As has been widely reported lately, Fannie Mae, which is under the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has developed a secret blacklist of condominiums, HOAs and co-ops that are ineligible for “conventional financin…
In a May 3 statement, National Housing Conference (NHC) President/CEO and former Treasury Department official during the Obama and Trump administrations David M. Dworkin expressed serious concerns about the Fed’s move to increase interest …
The recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank, and First Republic have shaken public faith in the US banking industry, again. While not the disastrous level of bank failures that led to the Great Recession in 2008, recent…
This past year was a year of contradiction in the real estate industry, both locally and nationally. 2022 began on the coattails of one of the strongest markets for homes in recent history. But by early spring, with inflation rising at a r…
In our current environment of steeply rising costs, it’s more important than ever to safeguard your reserves to ensure that your association has sufficient funds available for immediate and future capital projects. Unfortunately, many assoc…
A recent article on a real estate website posed a common question: What’s the best way for a condo board to collect unpaid common charges? The author of the article - presumably an attorney - gave some pretty good advice…and some not so g…
Like baseball players, condo and co-op owners are often creatures of habit. Settled into their units, they’re used to costs rising over time, but on a regular and predictable basis. That means once a year - usually in January - and by a co…
Many cooperatives and condominiums in New York have long benefitted from a tax abatement program under Real Property Tax Law 467-a. In September of 2021, Governor Kathy Hochul put new eligibility requirements into this law that go into ef…
Aging is expensive—and that goes double for residential buildings. Exterior deterioration is inevitable, mechanical systems do not last forever, and everyday foot traffic and wear take their toll on even the sturdiest structures. For many c…
The Community Associations Institute (CAI) estimates that 74 million Americans live in communities managed by homeowners associations, of which condos account for 35% to 40%. That’s a lot of people - many of whom may be in for a nasty shock…