Well if that’s the case, they’ll be the ones sued into oblivion. This may sound naive but how do they make money owning just the building but not the units?
They levy pretty high monthly condo fees and receive a percentage of the fees. The building assumes responsibility for routine maintenance of the common areas like hallways, lobby, landscaping, pool, garage and administration of owner/tenant issues, sales and billing. The condo fees also cover local and state taxes and major repairs, which may be budgeted or may be assessed.
For example, as the townhouse community where we live gets older, things happen—like the street trees have grown so that they are overshading the streetlights and uprooting sidewalks. So our HOA made a new proposal at the yearly budget meeting (which few owners bother to attend) and regular dues went up for several years in a row to prune 100 trees and repair sidewalks. But when a hurricane damaged the pool house and some other common-area structures, there was a one-time special assessment to cover the HOA's insurance deductible for those repairs.