Why Do Some Buildings Always Have an Ongoing Assessment?

Aug. 5, 2015 — An assessment is a recurring fee that is levied by a co-op or condo usually on a monthly or quarterly basis. As opposed to maintenance fees and carrying charges, which are typically used to cover a building's regular operating costs, an assessment is usually levied as a means to pay for capital improvement items, one-off transactions, extraordinary legal fees, or sometimes to balance an annual budget that is running a deficit. If a board has levied a permanent assessment (instead of increasing maintenance or monthly carrying charges) it may indicate that the monthly carrying charges are already high in relation to other comparable properties or that the property does not have sufficient reserves to cover extraordinary costs

Michael Crespo is president of Citadel Property Management.