CO-OP/CONDO BUYERS

If you're looking to buy a condo, boy does Freddie Mac have some good news for you. Brickunderground.com reports that the mortgage giant's new loan program, called Home Possible Advantage, will let potential condo buyers borrow up to 97 percent of an apartment's value — which means it's beginning to look a lot like a down payment of just 3 percent. Brickunderground.com did the math for you: "to buy a $500,000 apartment, for example, you'd only need $15,000 in the bank instead of a whopping $100,000." Best math ever? Not for potential co-op buyers, unfortunately. The program, which goes into effect March 23, is "only available for condos and single-family houses." Just as well, really, since co-ops often require a 20 percent down payment at least.

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Condominiums continue to use the lion's share of the 421a tax exemption, with very few co-ops participating in the program that along with the popular J-51 exemption is set to expire in June, panelists said Wednesday in a housing symposium. Participants also revealed proposals for affordable homes and predicted the fates of "poor doors" and a new, related wrinkle, "poor fences."

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The first week of December has come and gone and pretty soon it will be holiday party time. Brickunderground.com compiled a list of do's and don'ts for hosts to ensure they don't tick off building staff and neighbors. Advice includes letting the doorman and immediate neighbors know ahead of time that you're having a party; covering floors with cheap carpet, so dancing shoes don't drive downstairs neighbors batty; quieting down by 10 or 11 p.m.; and making sure party guests don't spill out of the apartment into common areas. If you're the one throwing the party, you may think these rules are an 11 on a Scrooge scale of 1-10. Not so much if you're the poor soul on 6C being serenaded by cackling merry people clomping up the stairs, past his door, to smoke on the roof. 6C probably didn't sign up for three or more hours' worth of foot traffic and noise. So even if party rules are already covered in your bylaws, the time is ripe for boards to distribute gentle reminders to residents who plan to host parties, to make sure guests have a good time without disturbing the rest of the building residents.

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Updated Nov. 30 and Dec. 3 — An attorney in Manhattan is challenging the legal foundation of New York City's efforts to prosecute short-term renters, saying the term "illegal hotel" is a misnomer without basis in law and that the City routinely condones unconstitutional warrantless searches and other questionable actions. 

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Weren't we just talking about the Mitchell-Lama co-ops late last month? We sure were. Only 45,400 limited-equity co-op and rental apartments in 98 buildings remain, compared to 105,000 apartments in 269 buildings in 1955 when the program began. New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein (D - 34th District) sponsored legislation in December to build more. Great news for supporters of Mitchell-Lama. But back in the news this week is Southbridge Towers in the Financial District, which voted for privatization just under two months ago. Residents of Southbridge are divided on the issue, reports The New York Times, adding that the "state’s Homes and Community Renewal agency is reviewing the Southbridge vote for accuracy, but has no authority to override a shareholder decision or block privatization." If it goes through, and it's certainly looking like it will, it means the more than 1,600-unit complex would become "the largest Mitchell-Lama co-op in Manhattan to privatize at a time when the city is struggling to hold onto its dwindling stock of affordable housing." And that's bad news for Senator Klein, proponents of Mitchell-Lama and middle- and working-class New Yorkers who are left vying for whatever affordable housing is left.

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Liz R.Insurance Broker writes: We are a condo of 67 units. Lately, buyers seem to be investors who are renting out their units. We have nothing that addresses this situation in our bylaws. We now have 10 of the units rented with no restrictions on time of lease, etc. I understand that if 30 percent of all units are rented, some banks will not approve a mortgage. I also see other pitfalls, and the board is discussing solutions. First, we are trying to get an 80 percent majority vote changed to 66 2/3rds in our bylaws. The more rentals with absentee occupancy, the more problems we seem to have. What are your thoughts, and has anyone confronted this same problem? This will be a hard sell.

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What's with ground leases so much in the news lately? In our second item about them in a week, a consortium is paying $285 million for the land beneath Carnegie House, the 324-unit co-op at 100 West 57th Street. Since ground-lease rents are typically 6 percent of current market value, reports The Real Deal, rising New York real estate prices means the current $4.4 million rent the cooperative pays annually would be $27 million if the rent were to be reset today — so what's it going to be in 10 years, when the rent is scheduled to be reset? Which brings to mind a variation on the old joke: How do you get to Carnegie House? By having enough money to make ground-lease payments the size of Montana.

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In July 2013, a full nine months after superstorm Sandy devastated Brooklyn's Shore Gardens co-op, management still had not repaired and remediated enough to allow all lower-floor residents to return. And now, more than two years after the flooding that drove many shareholders out of their homes, Shore Gardens Realty has made few or no renovations to the common areas and some apartments, as shareholder Natasha Brown tells NY1 News in disgusting detail. (See the video, if you're a Time-Warner subscriber.) Along with mold and off-limits laundry rooms, there's parking-lot damage that allows flooding from a nearby creek. But as Natalie Cole, another shareholder, says, "Calls to the management company go unanswered" — a fact reporter Susan Jhun found out for herself. There's really no excuse for that, let alone for letting repairs linger this long.

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You can call them pocket listings, whisper listings or off-market listings ... but chances are you won't be able to call them anything because, really, what are the chances schlubs like you or me are going to get tipped off to an unpublicized, unlisted co-op or condo apartment for sale? Well, our odds just got better with BrickUnderground.com's three-part "Guide to Elusive 'Whisper Listings'," here, here and here. That's a lot of whispering. There's advice for both buyers and sellers from brokers and attorneys, including how to tell if the seller really does have a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge, or at least to that nice apartment Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

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For such a relatively rare real-estate instrument, ground leases have been in the news a fair bit lately. And now the shareholders of Trump Plaza, at 167 East 61st Street in Manhattan, are getting news they might prefer to live without. As Bloomberg Businessweek reports, the family that owns the land beneath the 31-year-old luxury co-op wants to sell it — and the $185 million that the co-op board offered could hit some residents with an assessment of more than $1 million each. “People are calling me to stop this from happening,” said attorney Adam Leitman Bailey, principal of his namesake firm, who has been contacted by some owners wanting to keep the sale, and the assessment, from happening. But equally concerning is how much the ground-lease rent would go up another, outside buyer. In that scenario, the board projects, a monthly maintenance fee of $2,100 would increase to $9,800 when the lease resets in 20124.

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