You see the price. Four-eighty. Maybe four-sixty if the seller's scared. You think, finally, the market is coming to me. You, the working stiff who saved the down payment in a coffee can for three years. You think this is your moment. And I am here to tell you, pal, it is not your moment. The moment belongs to the HOA insurance premium, and it just went up again.
Here is what is happening, and it ain't complicated once somebody explains it straight. Buildings are aging. Post-Surfside, lenders got religion about reserve studies and structural inspections — and that religion costs money. Insurance carriers looked at aging concrete, looked at climate claims, looked at their actuarial tables and said no thank you, and either walked or repriced. The ones that stayed repriced like they were selling front-row seats to a prizefight. Associations pass that cost through to unit owners in the form of assessments and monthly dues that have, in some markets, doubled in two years. MarketWatch reported on this pattern recently — falling list prices masking rising total cost of ownership — and the numbers are not flattering to the pitch that cheap condos are a deal.
A two-bedroom in a fifteen-story building with a pool and a garage and an aging roof is not a two-bedroom in a fifteen-story building. It is a two-bedroom in a fifteen-story building plus whatever the board voted on last Tuesday plus the special assessment they haven't told you about yet plus the insurance deductible that is now so high it functions as self-insurance anyway. You buy the unit. You inherit the building.
Now here is where I have to be honest with you about something. My cousin Sal — not a licensed anything, I want to be clear on that — had a scheme. He has got a borrowed Econoline and a contact at a title company in Canarsie and the idea was we go to every open house in Flatbush this weekend, I file the color piece, he flips the HOA documents to buyers for a flat fee as a “consulting service.” I bring the readers, he brings the expertise, we split sixty-forty. I typed up the flyers myself. They were good flyers.
The title company contact called Sal on Friday. Turns out what Sal was proposing is not entirely legal in this state without a real estate license. The contact used the word “cease.” Possibly also “desist.” Sal is currently parked outside a diner in Bay Ridge eating a western omelet and reconsidering his options. The truck has a flat. The flyers are in a garbage bag in the back. The scheme is dead, the column is real, and the HOA fee is still going up — so read your documents before you sign anything, because nobody else is going to do it for you.