If you own or are considering buying a unit in a condo or homeowners association, there’s a recent change in the mortgage market that deserves your full attention. In March 2026, Fannie Mae issued Lender Letter LL-2026-03, introducing signi…

In a densely-populated high-rise or condo association where people share walls, halls, and amenities, residents' behavior can impose itself on neighbors every bit as much as noise and odors.  When disruptive or unsafe behavior is caused by…

Multifamily living means sharing spaces with neighbors and, unfortunately, it also often means sharing areas with pests like cockroaches, bedbugs, rats, and mice. Beyond being a skin-crawling nuisance, they can wreak havoc on a building and…

Each and every multifamily community is different, with unique needs, expectations, and challenges. If you’re a regular reader of this publication, you’ve heard that refrain many times, across a broad range of contexts—including board gover…

The housing affordability crisis isn’t exactly breaking news; over the past 25 years, stagnant wages and spiralling prices for even modest one- or two-bedroom condo units have raised the bar to homeownership well beyond the reach of most fi…

Residential co-ops have played a small but historically meaningful role in Chicago’s housing landscape since the late 1800s. While cities like New York developed large cooperative housing sectors relatively quickly around the same time, Chi…

The Windy City has hundreds of green roofs covering millions of square feet. While Chicago doesn’t have a law mandating green roof conversions by a specific deadline, it does have policies encouraging both existing and new construction to i…

For community associations, property managers, and building owners, financial stability depends on more than simply keeping up with day-to-day operations. It requires thoughtful, proactive planning for the future, particularly for major rep…

Q. “We live in a co-op, and one of our neighbors seems to have a constant flow of different strangers entering and leaving their apartment while they are absent. I cannot imagine that the board knows this is going on, and our house rules …

Keeping a building dry is both an interior and exterior challenge. All buildings, regardless of materials and construction, are at risk of water infiltration and moisture build-up in basements, walls, ceilings, window wells and roof materia…