Just can't wrap my head around this. As someone wrote earlier, this is why I have always had a difficult time living in multiple unit buildings.
The way it just crumbled is scary. I pray for the families of the lost.
I hope they fully evacuate then move out the belongings in the remaining standing building.
I am curious if after a week they will shift focus to stabilize the remaining building with constructed supports. Otherwise the workers on the rubble will have more risk than necessary.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to John Welsh :
I found a report that said prices on units started at about $600K, and that the median household income was $69,000. Not sure how that works...
Also saw a report that 45% of the residents were Latino.
Retirees?
NOT A TA said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to John Welsh :
I found a report that said prices on units started at about $600K, and that the median household income was $69,000. Not sure how that works...
Also saw a report that 45% of the residents were Latino.
Retirees?
Or rental units
With the current insane real estate market renter owners are everywhere. Property values appreciate just by holding with no investment and getting a monthly cash return is icing on the cake.
I would wager a very large portion of the occupants were renters and that's why some of the numbers seem so weird.
STM317 said:NOT A TA said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to John Welsh :
I found a report that said prices on units started at about $600K, and that the median household income was $69,000. Not sure how that works...
Also saw a report that 45% of the residents were Latino.
Retirees?
Or rental units
I think he was more implying that a $600k "home" with a median income of less than $70k is still a pretty "luxurious" price for most.
My fiance and I combined make double that number and I'd have a hard time feeling comfortable buying a $300k home.
Turns out that the exact address is 8855 Collins Ave Surfside, FL
The places might not be the rough neighborhood that I thought it was:
Sold in April 2021: 1,150 sq ft for $350k and the listing says HOA fees are $690 per month!
Sold June 15th 2021: 2,270 sq ft for $770k and the listing says HOA fees are $1,240 per month!
Sold June 18th 2021: 1,570 sq ft for $555k and the listing says HOA fees are $956 per month!
Congratulations on buying your new home! On the other side of the coin...congratulations on selling!!!!
z31maniac said:STM317 said:NOT A TA said:SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to John Welsh :
I found a report that said prices on units started at about $600K, and that the median household income was $69,000. Not sure how that works...
Also saw a report that 45% of the residents were Latino.
Retirees?
Or rental units
I think he was more implying that a $600k "home" with a median income of less than $70k is still a pretty "luxurious" price for most.
My fiance and I combined make double that number and I'd have a hard time feeling comfortable buying a $300k home.
Retirees. A couple retires and sells a fairly expensive house and/or business and uses that money to pay cash for an expensive condo in Miami Beach. Then they live on a combination of social security, pensions and investments at a lower income than they had when buying their property. Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, where my parents lived is the same way. Expensive lake houses in the middle of rural Arkansas where there are no good paying jobs. Nobody has a mortgage. Nobody works. Everybody is on a fixed income but had a much higher income when they generated the money to buy their residence. Some people dream of retiring to a place with a view of the ocean. Miami Beach is a retirement community.
This morning's paper had a large version of the one photo we see pretty much every day showing the collapsed building. It's a tragedy for everyone who lost someone there, but every time I see that photo, I wonder what happened to the two children who slept in those bunk beds on the top floor.
In reply to BenB (Forum Supporter) :
I keep hoping they stayed in the bed or weren't home.
Hopefully they went through the big hole above the top bunk and are recovering somewhere
The tenant that lived in that unit had no children. Unit came furnished when she moved in March.
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:The tenant that lived in that unit had no children. Unit came furnished when she moved in March.
People are weird, y'know? Think of everything that had to happen for that particular fact to become so easily found out.
In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :
Good to know.
Mr_Asa said:Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:The tenant that lived in that unit had no children. Unit came furnished when she moved in March.
People are weird, y'know? Think of everything that had to happen for that particular fact to become so easily found out.
Apparently it was asked a lot so she cleared it up in a few interviews.
In reply to Steve_Jones :
That's what I mean. Think of how many people noticed that particular room. Eventually the news would have started to focus on it. Then they would start to ask her and eventually she'd go on record and then the news would start to disseminate that info.
Think of how interconnected we are for that to have happened.
I'm not explaining it well, but its a lot, y'know?
John Welsh said:Turns out that the exact address is 8855 Collins Ave Surfside, FL
The places might not be the rough neighborhood that I thought it was:
Sold in April 2021: 1,150 sq ft for $350k and the listing says HOA fees are $690 per month!
Sold June 15th 2021: 2,270 sq ft for $770k and the listing says HOA fees are $1,240 per month!
Sold June 18th 2021: 1,570 sq ft for $555k and the listing says HOA fees are $956 per month!
Congratulations on buying your new home! On the other side of the coin...congratulations on selling!!!!
...What were the HOA fees going towards, anyway?
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
In the last new report I read,
The condo owners and the association both created a lot of chaos over the 2018 engineering report and the resulting increase in assessment. So it resulted in a delay of start of work until this year. I don't understand condo politics but this seems to be a moment where the iron fist organization style of just soliciting and awarding a contract for repairs and mandating the special assessments may have saved lives.
So the HOA fees went the right way towards getting the 2018 building engineering analysis. So good job realizing your building preventative maintenance and replacement maintenance were off and you needed a deep dive to develop a plan. But then not taking action was catastrophic...
I realize it seems like there was a terrible delay, but in my world of commercial construction 3 years to begin a $9 million commercial project is jarringly routine, if not rather fast.
We see startup time frames like that routinely on nearly every job. And we are almost always dealing with only 1 owner to negotiate with, not 136.
It's common for plan review alone to take 3-6 months, but we've had ones that take 2 1/2 years just to get a permit.
3 years sounds pretty normal to me. What does not sound normal is why the alarm bells (and the code enforcement response) wasn't sounded MUCH louder. If this building was in such disrepair as to be close to collapse, the engineering report should have SCREAMED about an emergency situation, and code enforcement should have condemned the building instantly. THAT'S what could have saved lives.
The glacially slow and inept bureaucracies people in my industry have to endure are literally killing both jobs and people. These people are supposed to be the professionals.
I recently saw this article of a pool contractor who was doing pre-bid inspections that took photos 36 hours before collapse.
...he saw the basement-level garage.
“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” the contractor, who asked not to be named, told the Miami Herald. He noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar under the pool.
...he said he was struck by the lack of maintenance in the lower level. The amount of water at Champlain Towers seemed so unusual that the contractor mentioned it to a building staff member, Jose, who was showing him around.
“He thought it was waterproofing issues,” the contractor said of the staff member. “I thought to myself, that’s not normal.” He said Jose told him they pumped the pool equipment room so frequently that the building had to replace pump motors every two years, but he never mentioned anything about structural damage or cracks in the concrete above.
And, this NY Post article further says...
“Any time that we had high tides away from the ordinary, any King Tide or anything like that, we would have a lot of saltwater come in through the bottom of the foundation,” Espinosa told the outlet.
In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :
I realize i may be wandering into conspiracy theory-ville (aka crazytown) here, but do you think the engineering report language was fashioned in such a way to not cause alarm bells to go off? To my mind, I get a 9 to 15M repair bill on my moneymaking asset (as evidenced by the condo ownership turnover) if i'm the HOA is that something I want have publicy known? To me (a layman), a repair costing that kind of money would mean taking the property out of service until the repairs are complete, but to a buliding manager that could be the cost for "normal" maintenance and not note anything catastrophic. Caveat: I have no such knowledge of large building management and the views listed here arent even my own, just spitballing thoughts off the top of my head, or out my a** (some days it's hard to tell which is which). In any event, it does seem that the ball was dropped somewhere, and people have paid for it with their lives.
Has anybody seen the Engineers report? Based on the news, it sounds like it should have recommended condemnation of the building. Because I agree with what Paul is saying. 3 years isn't a lot of time for a project that large. Heck, it may even take that long to find a contractor to take the project on. So did the Engineer report from 2018 say that this building is about to fall down?
Every single building I've been in has had some issue, most of the buildings have had some serious issue. But none of the issues have been "this building is going to fall down". So if that was in the report... Then there is a serious red-tape issue at hand. If it wasn't in the report... Then did it deteriorate that quickly, or did they not sound the alarm loud enough/not do a good enough job?
In reply to 06HHR (Forum Supporter) :
I know $9 million sounds like a lot, but it's less than 8% of the value of the property.
It's really not that much in commercial real estate.
SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to 06HHR (Forum Supporter) :
I know $9 million sounds like a lot, but it's less than 8% of the value of the property.
It's really not that much in commercial real estate.
But is it a big repair? Like, if I have a $30k repair (not renovation) on my home, I'm generally going to think it is a hair-on-fire, or close to it, I need to deal with this NOW or else I'm going to have flooding, or a fire, or some other serious safety issue. But if I have a $4k repair, I can probably get away ignoring it for a few more years before it turns into a safety issue.
So generally speaking, where would a $9M repair fall for a building that size? The price tag honestly doesn't seem like a big deal to me, definitely not going to set off alarm bells in my head on that building. Should it?
I feel like the messaging is going like this:
Various related engineers: "We told them there were maintenance issues"
Government authorities: "We were unaware of any significant problem, and our inspection process was responsible, but we care and we are here for you"
Media and people who don't understand construction: "OMG, these people didn't take care of their property, and 3 years is a terrible delay"
Its ending up making the condo association the bad guy, while the skilled people who could have corrected the problem (and failed miserably) are avoiding any culpability.
This was poorly handled by everyone at all levels, and they are now dumping it on the condo association and owners (who are NOT the engineering professionals, and DO NOT have the authority to force necessary corrections.
This is a E36 M3 show.
In reply to mtn :
The price tag doesn't ring the alarms. The engineering and inspection professionals do.
If the repair on your house was a $40 plumbing repair that was leaking under the slab and undermining the footings, would you delay because it was cheap? If I was the inspector, it's MY JOB to make you understand that this is important and you need to deal with it NOW.
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