Page 3 - New England Condominium July 2020

NEWENGLANDCONDO.COM NEW ENGLAND CONDOMINIUM -JULY 2020 3 Yale Robbins Publisher Henry Robbins Executive Vice President Joanna DiPaola Associate Publisher Hannah Fons Senior Editor Darcey Gerstein Associate Editor Pat Gale Associate Editor Shirly Korchak Art Director Anne Anastasi Production Manager Victor Marcos Traffi c Coordinator Alan J. Sidransky Staff Writer Alyce Hill Director of Sales Copyright 2020 by New England Condominium Magazine LLC, dba Community Association Publishing.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. New England Condominium is published monthly in New York, New York by New England Condominium Magazine LLC, dba Community Association Publishing, 205 Lexington Ave., 12th Floor, New York, NY 10016. 508-753-4630. ISSN 1550-946X. Periodical postage paid at New York, New York and additional mailing o ces. Subscriptions are available free by request to condominium and homeowner associations. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to New England Condominium Magazine, 205 Lexington Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10016. FREE Subscriptions for Board Members, Trustees, Property Managers and Real Estate Decision Makers. To Subscribe, please visit us at: newenglandcondo.com/subscribe TABLE OF CONTENTS C C F P .............. T P …R ................ Among the many realities made visible (or more visible) by the COVID-19 crisis is the domino theory: when one falls, the others follow. Conceived (and largely dis- proven) as a political metaphor, the notion has proven more useful when applied to issues of the economy and public health. The co-op and condo community, unfortunately, is one of those dominos. As the pandemic spread and the threat of mass infection and death rose, the reality of an economic slowdown, or even a full shutdown, came into clearer focus for boards and community administrators. B C L ............ . Each year, boards are tasked with figuring out the costs associated with all aspects of their community’s operations, including any capital repairs or improvements they plan to undertake in the coming fiscal year, and then making sure the revenue is there to cover said costs. Even in the best of times it’s a balancing act, involving predictions, assumptions, and fungible pools of income alongside hard histori- cal data, face values, and built-in escalations. And at the end of the process often comes the unenviable task of informing residents how much more they will need to pay the association or corporation each month to cover all of it. Even before the COVID-19 crisis hit, the question of where real estate values were going was the elephant lurking in the corner of the room. Some submarkets (like Boston, for example) were strong—and getting stronger. Others (like New York City) were suffering declines—primarily thanks to tax law changes passed back in 2017. The limitations on deductibility of state and local taxes, as well as the so-called ‘mansion tax’ had already had a deleterious effect on co-op and condo- minium prices in New York City, its suburbs, and nearby New Jersey, which are all high-tax areas. Substantial overbuilding in the high-end luxury market also didn’t help prices. P ..................... Q 8.586 8.586 19.028 5.3509 3.5239 5.4158 5.6965 2.3909 6.8578 8.7948 2.9666 5.0952 6.1509 3.24474.8436 4.7119 4.5426 2.1631 3.809 4.7025 4.9188