Mortgage lenders restrict buyers from NYC buildings deemed financially unstable

Buyers aren’t the only ones under increased scrutiny  as a result of  banks’ stricter lending standards — building are, too. And that’s stifling potential apartment deals in the city, according to the New York Daily News. Even buyers that have been preapproved for mortgages are being shut out of buildings deemed financially insecure.

“The building is now of equal importance to the unit itself,” Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller, an appraiser, told the Daily News. That’s because if the buyer were to face foreclosure the lender might have have to sell the property, and that would be a tougher proposition in a financially flawed building.

The problem is just the latest example of how banks are limiting a real estate bounce back even in the face of high rents and low interest rates.

The Daily News cited the Wellington Tower, at 350 East 82nd Street on the Upper East side, as a condominium building where the issue has surfaced multiple times. One reason the building is scrutinized is because it doesn’t show 10 percent of its expenses going into a seperate reserve. [NYDN] — Adam Fusfeld