Good information and clear communication are crucial for anyone involved with the administration of a cooperative, condominium or homeowners association—crucial not just to thriving, but surviving in today's challenging economic times. …
As managers, residents, and board members of the city's residential buildings gear up for 2011, sweeping up the tinsel and cookie crumbs leftover from holiday parties isn't the only job at hand. From bedbug disclosure rules to a propose…
A proposal to ban federal lenders from purchasing loans in co-ops that use flip tax fees or condos with deed-based transfer fees has housing community leaders worried the ruling would lead to diminished operating budgets and severely d…
Every condo and co-op has its own set of governing documents by which building administrators direct their community's day-to-day business. Bylaws, rules and regulations, and precedent-setting legal cases help keep boards within the le…
Tighter lending requirements for Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed mortgages for condos have put financial and administrative pressure on condos all over the country at a time when many are ill prepared for any new challenges…
Not everybody on a co-op or condo's board is an accountant (or can even balance their own checkbook, for that matter.) Handling the money for an entire building is a big responsibility, however, and residents rely upon their board to ma…
As of November 2, new lending guidelines from HUD mean that FHA loan requirements will be significantly tightened for condominium sales. The new requirements could have a profoundly negative effect on the ability to sell or bu…
Even in the best of economic times, preparing a co-op or condo’s annual budget can be a tiresome task, fraught with uncertainty, estimations and shifting numbers. Factor in one of the most harrowing economic downturns in a century, with…
Fresh from hoisting up the banking and automobile sectors, a newly muscular Uncle Sam is now turning his attention to putting the skids on the real estate meltdown. The Obama Administration earlier this year rolled out two maj…
In the last two years, Fannie Mae has amended it’s guidelines for selling and serving mortgages on condominiums, cooperatives, and planned unit developments three times. Why should service providers, cooperative corporations and communi…