On Lyndale Street in the Logan Square neighborhood of downtown Chicago sits a six-unit condo building. The rather average building is home to more than a dozen residents, a mix of professional couples and families with kids. Everyone in the small community pays homeowners-association fees to cover building improvements, various repairs, and basic amenities like upkeep of the common area and trash removal. But lately the Lyndale Street residents have been sharing a new burden: soaring insurance costs.
The cost of insuring the property jumped by 43% from 2019 to 2022, forcing the board members in charge of managing the building’s finances to make some tough choices. The board shopped around each year for lower insurance prices and tried to find other ways to save money, such as having the board president do the landscaping. But even with all the…
