Condo-Hotel Buyers Told Units Unregulated

(This story, in slightly different form, originally appeared in Incisive Media’s Daily Business Review.)

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL-Buyers suing celebrity real estate investor Donald Trump and developers of the local Trump International Hotel & Resort won’t be getting any help from state condominium regulators. Attorney Joseph Altschul last month asked the state Division of Land Sales, Condominiums and Mobile Homes to investigate alleged bad-faith dealings by the hotel’s developers.

But the division’s Bureau of Compliance chief Jonathan Peet said in a letter last week to Altschul that state regulators only oversee residential condominiums. Unless the units are private temporary or permanent residences, they aren’t considered residential units, Peet said. He did not address what agency would otherwise regulate condo-hotels.