Condos borrowing money

No.

Yes, it can, however the amount and conditions of the borrowing are governed by the by-laws. For large amounts, it might require the unit owners to consent.

While I am not an expert in this area, yes, a condo can borrow money rather than have a large up-front assessment. We briefly explored this avenue in my building and found a bank that would offer it to us, but we ultimately decided against this route. The term offered was relatively short- I can't recall how long, but it was somewhere in the 2-5 year payback period.

Right. E.g., the board of 15CPW can borrow up to $500,000 per year. Anything more than that requires the approval of owners representing a total of more 2/3 of the common interest.

Getting the loan is another story, but the condo usually owns the super's apartment and can mortgage that.

National Cooperative Bank - provides financing for coops.

Condos have no collateral to put up for a mortgage. If the bylaws authorize loans they can be taken out, pledging the maintenance payments in exchange.

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/RPP/9-B/339-jj

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/RPP/9-B/339-v

They cannot take out mortgages.

I was on a condo board and faced this problem. We needed some unexpected capital improvements and found the assessment per unit would have been overwhelming for a lot of unit owners. We had a mortgage on the super's apartment, set up when the building opened 15 years earlier, through the bank doing the mortgages for the building. We figured that that the values of all the apartments in the builiding had skyrocketed since then, so a larger mortgage would be easy to get. NOT SO, EVEN AFTER 1 WHOLE YEAR. Fortunately, the sponsor was in the process of constructing other buildings and had some contacts who eventually gave us a mortgage. (The sponsor only owned the commercial spaces, but he would have been assessed heavily also without the new mortgage.)