After a long period of low rates marked by high levels of activity in financing, the dramatic climb in interest rates over the past two years has presented challenges for co-op buildings faced with refinancing their underlying permanent mor…
Category: Finance
As 2023 draws to a close, the New York metro’s co-op and condominium communities are feeling the consequences of a long, slow, persistent market decline brought on by the pandemic, rising interest rates, and inflation. That decline has mean…
Congratulations! You’ve just been elected to the board of directors, and given your first monthly financial packet. Like many new board members, your first thought is, “This is so confusing. Glad I’m not the treasurer - I don’t have to unde…
When the average American taxpayer (or tax-dodger, one supposes) hears the word “audit,” they’re likely struck with a feeling somewhere between annoyance and terror. Usually that’s because being audited means that something has been found a…
Cash flow is the lifeblood of any multifamily residential community, be it a rental building, co-op, condo, or HOA. However, because the latter three are nonprofit entities, maintaining consistent cash flow is even more critical to their he…
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…
With inflation and supply chain disruptions dominating much of the news these days, multifamily boards and managers are feeling the squeeze, whether in the form of rising prices for necessary supplies, or lack of those supplies altogether, …
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…
In early 2020, our firm was hired to prepare a reserve study for an unremarkable 136-unit, 12-story condominium in south Florida. It was the kind of association you could drive right by without noticing, not much different from all the othe…