A new AI-driven platform interprets mountains of condominium records to help prospective buyers, current owners, volunteer boards, lenders and insurers determine if a community is financially and operationally sound.
Florida is home to over 1.5 million condominium units governed by approximately 27,000 associations. A legislative push for transparency and stability following the Champlain Towers South collapse in 2021 exposed decades of deferred maintenance and led to crippling special assessments.
The state, however, has lacked a standardized platform for stakeholders to examine a condominium community’s physical and financial health – until now.
A recently launched rating system from the Florida Communities Certification Association (FCCA) evaluates a building’s financial stability, operating performance, records quality, governance and associated risks by incorporating safety and inspection data. Former state Sen. Jeff Brandes, founder of the St. Petersburg-based nonprofit, compared its grades to a “Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”
“When you buy a condo, what they do is they hand you 600 pages of documents,” Brandes said. “You’ve never seen a condo disclosure before in your life. You’re not an attorney, and all of a sudden you’re supposed to go through this stuff and understand what type of assessments they’re facing, what type of reserves they have and whether they have enough insurance.”
“People think they’re buying this rectangle in the sky; they’re really buying into a multi-million dollar organization that has never been holistically independently reviewed.”
Brandes partnered with Joe Petrelli, president of Demotech, a leading rating agency for Florida property insurers, to build FCCA’s platform. They raised $500,000 and spent eight months developing an AI-powered system capable of deciphering thousands of pages of governing documents, budgets and reserve studies.
Time-consuming manual evaluations are also typically unaffordable for volunteer boards, said Brandes, who enlisted a retired senior insurance underwriter to test his hypothesis. It took 10 days and would have cost about $12,000.
FCCA evaluated and scored 12 condominium communities through a pilot phase to “determine where they stand against peers and where they stand against what we consider best practices,” Brandes said. Participants can earn Gold, Silver or Bronze certifications based on that review.
Brandes noted that the system creates a win-win scenario for stakeholders by providing financial certainty for buyers, enabling sellers to advertise a well-managed property, giving insurers insight into hidden liabilities and offering associations a vital operational tool.
“We can list, in common language, all these major points, tell them exactly where they are in bullets, and drive home areas where we think there are deficiencies,” he added. “The solution for the problem that Florida condos face is transparency.”
Brandes expects the FCCA to charge between $5,000 and $7,500 for an evaluation and credential. He also believes the benefits extend beyond board management and buyer confidence.
The platform could provide immediate financial relief in Florida’s volatile property insurance market by independently verifying a community’s stability. “We think that insurers, once you get rated, will start offering discounts,” Brandes said.
“And once you get into the discount world of insurance – if they offer you a 1% discount on a $20 million policy, you’ve paid for the product three times over.”
Data gathered by the FCCA could also benefit state regulators. Brandes noted that the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation struggles to keep pace with the volume of compliance paperwork.
“Imagine any government agency with 27,000 different associations that have thousands of pages of documents each,” he said. “They’re going to be overwhelmed. I think we can help the state identify problems quicker and faster, and bring in solutions.”
While the initial focus is on condominiums, the FCCA is already eyeing expansion. Brandes hopes to begin evaluating homeowner’s associations (HOAs) by late 2027.
He said roughly half of homes in Florida are governed by HOAs, which typically face less scrutiny than condominium boards. A for-profit division that solely provides independent evaluations for buyers is also in the planning stages.
“I’m just trying to solve problems in the market,” Brandes said.
