Well we just finished a major storm. What is left to say? What is left to say is “grandfathering,” seems to be a peculiar word to pick. I am a grandfather (big shout out to Eva and Sam) but that is not the “grandfathering” about which I am talking.
If half of Florida is going to be knocked down by an “Irma” type event, then “grandfathering” will be the word on the lips of every real estate professional in the State. Almost every building is nonconforming the day after it is built. This is because laws are changed with such frequency that some new law is bound to be added just a few days after completion. The building code will change. Or a zoning ordinance will be refined.
So, if your building is knocked down by an “Act of God” (another piece of terminology that we will deal with in a different post), what can you rebuild? The answer is different in each and every municipality. If you test the codes in the beach towns throughout south Florida where this is most likely to occur, you will get hundreds of different answers to the same exact question. “Grandfathering” is a concept that is supposed to protect landowners from applying new laws to old structures, but don’t bet on it. Yet that is the point: we are all betting on it.
This is a discussion to be continued, But in the spirit of zoning being the law that governs our civilization, this discourse is of profound importance.
