Boston Condo Owners Special Assessment:Minimum of $70,000

The Boston Globe reports:

It's the condo owners' nightmare: The building's heating and cooling system needs an overhaul, so everybody must pay a huge one-time assessment.

But the 500-plus owners at Harbor Towers on Boston's waterfront are facing the mother of all bills: from $70,000 to over $400,000. And they're due by the end of this month. In full.

The owners are reeling from the news, delivered in August, that collectively they owe $75.6 million for replacing much of the buildings' main systems; some can't afford the assessment and are selling their units.

"I'm just going to cut my losses and get out," said Renee Greene, a market research broker who lives on the seventh floor of one of the two towers and was hit with an assessment of about $95,000 for her 880-square-foot unit.

The whopping assessments have bitterly divided residents into two camps: those who have faith in the condo's trustees and the experts hired to examine the systems' conditions, and those who do not. Dissenters question the need for the work, while supporters contend that additional delays will only make an expensive project more costly.

Building equity?