I used a local credit union

I think every bank has an open mortgage, you might not have asked for the right kind of mortgage. Tell your banker what you want to do, and she will find a suitable mortgage for you.

It is important to stick with a bank to develop a long term relationship. This is if you want to build your real estate portfolio. Every bank offers about the same products, they may have some variations and called different names but they are basically the same.

I own the credit union a lot of money already before I borrowed for this building. Over the years I have bought about a million dollars and they treat me very well. Whenever I buy a condo, all I need to do is to fax to my banker and she will automatically offers me the best product they have.

Coming back to the mortgage on the building, they put one mortgage on 24 titles. Each time I sell one unit, they remove the mortgage from that unit. So the bank DOES charge me $125 discharge fee for each unit. When the mortgage is paid down to zero, I guess they will charge me a final discharge fee of $125 again. So they will actually have charged me 24 x $125=$3,000.

There were extra charge for commercial loan. For example, the bank charged me half a percentage point for the loan ($3,500). I have to pay the appraisal fee of $5,000 to appraise the building for the bank. There could be charge for environmental reports for another couple of thousand dollars. All these charges could be waivered for a residential mortgage or for a single condo.

I guess you have to put all this into perspective. You are in it to make a quite substantial amount of money, all these costs are part of the expenses that need to be incurred to finish the project.

Other costs: to complete all 24 sales, the notary public(or lawyer) would make $10,000. The realtors will make $80,000. So the selling expenses will amount to about $100,000.