Category: Property Owner Law

Whether you’re building your dream home or have just purchased a home that’s supposed to be brand new, poor construction work or materials that lead to structural defects can turn your dream into a nightmare. Contact a Sarasota, FL structural defects lawyer right away if you’re experiencing issues so we can get started on recovering the compensation you deserve under the law.

Everything starts when you talk to a lawyer. We can help you gather the evidence you need to prove that there are issues and then go through all the hoops that are required before you can bring a lawsuit. These are very important, and a single mess-up can destroy your case. If you don’t give the right notice, at the right time, if you miss a deadline, or you file something incorrectly, you might be left with no options. A lawyer will protect you from all these issues.

Under Florida laws, your first step is to notify the developer of your property or your contractor about the defect. This is known as a Chapter 558 notice, and it needs to describe clearly where your property is located, the nature of each defect discovered, and all known damage that has resulted from this defect. Under the law, the contractor has 30 days to respond and get the property inspected. They have to fix the issue, settle the matter by compensating you, or bring a formal dispute against your claim.

As attorneys who regularly represent homeowners associations and property managers, we frequently get questions about what the board can do with and without membership approval. These types of questions ultimately come down to distinguishing between what is and is not a “material alteration.”

The general rule is that if the proposed change is a palpable change to the appearance, function, or use of the association property and/or its common element, it constitutes a material alteration. If a homeowners’ association wants to make a material alteration, it must first obtain membership approval. Some examples of material alterations that require membership approval include painting the color of a common area (such as a clubhouse), or placing carports over parking spaces.

What About Landscaping?

There are sometimes questions in the gray areas, such as changes to landscaping. Typically, landscaping decisions are not considered to involve material alterations, and are thus left up to the board’s discretion. This includes decisions involving whether or not certain plant species should be replaced with others, or whether shrubs or vegetarian can be moved, changed, etc.

Florida property owners have thus far filed reportedly $2 billion in claims to their insurance companies seeking assistance for damage caused by Hurricane Irma. The storm was ranked as one of the most powerful to hit the Atlantic, and killed at least 33 people in the state of Florida alone.

It is crucial that insurance companies are prompt in responding to hurricane claims, as the more time that passes without access to their homes, the more unnecessary costs they experience. Your level of protection largely depends upon what protection your state offers you.

Yet, while the state of Florida’s two largest insurers—Universal Property & Casualty and State Farm—have indicated that they have plenty of resources to ensure that their clients are taken care of after the storm, thousands of people in Florida are reportedly being told that their insurance policies will not cover the losses they sustained, indicating that they may have a fight ahead of them in getting the protection they’ve already been paying for years.

Nothing is perhaps more effective in ensuring that there is a smooth relationship between landlords and tenants than carefully drafting and negotiating the contract that governs that relationship and the rights that each party has.

One of those terms includes the terms of “enjoyment” covenant, also known as a covenant of quiet enjoyment. This aspect of the lease refers to what extent the tenant and/or landlord is able to possess the premises in peace without disturbance by others. In other words, it’s the right to undisturbed use, and if it isn’t expressly spelled out with the specifics in the lease, it is automatically implied by the courts. This means that if the landlord “interferes” with this quiet enjoyment in any way, this can provide the tenant with the right to withhold rent and, in some circumstances, even terminate the lease itself.

One thing you will notice is that, even though this covenant is implied, it is usually written into every lease. This is because both parties (landlord and tenant) always retain the right to modify the condition and enforcement of this covenant by the tenant. Thus, when it does appear in a lease, its purpose is typically to restrict the conditions of the tenant’s rights. While this typically looks like language referring to a tenant’s requirement to pay rent and perform all of their lease operations before they enjoy quiet enjoyment against the landlord, contract law actually allows for two parties to contract to pretty much anything as long as it’s legal; thus, a landlord has a significant amount of leeway in building flexibility into this provision in the lease if need be.