Two more charts to add to Sunday’s rudimentary look at co-op finances. I wanted to look at how the proportion of income and spending segments have changed over time. If inflation were the only driving force in increased expenses, for example, all the lines below would be flat. Where that is not the case, we may consider that there are other factors at work.

This is what the change in relative revenue looks like over the past five years. You can see that even though carrying charges have increased absolutely over those five years, they have decreased as a proportion of overall co-op income; that is, they have not increased at the same rate as other sources of income. Resale fees have increased in importance as the real estate market has heated up. Everything else has remained relatively consistent.

Here you’ll see that taxes have fluctuated slightly but stayed around 25% of overall expenses; utilities and fuel costs have noticeably decreased (though before this past winter); maintenance costs and legal fees have both increased relative to other expenses over the past 5 years, but just barely. Everything else has stayed pretty consistent.