Community associations across Broward County
Broward County runs from the Atlantic shoreline, through Fort Lauderdale and a network of canals and the Intracoastal Waterway, west to the edge of the Everglades. Condominium living took hold early along the coast and in the eastern cities, where beachfront buildings sit near older mid-rise and garden-style complexes. Many of those communities, including a good number restricted to owners 55 and over, have now been governed by volunteer boards for decades.
The western half of the county developed later. There, single-family neighborhoods and townhomes are usually run by homeowners associations, often within a larger community that has a master association. The result is a county where a board may be managing a single coastal building or one layer of a multi-level community.
Financial questions Broward County boards are working through
Reserves for older condominium buildings
Much of eastern Broward's condominium stock dates from earlier decades. Condominium buildings three stories or higher are subject to structural integrity reserve studies and milestone inspections. Reserves for the items a structural integrity reserve study covers generally cannot be waived, and a special assessment, loan, or line of credit that funds them must be included in the annual financial statement. Those studies and inspections are engineering work; the financial statements report the reserve balances and activity that follow from them.
Property insurance in a coastal budget
For buildings near the ocean and the waterways, insurance is often one of the largest lines in the budget. When the cost changes, boards benefit from statements that show clearly how it moved through operating funds, and whether reserves or assessments were affected.
Master associations in the western suburbs
In layered communities, the master association and each neighborhood association prepare their own financial reports. Each one's required level depends on its own revenue, and a homeowners association with 1,000 or more parcels must be audited regardless of revenue. Florida's reporting requirements set out the thresholds.