Judge clears $20.5 million sale of condemned Pembroke Pines condo complex
.png "Screen grab of the Heron Pond Condominium at 8400 SW First St. in Pembroke Pines.")
The long-awaited $20.5 million sale of a condemned Pembroke Pines condominium complex is poised to advance following a judge’s stop on a bulk unit owner’s challenge of the deal, according to federal records.
The six-month legal battle over the Heron Pond Condominium — 19 two-story buildings housing 304 units at 8400 SW First St. — began in September.
Residents were ordered to vacate the 25-acre complex by city officials in August 2024 due to “significant structural issues” that deemed all units “unsafe for occupancy,” per the City of Pembroke Pines.
The condos were built in 1988 as an apartment complex called Runaway Bay, and their disrepair included moisture and termite-related damages as well as internal structural deficiencies from “inadequate design and inadequate construction practices.”
A court-appointed receiver — Daniel Stermer, former mayor of Weston — was granted oversight of Heron Pond after unit owners petitioned for one in a 2024 lawsuit in which they also sued over mismanagement from the complex’s board of directors.
Forgoing repairs, Stermer set on terminating the condominium and placing it for sale, with proceeds split between the unit owners.
He was granted the dissolution on Aug. 14 and named a “stalking horse” bidder — Integra Real Estate, a Miami-based investment and development firm — on Sept. 26, records show.
A pin was put in the sale in December, when the Federated Foundation Trust — which owns over 100 units at Heron Pond — objected to the deal, arguing that Stermer’s receivership was never “properly authorized” by the complex’s board and that the buyer was excluded from the bidding process.
According to unit owner and former Heron Pond’s former HOA president James Rhodes, the trust was responsible for the complex’s disrepair as several of the complex’s board members had ties to it.
“It is believed that these individuals may have wanted the association’s common elements to fall into a state of disrepair so that they could acquire more units … at a reduced/discounted cost,” Rhodes wrote in April 2024 court filings, The Real Deal reported the following month.
A Jan. 7 federal court hearing was what largely settled whether Heron Pond’s sale should be reopened to give Federated Foundation Trust a chance to beat Integra’s bid.
Per court transcripts, Stermer’s attorneys argued that Federated’s last-minute application to prove itself as a qualified bidder was incomplete, “missing bank statements, escrow confirmations or other proof of available funds.”
Federated’s legal team contested that Stermer’s failure to provide appraisals and market analyses during the sale process months before showed Federated was being “excluded,” posing that how the sale was conducted — not the sale itself — was the real issue.
Judge Rodney Smith, who oversaw the case, ultimately chose to re-open bidding and give the trust six days to come up with the $23.95 million needed to beat Integra’s bid, The Real Deal reported.
But when Federated executive Piyush Viradia Patel told Smith that he only had $18 to $19 million committed and would need a few days to confirm the rest with investors, the judge chose to approve the Integra sale instead.
“The Purchase and Sale Agreement was negotiated and entered into in good faith and without collusion or fraud of any kind,” Smith wrote in his Jan. 8 order granting the sale.
Federated appealed the order in February, claiming it was denied due process during the January hearing, court records show.
A federal appeals panel ultimately affirmed the sale order to Integra in a March 20 opinion.
This story was originally published March 24, 2026 at 2:55 PM.
