Poll: Outlook for NYC Area Maintenance and Common Charge Increases
April 1, 2009 — Cooperative and condominium maintenance/common charges in some buildings have increased by more than 10 percent this year, according to a new online poll of board members by Habitat magazine. The good news is that a huge plurality — 37 percent — raised them just 1 to 3 percent or not at all.
These figures are less optimistic than those of a Habitat print-magazine poll in the January 2009 issue. There, building managers projected that 50 to 65 percent of their buildings would have increases of from 0 to 5 percent.
The poll, conducted the final week of March, found 30 percent of the respondents saying they've increased fees a range of 4 to 7 percent this year. A full quarter of the respondents say they've raised monthly fees a range of 7 to 10 percent. Maintenance or common charges went up a whopping 10-percent-plus in 7 percent of the board members' buildings.
These figures compare with the 7- to 12-percent hike that Cooper Square Realty reported in the February 21 CrainsNewYork.com, for 300 Manhattan co-ops and condos it manages. Halstead Property Management, without citing numbers or locales, reported increases of 8 to 14 percent.
Those figures are primarily for higher-end properties, as distinct from the Habitat online poll's self-reportage from throughout the boroughs, as well as Westchester and Nassau counties and nearby New Jersey. The Habitat figures roughly compare with data reported in mid-2007 by the Manhattan-based appraisal company Miller Samuel. That firm found that maintenance increases for the preceding five years averaged 24.1 percent, or just under 5 percent annually — well within the habitatmag.com poll's most-cited range.
This is, however, markedly higher than the 1997-2001 average Miller Samuel found: 10.2 percent, or roughly 2 percent a year.