The majority of aging condo buildings requiring the most work in the years since the deadly Surfside condo collapse are located in South Florida, a new report shows.
The state’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability compiled and analyzed data collected by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation for milestone inspections completed in 2024 and 2025, unveiling the curtain on the state of the aging condo stock in Florida. The inspections are a requirement for condo buildings that are three stories or higher and 30 years or older, or 25 years depending on their municipality and proximity to the coast.
The collapse of Champlain Towers South in June 2021, which killed 98 people when the tower came down unexpectedly, triggered the changes in state law.
The report’s most shocking finding is that 30 buildings in 2024 and 24 buildings last year were found to be unsafe or uninhabitable. Most of these were also concentrated in South Florida, where the density of condo buildings is highest. Aventura was reported to have 19 unsafe buildings in 2025, but a city spokesperson said that no condo buildings were found to be unsafe last year. The properties had not yet met their recertification and were misclassified, according to information the city provided to The Real Deal.
The report also stated that unsafe buildings are also in North Miami. The city’s building department did not immediately respond to a request for more information about which buildings were determined to be unsafe or uninhabitable.
Building officials statewide reported that 8,736 condo buildings completed their phase one inspections, and 1,575 buildings completed their phase two inspections. Building officials granted nearly 1,600 extensions of initial milestone inspection deadlines, and 94 percent of those were given to buildings in coastal municipalities — the majority in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The estimated values of required repairs ranged from under $1,000 to $30 million, and most repairs were for concrete, electrical and structural issues.
Many condo owners across South Florida have struggled to pay for repairs and the new requirement to fund condo associations’ financial reserves. After years of deferred maintenance, which was previously allowed, some owners have banded together to sell to developers or bulk buyers. That hidden cost of condo ownership, plus rising insurance and property taxes, has made it unsustainable for some.
Last month, federal investigators finally unveiled their findings on what caused the collapse of Champlain Towers South. A structural failure first occurred at two critical garage column connections beneath the pool deck roughly three weeks earlier, according to a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
That initial failure triggered an undetected, slow-motion chain reaction, confirming what many engineers had long suspected. Investigators found that when the slab-to-column connections failed, the pool deck’s concrete slab started to quietly warp and break over a 21-day period, progressively shifting substantial weight onto adjacent columns.
Damac Properties acquired the site of the collapse for $120 million in 2022. The Dubai-based developer plans a luxury condo building on the 1.8-acre property, but has failed to attract any buyers, TRD previously reported.
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