rising building expenses

I don't know but I will say I don't know any other city where the inspect them as often. And I suspect there's a degree of corruption in NYC gov't where it has been captured by special interests.

No, even if "every five years" had seemed too frequent before, with climate change and the extra stressors of stronger storms/more water/such variable temperatures it's necessary.

Also remember that much of NYC housing stock is old -- boxy brick buildings built before the great zoning change of the early 60s are now pushing 65, and the 1910ish building I'm typing this in is certainly feeling her age.

If you want lower maintenance, you should push politically for NYC taxation to be based on income, because running so much of it through property is really one of the problems.

ali r.
{upstairs realty}

the law costs NYC buildings about a billion dollars a year, many of the buildings spend over half a million dollars to comply every five years. The larger apartment buildings spend over a million. There have been very few deaths from falling facades in the City in the last decade. The cost benefit ratio is not in favor spending the billion dollars.

>> If you want lower maintenance, you should push politically for NYC taxation to be based on income, because running so much of it through property is really one of the problems.

Why is that a problem? My understanding is that nearly every municipality in the country primarily collects revenue this way, including most large cities. I don’t know why this is, just don’t understand why it is a problem per se, and if you think all municipalities should switch.

>> If you want lower maintenance, you should push politically for NYC taxation to be based on income, because running so much of it through property is really one of the problems.

We already pay RE & income taxes in NYC.
The RE tax is unavoidable regardless of residency status.
Income taxes can be avoided by declaring non-NYC residency.
Shifting more from RE tax to income tax would just give people with means another way to avoid NYC tax.

SF is now following NY re facade inspections; our SF building is in the process of figuring out how much it is going to cost, and the estimates are not pretty.

@MCR- kind of stuff + basic board competence make me of two minds re: building reserves.

There's been, as of now, 3 major board turnovers at my condo in 10 years.
The second board drained the reserve twice in 4 fiscal years. They were able to fill & re-drain it because of a one-time sponsor check we'll never see again.

Now the third board is ringing the bell about needing to ramp up reserve savings to fill it back up. This seems good & responsible and I trust this particular vintage of board members! Then again, how long will they stay on, and if idiots get back on the board.. it's a big fat piggy bank to drain a third time.

@value: do you have a source for the costs you mention?

Every 5 years seems onerous, and once all buildings have been through a few cycles, the overall quality of facades should be improved enough to lower the risk of pedestrians getting beaned... But, wear and tear is a continuous process and mortar isn't eternal, not to mention the buildings w/ falsified or poorly done inspections -- so maybe risk can never be reasonably reduced (assuming it was too high previously).

It will be interesting to see if drone-based video inspections take the place of manual inspections as phyical examination is only 'preferred' by the law - it seems like this should drop costs a bit, but there is still the mandated physical examination of a street-side 'representative sample', which will always entail scaffolding. Maybe the answer is to reduce the requirement for sidewalk bridges during inspections -- perhaps only require them for new construction and some material level of repair?

Meanwhile it's going to be fun to see some of the super talls, and Jamie Dimon's new cubicle palace partially covered in scaffolding every 5 years... (no exemption for glass & steel clad buildings)

Ali,

NYC already charges more $ to high income people as city revenues is funded by real estate as well city income tax. Think some one living in $4mm apartment (call it $50k taxes per year) making $1mm vs $2mm. City tax burden on person making $2mm is $38000 higher. In NYC suburbs they both would have paid the same real estate tax at a $2mm house of say $50k. And $2mm earner wouldn't have to pay $38k extra.

@Aaron - ideally you could get different/better information at lower costs with drones by equipping with some additional non-visible range imaging like IR, which can be used to detect water ingress.

Argument there you could do the big expensive thing every 10 years while doing the drones at much lower cost in between, but the scaffolding industrial complex would throw a fit.

California has statutory reserve requirements, unlike NY, so we don't have a choice with that building. With respect to buildings where we do have a choice, I prefer to live in a "pay as you go - no reserve fund" building with like minded owners who maintain personal reserve funds for their apartment in the same manner they do with their SFH. I think the moral hazard of a board faced with a large piggy bank and infrastructure needs geared to their own apartments is too hard for most people to resist, so best to leave them with an empty bank account and force them to explain each assessment to owners.

To the original question, how many of the city council member own in above 6 floors buildings? I suspect may have houses or low rise or rentals. Hence, continues passing of laws where the intent is good but the cost is crazy high. 10y inspection should be plenty. It is likely facade mafia behind the scenes in toughening the laws. And cost of facade work in NYC is 3x what it should be as insurance is really expensive and engineers, facade contractors are all "friends". Managing agent doesn't have much incentive to force down the cost. In some cases, they get their cut.

@MCR - " I think the moral hazard of a board faced with a large piggy bank and infrastructure needs geared to their own apartments is too hard for most people to resist".

That is precisely what happened. A lot of discretionary building infra upgrades and gold plated solutions that happened to only benefit 1 particular line or floors plus overlapping vendors with personal & building projects...

@300 - I think you are correct there re: makeup of city council and the general buddy buddy system around the inspections

Steve,

I see it too closely unfortanely. Board hires an engineer who gets three bids - all of them from expensive contractors who they know well. They will resist any attempt to get bids from people who they don't know well and tell the board that they aren't sure about quality of work. Board members feel that the engineer did the job and they got the best possible price. There are indeed some good managing agents who are cost concious.

Then the contractors indeed have to follow myriads of regulations by DOB and inspections (you do some work, you wait for inspections, and finish paperwork etc) genuinely adding to their downtime cost. Rental buildings manage to do the same work at less than half the cost.

“With respect to buildings where we do have a choice, I prefer to live in a "pay as you go - no reserve fund" building with like minded owners who maintain personal reserve funds for their apartment in the same manner they do with their SFH”

This seems exceedingly risky, how to you ensure your “like minded” neighbors/owners have enough in reserves to cover a major assessment, or are willing to actually pay for a major assessment even if they can afford it. Maybe they are supporting a no reserve fund because they plan to sell in the very near future and don’t give a damn how the building looks in 5-10 years. Plus most banks won’t lend if a condo has zero reserves. I guess if you want to live in a condo or coop that only accepts all cash buyers, then fine but good luck when you eventually want to sell. This is part of the problem in Florida, many condos where most owners are investors or 2nd/vacation home owners, they don’t actually see the wear and tear on the building and don’t believe reserves are needed and they want their condo fees low since they are only thinking about the present or very near future. Then a major, major assessment is finally needed and they can’t sell their unit no matter how much they slash the price. Everyone wants to kick the can down the road, but as we saw what happened in Surfside, the consequences can be disastrous. I would never buy in a building that has really low reserves, it’s just not a good omen for the future and even if you are sure you can financially afford a major assessment down the road, you can never be sure how your fellow owners would react. In my small 16 unit building in SF, a couple of owners did not pay a $10k assessment. The condo board had put a lien on the property. Eventually they paid one year (!!) later but it was extremely stressful as we could not schedule needed repairs because we weren’t sure when these deadbeat owners would cough up their portion of the assessment. Ah, the joys of condo ownership!!

@911 - you are also looking at a very different regulatory regime in blue cities vs Florida though.

I'm not sure a condo/coop could get into quite the same situation of these Florida condos re: structural soundness given the relative inspections/certifications/insurance requirements.

Think of some of the stories in NY about $30k mandated elevator software updates, buildings having gas turned off for a year after a leak as the city mandates entire mechanical room be redone, the overcautious approach to facade maintenance, and general whinging about the cost of compliance here.

Also building on bedrock vs porous ground with direct exposure to corrosive seawater coming up through the ground.

NYC would probably have condemned a building in such a dire state here long before it could fall over.

That being said, I'm sure something bad could happen here.

@911 - Yes, finding "like minded" is indeed the challenge with communal living in any form. Our building at the moment has a healthy reserve, plus we were just assessed on top of that an amount equal to 4 months of maintenance. I am okay with this because I have full faith in our current board president. She is a seasoned executive of a large hospital and has the building humming. She is that rare example of high competence fused with complete integrity, and I am so pleased the shareholder population has finally gotten behind her. However, if she were to leave the building, I fear all those precious reserves would be spent on the apartment of the finance guy who joined the board just to save his illegal gas fireplace (mercifully his efforts on that front failed, but I believe that is only because of the strength of the current board president).

Regarding the "pay as you go" model :
It's superior as far as tax planning. When you contribute towards a reserve fund through higher maintenance you get zero tax advantages. When capital projects are paid for with capital assessments the assessments are added to your tax basis in the property

You need a certain amount in reserves for emergencies.

@stache - I prefer that a building maintain a revolving LOC that it can tap for emergencies and then immediately pay down after it has been tapped through an assessment. Unfortunately, boards who don't share my preferences in the realm will tap the LOC and not pay it down; they will wait until the next refi to roll it into that, meanwhile paying the higher LOC interest rate for how many years intervene. No matter which way we cut it, it all comes down to having a board with financial management competence and integrity. Total crap shoot in any given building these days.

Yes, absolutely should be a longer cycle. Wasn't there a serious proposal at the NYC Council to do this, sponsored by Powers?

I think a significant part of the problem is not the frequency but the cost. Not only are the charges for the inspections high, but those involved in the process have their bread buttered on the side of finding expensive solutions. The city could mandate the rather than building engineers running the show, a list of specialty engineers who had fees severely capped be used (of course that will be get a different set of problems). Or even set up a city agency to perform the inspections paid for with the Real Estate taxes collected from the buildings.

I'll note that I'm privy to seeing the costs incurred by both private building owners and Coop/Condo buildings and in my limited experience the former spend much less than the latter on this issue. And I believe it's because of the total lack of experience of Board Members along with the current status quo of building professionals all having their hands out and backing each other up advising to spend as much money as possible. And while I have absolutely zero proof I believe that some of the professionals who have access to building financials are advising certain professionals how much money the Coop/Condo has access to.

Look at how much money 77 7th Ave and 2 5th Ave spent on facade projects

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/realestate/village-co-op-gets-hit-with-30-million-assessment.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/realestate/streetscapes-the-vermeer-trouble-behind-the-elegant-facade.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Fascinating read on the Vermeer ... sh^tty construction.

I've mentioned it before here, wondering if there's a story there - NYC construction from the years 19xx to 19xx (or maybe 20xx) and crime family involvement in the construction trades

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/04/nyregion/trump-project-went-on-despite-warning-about-concrete.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Interesing find. No doubt he would have let it go up if the city hadn't flagged it. And who knows how many buildings were flagged and quietly approved after a consideration was paid. The power of those crime families was in decline through the 80's and 90's but they were at their peak influence in the 1950's and 60's when a lot of those white brick buildings were going up.

Worsening the situation: a uniquely American hyperbolic approach to safety and security. Fire escapes: when was the last time you saw one used for anything but lounging on a hot day? How many thriving cities (Paris, London, Madrid) do not have them? A brick falls on someone, a new regulation is passed...and a lucrative industry is spawned. On a much grander scale, things like the Patriot Act come to mind.

@mcr - a LOC is an excellent idea as long as there is something in the statutes that require it to be paid off through assessments as soon as it is tapped (and not starting when the work is accomplished).

@MTH - the problem with "statutes to require.." is that in my experience what the bylaws say, and what bylaws are enforced depends on the board. Even the management companies are indifferent if you have choose a smaller clown show of a company (sorry, "boutique"). If you are a board indifferent to the bylaws, you could select a management company that suits your needs.

So present board could go through the whole song & dance of campaigning for amendment, gettin quorum & 66% shares voting aye or whatever, amend the bylaws.. and 3 years later, new board, so sad, too bad.

Building financial discipline is a goldilocks situation. If your neighbors are insufficiently rich, your building can fall into disrepair, but if they are too rich then there is no fiscal discipline because what's another 5%/year?

>> Fire escapes: when was the last time you saw one used for anything but lounging on a hot day?

Indeed! Even worse are fire fighters, who spend most of their days lounging around firehouses, cooking, and working out. And don’t get me started on fire extinguishers, whose main purpose is to just be a blaring red eyesore. Seat belts and airbags too, they have never come in handy a single time in my life.

@steve123 - exactly on the fluctuating boards and boards that ignore bylaws. One of the things that prompted me to organize the coup in our building in 2019 was that the board had raised the flip tax from 2 to 3%. I asked to audit the paper election and was denied access. Once I got on the board I did audit and sure enough, the measure had not gotten requisite percentage and the flip tax increase was reversed.

The shareholders have been grateful for the board work I have done over the years and want me to stay involved, but that level of detail and work is a constant reminder of the apartment I love but don't live in.

Current board president is amazing, but the current good state of the building is too dependent on her individual talent and diligence, and even she won't be able to effect pay down of the mortgage. Whoever buys our apartment will need to fall into the category Steve123 describes as too rich to care about annual increases of 5% on maintenance that is already well above the general maintenance of similar apartments in larger buildings.

:D It's true! And police? Bunch of donut snarfers! In my day we setled our differences with a six-shooter.

Amen!

An armed society is a polite society

Five year inspection cycles are not new. That's not what's doing it. What is doing it is increases in the minimum wage, the prevailing wage act that Hochul signed into law and local law 97. The combined effect is paying more in labor costs for non-union positions and switching away from natural gas which is often the cheapest source of fuel.

the prevailing wage is at least triple the State minimum wage. The State enacted it to protect the high wage union construction workers from any competition from non union companies. The construction unions have been large contributors to our politicians. This and the burdensome five year inspection cycle has caused financial problems for many co op apartment buildings. Let's increase the inspection frequency to ten years, and let the minimum wage law apply to all workers equally.

the. NY times has an article about sidewalk sheds that said, that the City Council is considering a law to lengthen the five year scaffold building inspections to 8 or 12 years. That would save Co ops and condos from the huge costs of the five year inspection law now in place.

It said for new buildings so how new I don't know.

The legislation was drafted in consultation with the New York City Special Riggers Asso. NYC contributes about 1b to the industry every year according to Bloomberg. Whenever you have monied interests being solicited by gov't on issues of safety, if the probability of being hit by falling masonry is anywhere near being struck by lightning, it's unsafe. And they probably ignore crime committed in the confines of sheds.

That's a separate issue.

If the law was actually concerned with someone getting hit with falling masonry why does it not include office buildings and brownstones? The five year inspection law is too expensive for co ops and condos and causes large assessments and maintenance increases. There is a correlation between high maintenance for an apartment and lower sale prices. Prices for Manhattan co ops have been flat since 2007.

If people can't afford to live in small buildings and they shouldn't buy in them. The taxpayers don't need to subsidize people's wants.

This is true. People that buy into small buildings need to do that with their eyes wide open.

It looks like it's happening: https://newyorkyimby.com/2025/04/mayor-adams-signs-legislation-to-reform-sidewalk-scaffolding-across-all-five-boroughs.html This article makes it sound like the legislation provides a way to go after coops that take too long. And for buildings over 6 stories high it moves the cycle from 5 to 'up to' 12 years...So far, so sensible. I guess we'll see how it plays out.

Exact text: Don't know how they will decide 6 years or 12 years.

Intro. 394-A — sponsored by Councilmember Powers — extends the cycle for required façade inspections of buildings taller than six stories from five years to between six and 12 years. The bill also empowers DOB to improve the Façade Inspection & Safety Program, which will be informed by an ongoing study launched by DOB.

"...which will be informed by an ongoing study..." Mercifully, 394-A states that the study and recommendations be presented by 31 Dec 25. It sounds like they are bound the by the modification to 28-302.2 to end up with numbers between 6 and 12 years. Not clear to me that there's much difference - stuff is going to fail when it fails, not when the city council says it will.

And new buildings' first inspection is 8 years out, rather than 5.

https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6557984&GUID=3DC87BEC-F376-44C2-B1AF-D59EFBD5DB60