From Property Manager To Case Manager: Meet Woman Fighting Miami Condo Associations

In this episode of The Peter Zalewski Show podcast, host Peter Zalewski interviews case manager Ketty Urbay of Gomez Law about advocating for individual unit owners who sue their condo associations.

Episode Overview

In the Nov. 12, 2025, episode of “The Peter Zalewski Show” podcast, host Peter Zalewski interviews Ketty Urbay, a case manager for the litigation firm Gomez Law in Coral Gables, about her role in advocating for individual unit owners when they sue their Miami condo associations.

Urbay’s professional background includes a real estate broker license and a Community Association Manager (CAM) certification, making her well-equipped to investigate condo situations that have “gone sideways.”

Urbay, who has lived in Miami since the age of three, described her unexpected entry into the industry.

She spent 10 years managing over 600 residential units before launching her own boutique property management company focused on commercial and residential condos.

Her transition to case management was personal, stemming from her own “very bad situation” as a condo unit owner where she had to fight her “big, bad board,” an experience that led her to join attorney Eduardo Gomez to focus on “helping the little guy.”

Zalewski provided the historical context for South Florida’s volatile condo market, noting the period before the Great Recession when developers required only a 20-percent deposit.

This high-risk era, characterized by flippers and websites like CondoFlip.com, ultimately stalled after Hurricane Wilma hit South Florida in late 2005 and ultimately collapsed after the 2008 Lehman Brothers failure.

Following the South Florida condo market’s freefall, the rules tightened, demanding a 50-percent deposit for new construction to ensure a more legitimate pool of buyers and reduce the risk of buyers walking away at closing.

Urbay recounted the severe financial stress she managed during the foreclosure crisis, having taken on associations with crippling delinquency rates that, in some cases, reached 50 percent.

During this time, condo associations—especially apartment complexes that had recently been converted—struggled to decide whether to pay for basics like water or critical needs like insurance.

She recalled the widespread mentality of condo association boards to constantly “vote down reserves,” a practice she actively pushed back against.

Urbay tried to educate her clients on the dangers of deferred maintenance and would often persuade boards to implement a “partial reserve” payment as a starting point.

Developers of condo conversions typically made only minimal, cosmetic upgrades to these older structures before selling.

Zalewski noted that these converted condos often saw a massive price drop during the downturn, citing an example in Greater Downtown Miami where units plummeted from the $500,000 per unit range to less than $100,000.

Urbay confirmed the chaos of the time, observing that many buyers and Realtors failed to understand the financial reality of their purchase, neglecting to read key documents like budgets, financials and the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) sheet.

Zalewski described the extreme cost-cutting measures during the downturn, including buildings unscrewing every other light bulb and shutting down security cameras, and recalled the unprofessional scene of a real estate agent sleeping on a mattress in an bank-owned unit.

Urbay shared her parallel experiences from the “wild, wild West” period, dealing with abandoned units used for illicit activities and older buildings that were plagued with constant plumbing backups and chronic maintenance issues.

She noted a persistent problem with the industry’s management structure, distinguishing between onsite management for highrises and portfolio management for smaller communities.