Free Republic

Mayor Eric Adams said he’d consider property tax breaks for middle-class co-op and condo owners who have to pay for pricey building upgrades when a new “green” mandate icks in. Hizzoner said he was open to tax abatements as anxious residents brace for the costs of Local Law 97, which covers 800,000 co-op and condo apartments. “My second apartment was a co-op,” Adams said during testimoney in Albany on the state budget last week.

Just 13 of 146 units at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Private Residences have been purchased in the two years they’ve been up for sale, according to the San Francisco Business Times. The high-rise development, which sits across from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, features condos that range in size from studio to penthouse, including a $49 million two-level residence listed as the most expensive penthouse in the city in 2019. City records obtained by the Business Times show the building’s last sale was on June 1, meaning not one of the condos sold in the year’s third quarter.

US bishops’ conference denies any wrongdoing in ongoing Peter’s Pence lawsuit, blames parishionersWASHINGTON, April 28, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — In an ongoing case regarding the use of Peter’s Pence donations, lawyers for the U.S. bishops have asserted that parishioners were aware (or at least ought to have been) that their money could be used by the Holy See for any purpose, despite their own advertisement to the contrary.The Peter’s Pence lawsuit was originally filed in January 2020 against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) by the Stanley Law Group based in Dallas, Texas, representing a Class Action brought by...

Three women and two men are dead in a shooting in a condominium building on Chicago’s Northwest Side by a neighbor who was known to have “anger management issues,” police said. A woman who had been in critical condition after a gunman opened fire in two units of a Dunning condo building died Sunday from her injuries, bringing the death toll to five from the Saturday night shooting rampage, police said. Authorities said the man left his condo in the 6700 block of West Irving Park Road in the Dunning neighborhood, went to a neighbor’s home in the same building...

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday took the extraordinary step of firing his embattled investigations commissioner, Mark G. Peters, the culmination of a fierce rivalry between the two powerful men. It was a rare and consequential action by a mayor to remove an investigations commissioner: The position is understood to come with a large degree of independence that allows impartial scrutiny of all areas of government, including the executive branch.

Syndicated writer Charles Krauthammer attacked the United Nations for their continued swipes at Israel and the United States. Krauthammer said, ” I think it’s good real estate in downtown New York City. Trump ought to find a way to put his name on it and turn it into condos.”

Chinese conglomerate Anbang Insurance Group bought the Midtown property for $1.95 billion in 2014—which then prompted President Obama to ditch the hotel as presidential lodgings. As many as 1,100 of the current 1,413 rooms will be turned into condos; the WSJ also reports, "The vast reduction in Waldorf hotel rooms will lead to the elimination of many room-service, housekeeping and other hospitality jobs. The Waldorf has about 1,500 hotel employees. The new owners and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., which will continue to manage the property when it reopens, have reached severance agreements with hundreds of these workers at a cost...

Committees are now drafting bills to be presented in the March session of the Florida legislature. If enough citizen input is received demanding regulation of single family residences in Florida’s gated communities and regulation of drug-re-hab centers now being located in private neighborhoods (which may or may not be gated), relief just may be coming for oppressed homeowners, their families, their children! About ten years ago, the Flower Pots bill was successfully passed which regulated only residents of condo communities. However, the State of Florida was reluctant to do anything about giving protection to those of us who own and...

Millions of Californians would not be able to smoke tobacco inside their own homes under new legislation that would raise the bar nationwide for fighting secondhand smoke. No state ever has ventured into personal bedrooms and living rooms with its smoking restrictions, but California is going even further than that by targeting owner-occupied residences as well as rental units. Specifically, the measure would prohibit lighting up a cigarette, cigar or pipe in condominiums, duplexes and apartment units. The push would extend a lengthy list of places where smoking already is barred, including restaurants, workplaces, playgrounds, public buildings and cars containing...

Vermont Secretary of State James Condos is threatening videographer James O'Keefe with criminal investigation for his Project Veritas exposé of voter fraud in the state. Ironically, Condos would have made it far easier to commit the very fraud that O'Keefe's investigation has suggested may be possible at the polls. As a state senator, Condos pushed for same-day registration voting. "We are all concerned about maximizing the number of voters with an election that has integrity," Condos told The Burlington Free Press on February 14, 2005. "There is a lot of trust in our system," Condos told The Free Press on...

Condo board tells elderly woman to upgrade condo or get foreclosed onSarah Eisenberg has lived through many storms in her 96 years, but the ominous forecast she faces these days comes from the association that runs her condominium. Eisenberg said that she has been told that if she doesn't pay to upgrade to hurricane windows and doors, the association will foreclose on her Fort Lauderdale unit. The cost is $6,500, a price tag too expensive for a senior citizen on a fixed income, Eisenberg said. She gets $1,500 per month from her Social Security check. "They want $2,000 for a...

GILFORD – The wife of a soldier serving in Afghanistan has hired a lawyer to take on her condo association for not only refusing to allow her to display the American flag, but refusing to reimburse her for one damaged this winter by workers at the 137-unit development. Geri Farnell of the Samoset Condos, 2696 Lakeshore Road, said she is headed to small claims court. "The flag represents what he does. It's his life," she said of Troy Farnell, who is in the First Special Forces Group. "I thought New Hampshire was incredibly patriotic. But maybe not." Troy Farnell, deployed...

MIAMI—Freddie Mac moved to buoy the battered Florida condo market, waiving lending rules that made it harder to buy and sell units in many condo buildings. Freddie Mac said Wednesday it will back mortgages on units in financially troubled condo developments as long as the seller's loan is already owned or securitized by the mortgage finance company.

Fannie Mae is seeking to prop up Florida's ravaged real estate market by reviewing hundreds of condo projects in the state that currently don't qualify for its loans. The mortgage finance company said Thursday that buildings deemed stable after the review will be given a special approval lasting up to 18 months. If they are approved, lenders will be allowed to offer mortgages to homebuyers and sell those loans to Fannie Mae, which pools them into bonds and sells them to investors. The reviews will look at the buildings' occupancy, homeownership association dues, financial stability and physical condition. Under nationwide...

A Boston city councilor is fired up over attempts by high-end condo owners to muzzle Old Ironsides’ twice-daily cannon blasts, calling their complaints of excessive noise “absolutely ridiculous” and vowing to push for a city resolution to support the time-honored tradition. “Old Ironsides is part of Boston history,” said Councilor Sal LaMattina, who represents Charlestown, where several residents in a swanky condominium development near the Naval Yard have launched a letter-writing campaign to silence the 44-gun frigate’s cannon salutes.

"According to your many editorials on the subject, I'm one of the deadbeat borrowers because I've applied for not one, but two, loan modifications. I can't handle my debt so I'm a deadbeat, right? Wrong...

We've seen lots of wild haircuts in the world of real estate, but nothing like this. Condovultures: A South Florida private equity group purchased 51 new, oceanfront condo-hotel units in the luxury One Bal Harbour complex at $63 per square foot, a discount of 94 percent off of the $1,100 per square foot average recorded sales price, according to a new report from Condo Vultures® LLC. Elcom Condominium LLC with Jorge E. Arevalo and Thomas D. Sullivan in South Miami paid $2.6 million for 41,047 square feet of saleable space in the 124-unit Regent Hotel tower located on the west...

As those who read my piece "Running Off The Cliff" know, the changes made to the 421a tax abatement program resulted in a perverse rush by developers to begin construction on new condo projects in New York City in the face of a declining Wall Street economy. It's an amazing testament to the distortion of behavior that subsidy programs can have. The chart from that piece was so striking I am reprinting it here (but slightly gussied up). Note that building permits for single family homes and 2-4 family homes peaked in 2006, lagging the US overall - as New...

...Until now, most of the damage to banks from the housing crisis has come from homeowners defaulting on their mortgages. But amid a dismal spring sales season for new homes, loans to home and condo builders are looking increasingly shaky. Banks have begun to dump them at what will likely be steep discounts, setting the stage for billions of dollars in fresh losses. ..."As long as the housing market is on a downward path, as long as those prices continue to fall, I think there's a risk that the losses could continue to mount on a variety of loans," Federal...

The day of rest is causing some unrest at Century Village East in Deerfield Beach. Most of the 56 owners in Berkshire E are Orthodox Jews barred for religious reasons from pushing the buttons on their elevator during the Sabbath, which runs from Friday evening to Saturday evening.