New Florida condo laws force South Florida residents to sell

All new at six o'clock. It's all over for a dozen and a half condo owners in Fort Lauderdale. They're being forced to sell their building because of new state laws that require repairs with big price tags. Good evening. I'm Elliot Rodriguez and I'm Lauren Pastrana. Thank you for joining us. CBS News Miami's Joan Murray joins us live from Fort Lauderdale Beach and Joan, this is a sign of things to come. Yeah, definitely. Well, you may remember we were in front of this building about three months ago when everyone was forced to leave because of a crumbling foundation. Well, now they have made the difficult decision to never come back. Everybody's scattered all over. Warren Sackler's life has been upended for months along with his neighbors at Springbrook Gardens, a beachside bit of paradise built in the 1940s. It's horrific. Indeed, the saddest day. Last September, condo owners were forced out after the building was found to be unsafe. The foundation was decaying. We didn't have 4.5 million to take care of the story of the building. So residents have decided to sell. Each would have had to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs required under new statewide condo laws and acted after the deadly surfside collapse in 2021 under the new condo laws. All condos must have reserves for major repairs and money for maintaining the roof foundation and balconies and structural inspections must be done on condos three stories and higher. We're constantly getting phone calls from owners asking what should I do? What can I do? How do I approach this? Jeff Shannor has been a realtor 30 years. He says new condo laws are changing the landscape. Rising maintenance fees and assessments are driving people out. Would you call it a glut right now? Yeah, I think that's a good word to use. There's a lot of condominiums that are currently for sale and a lot of them just simply can't get can't sell. I renovated and then I had some friends post stuff and we got into place. Warren Sackler has stripped his double unit of appliances and fixtures before the wrecking ball takes down his building. He doesn't know where he'll end up or if the cost of a similar unit near the water will be affordable. Nobody's happy about it. I you know, everybody, I mean of the 18 people, they all wanted to live, you they would love to live there, but not with the debt and everything else. So we've been told that the owners have been offered $14 million for this building, but it was considered not enough. They're looking for 22 23 million. They're going to meet with the realtor on friday to see if that is possible. Once it sells, quite likely it's going to be taken down and make room for a new condo reporting on Fort Lauderdale Beach. Joan Murray, CBS News, Miami.