how much co-op mortgage for a 1br

How many units are in the building? What type of mortgage did the co-op take out and at what interest rate? (E.g., 10-year balloon loan, 15-year self-liquidating loan, etc.) What is the additional money being used for?

For reference, my large one bedroom 1.5 bath has about $50k in pro rata underlying debt. The smaller one beds in the building have about $30k. Our board is, I believe, is going to increase this debt level somewhat during our upcoming refinance in order to fund necessary repairs. When the choices are depleting reserves, assessing, or borrowing money at 5%, borrowing can be the least bad option. Some shareholders are pushing for a self-liquidating loan so we can have some kind of debt reduction plan, but it will all depend on what it does to maintenance.

Co-ops that borrow too much money (and in our case it was all done by the sponsor years ago) can get stuck in a catch-22. They can either keep maintenance reasonable and use interest-only or balloon mortgages where principal will never really be paid down, or they can have high maintenance for 10 or 15 years while attempting to pay off the large debt with a self-liquidating loan. Few if any banks are willing to lend to most co-ops beyond 15 years.

The bigger the coop mortgage the greater the leverage inherent in your investment. Different strokes for different folks.

I always figure out what the building's mortgage is per square foot and then mentally add that to the price per square foot that I am explicitly paying. That should give you a sense as to whether the price is reasonable.

Even adding the mortgage per unit back to the sales price, the co-op still seems to be much more attractive in pricing than condo. So, once investors no longer have faith in real-estate, the co-op might hold value better than condo, right?