Texans burned out of their condos 5 years ago are stuck paying $800 monthly fees while rebuilding is 'just pooping along'

A fire tore through Bayfront Towers, a 75-unit complex in Nassau Bay in March 2021 and destroyed 11 condos while damaging 26 others.

According to reports, 11 owners are still waiting to move back in. In the meantime, they’re still on the hook for HOA fees and, in some cases, hefty special assessments.

One owner, Sarah Arends, summed up the pace of the rebuilding: “I don’t know what he [the contractor is] doing; he’s just pooping along.”

What happened at Bayfront Towers?

Arends’ first-floor condo was among those apartments destroyed in the fire. She had bought the unit three years earlier as part of her retirement plans.

Unfortunately, she’s spent the past five years paying for a home she can’t use.

Arends told Fox 26 Houston in August that she still pays close to $800 a month in HOA fees, or roughly $10,000 a year. She’s also been hit with $38,000 in special assessments to help pay for reconstruction.

All told, Arends estimates she’s spent about $80,000 on the property since the fire while also paying to rent somewhere else.

The association has raised more than $2.8 million in special assessments since the fire, after insurance payouts were exhausted during the first two years of rebuilding. And the rebuilding itself hasn’t exactly moved at lightning speed.

The HOA says it took 18 months to get approval to rebuild at the existing elevation. After that came architectural delays. The project was supposed to be finished by May 2026. Instead, the HOA says the contractor is now more than a year behind schedule, and the board is working to bring in a new general contractor with the goal of getting owners back into their units by the end of 2026.

“We don’t know if it’s going to be a month, a year, five years, we don’t know,” Arends told Fox 26.

The risks condo owners should understand

Bayfront Towers is an extreme example, but it also shows how monthly HOA fees may not be the only cost condo owners have to worry about.

HOA dues generally pay for things like common-area maintenance, insurance, and other shared expenses. And they’re typically mandatory under the association’s governing documents. At Bayfront Towers, the association says owners remain responsible for their fees because they’re still owners of their units — even while those units are uninhabitable.

Special assessments are another potential expense. They’re generally used when an association needs money for a major repair or other cost that isn’t covered by its regular budget or reserves.

Realtor.com’s data finds that 44% of U.S. homes listed for sale in 2025 were subject to HOA fees, up from 34% in 2019. Among condos and townhomes, that share was much higher at 85%. The median HOA fee was $135 a month.