside for maintenance, she said. Hollander said the tragedy in Surfside sounded the alarm on the need to maintain 40- and 50-year-old buildings.

“Imagine ... you’re a 40- or 50-year-old person, and you never went to the doctor, or you never maintained your body,” she said. “Just like if you don’t take care of your body, if you don’t take care of the building, you’re going to end up in a bad situation. And unfortunately, there are many condominiums in the state of Florida right now that kicked the can on the maintenance.”

The condo association at Heron Pond has argued the buildings weren’t properly maintained over their lifetime. Originally a garden-style apartment complex that opened in 1988, the development that became Heron Pond was converted into condominiums in 2006.

In 2017, a trust that owns 111 of the units took control of the condo’s board of directors. A coalition of other property owners has since accused the trust, called the Federated Foundation Trust, of mismanaging funds and failing to perform routine maintenance with the hopes that the condos would fall into disrepair so that it could acquire more units. Several lawsuits have been filed against the association over the alleged mismanagement, which the trust has repeatedly denied.

Earlier this year, the Heron Pond Condominium Association filed a petition in Broward County asking for a receiver to act on behalf of the association in place of the board of directors, expressing a lack of confidence in the board’s judgment and leadership.

“It is believed that those individuals elected to the board of directors were not representing the interests of the association, but rather their own personal interests wherein they failed to perform required maintenance to the association’s common elements,” the petition stated. It further alleged that the trust had not submitted monthly assessment payments to the association. A judge granted the petition in late April and appointed a receiver as requested.

Keith Grumer, an attorney representing Federated Foundation Trust, said the trust’s dues are current and that it had tried its best to make the necessary repairs. According to notes from a June 13 meeting , the trust had paid its monthly assessments of $352,481 since at least December.

“There was a movement within the association to attribute fault to the Federated owner and the Federated group, but these are wood structures,” Grumer said of the buildings. “There’s not a single penny unaccounted for. There is no misconduct by anybody affiliated with Federated. It’s an unfortunate circumstance.”

It was in 2021 that the condo board obtained structural reports concluding that every building in the complex was in poor condition, according to the petition. Last fall, the city of Pembroke Pines finally got involved in the matter. By October, the city had issued an evacuation order for six buildings and declared individual units in seven other buildings unsafe. Last month, all remaining units were deemed unsafe, and the rest of Heron Pond’s residents were ordered to vacate.

Court-appointed receiver Daniel Stermer said he is working with the association to weigh its options.

“On the one hand, we are looking at what it would cost to rehabilitate the buildings because not only do you have to figure out the cost, you then have to figure out how the unit owners are going to get assessed to pay that cost, while at the same time investigating and contemplating a potential sale of the property,” he said.

There are three people serving on the current board of the association, according to records on the Florida Secretary of State website , at least two of whom are not affiliated with the trust, Stermer said.

A non-binding poll conducted Aug. 5 in which 64% of unit owners responded showed that 84% want the property to be sold. Following that poll, the Federated Foundation Trust also voted in favor of selling the property. That brought the percentage of unit owners wanting to sell to 86%.

The proceeds that would come in from a potential sale, after expenses are paid, would be distributed to the unit owners, Stermer said.

“We are still investigating to come up with best answers to answer, ‘If we do this, why? If we do that, why?’” he said. “So that is a continuing process.”

Alternately, if upgrades were to be done, Stermer said, unit owners could be looking at assessments in the tens of thousands of dollars.

“I have received a proposal to do a certain scope of work, and that cost would be projected to be $585,000 per building,” he said. “There are various ways to compute how an assessment will be done, but just using a straight-line assessment, that would be no less than $40,000 a unit.”

Grumer said repairs to the building would be too costly for most of the unit owners to pay.

“I can assure you, Federated made substantial efforts to save the complex, save the buildings, always being mindful of individual unit owners or small unit owners,” Grumer said. “The current reports are such that the cost of repair did not justify forcing each person to come up with that contribution.”

Of the 304 units on the property, only 20 are homesteaded, meaning it is the owner’s primary residence, Stermer said.

“I understand and appreciate deeply the frustration, anxiety, confusion and angst that every unit owner has, whether they’re homesteaded or an investor, and some of them have lived there for many, many years, and this is their home,” he said. “And for them, this is not an easy circumstance to find themselves in. Their home is in peril … which is why I speak to or respond to every unit owner that reaches out to me.”

Moving woes

Residents renting units at the property told the Miami Herald they didn’t realize how dire the situation was until after they moved in.

Mariah Joseph had been living at Heron Pond since last June and said she was unaware of the extent of the structural issues. She’d assumed her building was spared after a recent inspection when she was told nothing was wrong with it. “And then a few weeks ago, [we got a] notice: Everybody has to vacate.”

The buildings that hadn’t been vacated last fall were inspected on March 13 by ACG Engineering Services. In letters posted on the city’s website , the engineers noted the remaining buildings did not need to be vacated at that time.

But the engineering company did an about-face July 22 in a letter to the city and the condo association, noting that a second inspection conducted by Specialty Engineering Consultants, a firm hired by the receiver, revealed lateral load deficiencies hidden in the structures and the “bones” of the building that were not seen from a visual inspection. The letter indicated that the lateral load deficiencies were the result of inadequate design and construction practices.

Heron Pond tenant Dashna Thenord said she thought it was just a matter of the balconies needing fixing when she moved into the two-bedroom condo where she lives with her mom, grandmother and stepfather back in April.

“It’s stressful. … The fact that we have to move within this month is crazy,” she said.

It will be the second time the family has been forced to move in a few months’ time. Before they moved to Heron Pond, Thenord and her family were renting a house in Miami, but their landlord decided she wanted to update it and move into it.

“We should have known,” Thenord said of the condition of the Heron Pond condos, “but we were kind of desperate for somewhere to stay.”

For Jesus Nater, the July notice was unexpected: “I knew it was under construction, but I didn’t know how bad it was,” he said in Spanish, adding that when he moved in a year ago, he was told the place would be remodeled in eight months. He’s now moving to a more expensive apartment nearby. He had been paying $1,700 for a one-bedroom apartment he shared with his wife.

Hollander, the real estate professor, said she understands the frustrations of renters who have been displaced but also emphasized that they were walking away from a bad and potentially unsafe situation.

“We have to weigh it’s a terrible inconvenience for the people to move out,” she said, “but at the same time, it’s erring on the side of safety and preservation of life.”

Miami Herald journalists Joanne Haner and Matias Ocner contributed to this reporting.