The fee is not a charge levied on you. It is your share of what the building costs to operate, and it moves for reasons that are largely visible in advance.
This page explains the structure and the drivers. Any specific building’s budget is a document to be read rather than a figure to be quoted. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the current position on any building we cover.
A condominium association collects from owners and spends on the things the building needs: insurance, staff, utilities for common areas, maintenance, management, amenity operation, and a reserve for future capital work.
Your share is set by your percentage interest, which is defined in the condominium documents and usually relates to the size of your residence.
A high fee is not automatically bad and a low fee is not automatically good. A building with a full service programme, extensive amenities and properly funded reserves costs more to run than one without, and the second is not cheaper in the long run if the work still has to happen.
Insurance. In coastal Florida this is frequently the largest single line and the most volatile. Property insurance for a waterfront tower is a substantial and moving cost.
Staff. Front desk, security, valet, concierge, engineering, housekeeping of common areas. Service level drives headcount and headcount drives the fee.
Utilities and services for common areas. Power for lifts, corridors, amenity spaces, pools, water, waste, landscaping, pest control.
Management. The management company’s fee, plus accounting and administration.
Maintenance. Lift servicing, mechanical plant, pool systems, generators, facade cleaning, ongoing repairs.
Reserves. Money set aside for major future work such as roofing, painting, waterproofing and mechanical replacement. Florida has strengthened requirements around structural reserves for many condominium buildings, and this is a line worth understanding properly with counsel.
Your own electricity and, depending on the building, your own water. Contents insurance and the portions of coverage that fall to the unit owner rather than the association. Interior maintenance and appliance replacement.
Property taxes, which are separate and substantial in Florida and are not part of the association fee.
Club or amenity memberships where a building carries them separately from the association. Some projects operate a beach club, spa or golf arrangement outside the association budget with its own charge.
Special assessments, which are additional levies for work that reserves do not cover. These are not part of the regular fee and they are the item that most often produces an unpleasant surprise.
Insurance renewal. The single most volatile input in coastal Florida. A hard market moves the fee for every building on the water at once, regardless of how well any of them is run.
Reserve funding. Where reserves have been underfunded, catching up raises the fee, and Florida’s tightened structural inspection and reserve rules have driven that in a number of buildings.
Service level. Amenity programmes expand. Staffing grows to match. A building marketed on service tends to add rather than subtract.
Age and condition. New buildings enjoy a period under warranty with new plant. That period ends, and the budget then reflects a building that requires maintenance rather than one that does not yet.
Note also the arithmetic of the denominator. A large amenity programme carried by a small number of residences is expensive per residence. Two towers with identical amenities and very different unit counts do not cost the same to live in.
The estimated operating budget for the project, per residence, with the line items.
The reserve schedule and how reserves are to be funded.
What sits outside the association budget entirely, including any separate club or amenity charge.
The caution: a preconstruction estimated budget is an estimate made before the building exists, prepared by the developer, and it is not a commitment. Actual operating costs after turnover are frequently higher, and insurance in particular can move substantially between the estimate and the first real renewal. Read the estimate as a structure rather than as a number you can rely on.
Reading an estimated budget properly, and understanding what is missing from it, is a short exercise that changes how a shortlist looks. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier and we will go through a budget with you, including the lines that tend to move.
The lines that are absent usually matter more than the lines that are present. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier and we will go through the current position on any building we cover, including the parts a sales gallery would rather skip. Where a question is legal, tax or structuring, we introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.