I’m writing this entry from Ft. Lauderdale, where I am attending the Institute on Condominium and Cluster Developments presented by the University of Miami School of Law.   This two day seminar has provided me with a wealth of material for future entries to this blog and has allowed me to spend some time learning and meeting with many of my fellow community association attorneys throughout Florida.   A colleague from our Tallahassee office, Karl Scheuerman, spoke at one of yesterday’s sessions on the many issues facing "subsequent developers" of condominiums and other community developments.  Hopefully, these are issues that your community or association will never have to face.  

Karl and I attended the dinner meeting of the Florida Bar’s Condominium and Planned Development Committee (which is part of the Bar’s Real Property Probate and Trust Law Section) that was held at the end of yesterday’s presentations.    Again, this event gave me the opportunity to discuss with a number of my colleagues problems facing ROCs and potential solutions to those problems.

As my blog followers know, I also attended the convention of the Florida Manufactured Housing Association at the Saddlebrook Resort north of Tampa earlier this month.   This annual event gives the members of our firm that work with the owners of manufactured housing communities the opportunity to network with those owners and many of the companies that provide important services to those communities.    A number of my colleagues from our firm, including Allen Bobo, Jody Gabel, Richard Lee, David Eastman, Karl Scheuerman, Carol Grondzik and I made presentations to convention attendees on a variety of topics, including:

  • Evictions
  • Fair Housing Issues
  • Dealing with Abandoned Mobile Homes
  • How to amend rental prospectuses

It was clear from our experiences at the FMHA convention that the current state of our economy has created an environment that is extremely challenging for community owners, whether they be private investors or ROCs. 

The FMHA is well aware of the importance of resident owned manufactured housing communities in Florida and will be making a concerted effort to encourage these communities to join FMHA and to participate in its activities.  I’ve always felt that the FMHA and the community associations that own and operate manufactured housing communities have many common interests and will be posting details on the FMHA’s increased efforts to bring more ROCs into its organization in the future.

 I’ll be posting the dates, locations, and topics of our upcoming November and December seminars next week.