Did Your Building's Budget Problems Start Years Ago?

You probably think your board is managing your building’s finances responsibly. But are you certain? In this episode, three of New York City's leading property management CEOs discuss case studies that expose how buildings can easily spiral into crisis. Peter von Simpson of New Bedford Management, Michael Feldman of Choice Management, and Dan Wollman of Gumley Haft Management share stories about inheriting buildings with conspiracy theories running wild and boards in denial about their financial reality. The conversation reveals why some buildings operate for years with maintenance charges that don't cover actual costs, and what it really takes to rebuild trust when a community is fractured. Through these real-world scenarios, the managers reveal patterns that repeat across buildings, and what your board can do to course-correct before it’s too late. Habitat's Carol Ott conducts the interview.

How To Run Your Building: For Co-ops and Condos

Transcript

Carol Ott (00:42)
Welcome to Habitat's management roundtable series where we have gathered leading New York City property management executives to help boards understand one of the universal challenges in a co-op or a condo's life, switching management companies. While boards make this change hoping for better service and results, the incoming management team

inherits a complex web of unresolved issues, strained relationships, and sky high expectations. To help smooth out these rocky roads, I'd like to introduce our distinguished panel. Joining me today is Peter von Simpson, CEO of New Bedford Management, Michael Feldman, CEO of Choice Management, and Dan Wolman, CEO of Gumley Haft Management.

Before we discuss transition challenges in detail, I'd like to go around the table and ask each of you to call out the toughest part of establishing a new management relationship. Is it the fix or is it the board's response to the fix? Dan, why don't you start?

Dan Wollman (01:47)
the fix is obviously a big part of it, but it is the board's response to a fix. I think a lot of times boards are not on board with what the fix is.

Carol Ott (01:58)
And Peter, how about you?

Peter von Simson (01:59)
Sure, and I think it's somewhere in the middle and think Dan's response is appropriate in that way. When we transition into a new building and they sign with New Bedford, they sort of know what we're about, A deep dive into their financials and their compliance department and their capital projects. So if they're going to select us, they know what we're about already. So usually that first 60 to 90 days is sort of a sweetheart period where they're as open-minded as they're going to be.

And so then it's really our job to provide not just a problem, but options for solutions that are hopefully affordable and can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Carol Ott (02:37)
Michael?

Michael Feldman (02:38)
Yeah, I think certainly there are elements of both. Ultimately, it's about trust and there are levels of trust. There's a trust level for them to go and engage you and then hire a new company and switch over. But then there's a different higher level of trust that's required that you want to work towards that you can only really gain from proving your worth and ⁓

Those first 90, 150 days are critical.

Carol Ott (03:08)
All right, Dan, when we spoke about these challenges, you told me about a condo you took on who came to you with an unsafe Local Law 11 filing, a $4.6 million contract in front of them that was unrealistic in terms of timing and cost, and the coup de grace, no money. I'm sure the fix was challenging, but my guess is so was the board.

Dan Wollman (03:14)
Ahem.

Carol Ott (03:31)
Can you share what was going on there and what were your steps?

Dan Wollman (03:35)
So I think sort of apropos of your first question, the assignment was to develop a fix And the second part of that assignment, as you were suggesting earlier, is to get the board fully in tune or fully on board with the fix. In that particular situation, the building had no money. the building had been

administratively unsafe. So there was a bridge on both sides of the building. they were about ready to enter into a roughly four and a half million dollar facade contract that they needed an assessment for. The contract also suggested or inferred that the work would be done in 12 months, which would have been both physically and economically impossible. And

They had a pile of payables. The fix in that building

was to, we met with some additional contractors for the local law work. We were able to negotiate a contract at 4.2 million. We had a much more realistic timeframe, which was a two-year time frame. The board then set an assessment on a two-year timeframe as opposed to a one-year timeframe. The board needed to,

instituted a half a million dollar operating assessment to cover all their unpaid bills. And then we developed a more realistic budget. And then for January 1st, they took a 12 percent increase.

Carol Ott (05:05)
to jump in here. Now I'm going to assume that the board, they're not stupid people. and I'm going to assume that the condominium had financials every year. What I don't understand is how they were operating with a budget that apparently was not realistic.

Dan Wollman (05:22)
I think most people would agree that boards or many boards are apathetic or many residents are apathetic. the board was not raising common charges year after year. They were both building up their payables and eating up all of their cash. There was a large change in the composition of the board.

And then the board started to do a much deeper dive into their finances. They knew they had to spend $4 million or excess $4 million the restoration project. And they started to dig much deeper into the finances.

Carol Ott (05:59)
So they dug much deeper, they were with their previous management company. They were given, I presume, management reports. They were given, their accountant did prepare a financial statement. Did any of this not appear on those two documents?

Dan Wollman (06:15)
I think for people who looked at the documents, they would have come to the same conclusion that we came to and that the board ultimately came to. As I said earlier, people are apathetic. Lots of people are disinterested. Maybe disinterested is too strong a term, but when your common charges or your maintenance are not increasing and you're not really thinking much about it,

You're saying this is a great place to live. If you live in a home out in the suburbs, you know that your expenses are going up every year. We know that in managing buildings, condominiums, for example, labor might be 50 % or more of the budget. And if the labor contract increases on average three or three and a half percent a year, you automatically need a one and a half or two percent increase. So

For people who aren't really paying attention, they think it's a great place to be. For people who are paying attention or saying, I don't understand how the building is operating this way. And over time, more and more people who were more sophisticated got involved and said, hey guys, I don't understand what's going on here. How are we going to pay for all this stuff?

Carol Ott (07:25)
Okay, Peter, before turning to you, I want to ask all of you, if after taking on a new client who presumably came with financial or other issues, how tough is it to tell the board something it doesn't want to hear? And how long would you give the board to take your advice before you walked away?

Peter von Simson (07:46)
Yeah, sure. So for us, we're not doing a forensic audit, you know, we're really looking at the outgoing management companies, financial reports, the auditors reports, looking at the open payables as Dan is describing capital projects, and we are coming back to them with a blue sky. And we describe it as that, right? So blue sky, this is where your maintenance should be, be at breakeven.

and also to have a reserve replacement, some process, if you have a loan, and however else you're gonna fund your capital project. So it's really important that they have that information. And then we try to give them some options and timelines to get there. So as Mike was describing earlier, trust is a big part of it. We're not relying on trust, but we know that in order for them to trust us, we have to support every line

new world of property management is transparency.

Every line item on your budget has to have supporting documentation and the ability and the willingness to communicate that to everyone, at least on an annual basis, so that what Dan is describing doesn't happen. It's not the prior board was good or bad. It's the fact that that information wasn't being disseminated out to people so that they all knew what was at stake and could then make decisions.

Michael Feldman (08:41)
Yeah.

Peter von Simson (08:58)
whether it be more involved in the board in some way, or to make financial changes in their own life to prepare for a large assessment, that's the miss. And that's how this world has changed so much in property management is that you're not gonna get a second chance.

Carol Ott (09:12)
Would you walk away if the board didn't come to grips with reality?

Peter von Simson (09:17)
I mean, it's not one size fits all. So in addition to just assessing for it, which obviously is an option to get the money upfront, you could see if they could file and would qualify for the new J-51, which we've been using in all kinds of buildings right now that it doesn't offset the upfront cost, but it makes the pain sort of a lot easier to absorb.

There's city council grants in some instances for the neediest of buildings, which we've taken advantage of. or just a traditional loan, although those rates have gone higher, there's still an option even for condominiums today. So what we try to do is provide options and costs and timeline and try to take the temperature down because in almost all circumstances, there is a way out. You can take a loan out that doesn't have full amortization, right? So that can keep your costs pretty low.

but that work does have get done. The only way I would walk away from a board is if they wanted to do something and take an action that I thought was really detrimental to themselves and to the people that live there, something that would create an unsafe environment. But we would have multiple conversations before that happened. And thankfully for me, don't recall that ever happening.

Carol Ott (10:22)
Michael, how about you?

Michael Feldman (10:23)
Yeah, I mean, it's obviously difficult to have hard conversations if you're inheriting a situation that's dire, but I would submit, Carol, and I'm sure Peter would agree that it's harder ultimately to not have those conversations. You have to be candid with your boards where they are. If you need a special assessment to deal with payables that have built up.

If you need to raise common charges significantly, it's not pleasant, but it's what has to happen. ultimately you end up in a better place by right-sizing the ship. I mean, it stands to reason when you're taking on a new engagement, the preceding management company left something to be desired. so...

Dan Wollman (11:03)
Ha!

Michael Feldman (11:09)
Often, I'd like to start by bifurcating the issues into physical and economic. The physical ones are often ongoing. You have to deal with them on a go-forward, where the economic, at least if you can sort it on a go-forward, time does heal those wounds.

Carol Ott (11:27)
Okay, Peter, when we spoke about this topic, you told me about a new condo your firm took on who came with rampant conspiracy theories floating around the building and a money problem. I'm assuming that the conspiracies drove the board to find new management, but I would guess the first order of business was to understand what the competing narratives were. So can you give us sort of an insight to what was going on there and

What did you do?

Peter von Simson (11:55)
Yeah, so sort of also touching on what we were talking about previously, actually the management company had called it quits. I didn't know this management company. was not anyone on this call. And I'm not sure it's anyone that you've actually interviewed with, but they were a smaller company and they just said for the amount of ill humor and attacks that we're having, you're just not paying us enough to deal with this. And I think I understand what they went through. So

What we have tried to do, and honestly, I think everybody here would agree, no boards are changing management companies if everything's going really well, or even pretty well. Most boards they'll try to work it out with you if there's a hiccup, but other than that, they're willing to go forward. In this case, the operating budget was not sufficient. They were relying on their vendors to basically loan them the money. The vendors were getting upset, not servicing the building.

the open payables continued to accrue and you had this, you know, race to the bottom where they didn't have the money. People weren't having the services and the management company was saying, you're blaming us, but you're not giving us the tools to fix this. so take us out of here. That gave us, I think a little bit more support going in than with most new accounts in that everyone agreed that we can not keep going like this.

So what we said to them was, we have a very transparent financial system. Let's put everything in the system. Let's move away from all these miscellaneous expenses. Let's show everybody what your operating account looks like. You can say the common charges are too high or the common charges are too low, but if you look at your actual budget and you look at the discretionary spending being, I would say 5 % and that's being generous in this case.

it's hard to really blame the board or management company for the state of the building. So we did that and we went back to the board first and presented this to them. We also got on a Zoom call and presented this to all owners. The board was being challenged. Some people might say attacked by this other group of owners.

and saying that they wanted to see the books and records because they felt like things were not happening that needed to happen in the building and wanted to understand why. The board was offended by that and what I said to them and I'm not sure they really appreciated this so far, but right away was, this is their money. This is your community. You have nothing to hide. This stuff is

wheat toast with a little bit of butter. There is nothing in here that you should not disclose. So rather than go through this exercise of having multiple attorneys involved, bring them in. We'll sit with them. We'll take, walk them through every line item, understanding the bank accounts are not going to be reconciled for that month and we're not going to have audited financials. So there's some caveats to that. Let's show them the books.

And ultimately that conversation took place and we were able to present that. There were very few follow-up questions. The attacks died away. It did raise concerns because it made it very obvious that they didn't have the money to really operate the building as they were all saying they wanted. Increasing staffing, additional door people. But there was no money to do these things. So when a certain number of that other group said, you know what?

I don't necessarily agree with this board. I certainly don't like them, but I'm not going to be part of a lawsuit. I'm going to have everything back down. And that is sort of where we are now. We continue to develop both a capex below the line plan as well as work. And they're on a cashflow, a breakeven basis on their operating budget. And we've paid off all their open payables. So their vendors are servicing them again. Things are still a work in progress on the service and on some of the repairs.

but I think everybody sees that there is a way forward.

Carol Ott (15:43)
So before turning to Michael,

Peter von Simson (15:45)
you.

Carol Ott (15:46)
want to ask all of you about out of whack budgets. We've just heard about two properties that didn't have enough money to operate properly. You run management companies and you prepare budgets. So how does this happen? Dan?

Dan Wollman (16:01)
So there are boards that are realistic and there are boards that are unrealistic. There are boards who believe their mission well is A, to keep the maintenance down, which is fair and appropriate. But there are times where we review budgets with boards and they go through these things on a line by line basis and they say, you know, for

flowers, let's say, we're not going to spend 15,000, we're going to spend 10,000. know, just to squeeze a budget back into a maintenance increase that they think is going to be palatable to the residents of the building. You can't run your building based on what you think is going to be palatable to the people who live there. You need to run your building based on what it's going to cost to actually run the building. So,

people sometimes try to fool themselves that whatever numbers they're putting on the paper are the right numbers.

Carol Ott (16:59)
I find that a little scary. I would hate to think that your new clients who seem to have money problems, you know, there may be other issues.

But the budgets aren't correct. They're not living their financial life in a realistic way. And the previous company that they had hired either hasn't forced them, wasn't able to force them. I'm sure the previous company was competent enough to do that. Peter?

Peter von Simson (17:23)
Yeah, if there's a way out to Dan's point, is there someone on the board who says maybe they can't afford to live there, which doesn't make them a bad person, right? They are on limited income or just living expenses are such they're going to look for line items that they can move that will somehow then make that increase, if not lesser, non-existent. We really try to hold firm.

Most of our buildings, just because of the kind of management company that we are, we're dealing with mostly mid-sized buildings between 50 and 150 units. There's not a big flower line item. What we're dealing with is fuel, staffing, taxes, insurance. And what we're trying to lay out to them is as fiduciaries, you really don't have this option. You don't have the option to

this thing into the ground.

can't afford to live here, by all means, you have to let people know that part of this is also is to protect their investment. So running this thing into the ground it's tough for them individually, but it's also bad for them as an investment. For most of the people that we work with, this apartment is probably the largest investment that they have. So that rings home. And then what we also do, which is what a lot of boards are afraid of, because it's their neighbors, is we say,

We'll lead the budget. We'll lead the budget zoom with the building. We'll answer all their questions. We'll bring their accountant on who's also reviewed the budget. We create all of our budgets, but we still would lead that conversation. Let the naysayers come, I want to speak to them. That's the point of it, right? To try to do it and not have their feedback. It just hurts everybody. So understanding that the board's job as fiduciary is to run the building at least at break even at a minimum.

Dan Wollman (18:43)
you

Peter von Simson (19:02)
We get on the call, we show the budget, we go through it line by line. Feel free to chat your questions, raise your hand. We'll call people one at a time. At the end of that conversation, people are not always happy. You could have a 12 % increase as Dan is describing. That's not impossible, especially where insurance, but it is not a case where people can say, I hate my board because they don't care and they're raising the common charges just to get me out of here, which is clearly not.

the case because they're paying exactly the same common charges. It doesn't even make any sense. So that transparency and that is the new world. I'm not saying we did this 10 years ago, but for the last five years really a zoom has taken off any sort of beyond 4 % increase we expect that we're going to be on a zoom call presenting the budget.

Carol Ott (19:47)
Michael, when we spoke about funding shortfalls, you suggested ways that management companies could keep this issue in front of boards who really were having a difficult time confronting this reality. Can you share some examples of how you have done this and the outcome?

Michael Feldman (20:05)
Yeah, look, I think conceptually, you can take a jab. You want to avoid the big upper cuts, right? So those two, four, 6 % increases, that's healthy generally. What's not healthy is when you don't have an increase for year after year, and then all of a sudden you have these massive issues. So we really first orient the boards to the reality that utilities go up, insurance premiums go up.

co-ops taxes go up and there's really no way around modest annual increases typically. You could have an unusual year here and there, but for the most part, you can pretty much book that there's going to be some sort of modest increase that's unavoidable. Most of the expenses in the budget, when you really think about it, are fixed. They're not variable. Obviously,

Larger buildings with more amenities and more building staff may have more variance than a smaller building, but for the most part, most of these expenses are fixed.

Carol Ott (21:07)
now you've taken on a new client, let's say where the budget wasn't based in reality and the board doesn't want to raise maintenance. mean, you've all said very sound reasons why it should be raised. Life is more expensive year after year, but there are boards who for a variety of reasons don't want to do that. How do you keep a budget, a realistic budget front and center of the board so that

you can bring them along to what reality is, because clearly they've been resistant before.

Michael Feldman (21:38)
Yeah, mean, look, plumbers need wrenches, property management companies, we need our words, you need to communicate, and sometimes it takes more than one conversation. part of it is having clear documents that can clearly present the budget in a makes sense way. A lot of these issues that we're talking about, these are humans on the board, and there's a lot of...

Financial illiteracy out there. I'm pleased to see a lot of these schools these days are now teaching it in the high school financial literacy. So maybe there'll be less of that for the next generation of property managers. But until then, you need a dance partner. Sometimes boards are very sophisticated and sometimes they're less so. But really after you get through all of the blocking and tackling, you have to watch out for certain types of issues.

For example, water. You know, water usage for new construction buildings, a lot of times we'll take on a new construction building that is one or two years old. The developer sponsor was self-managing or ⁓ you have a property management company that's not used to dealing with new construction buildings. And the water...

⁓ Bill will be under billed until they get around to actually checking the meter. And so you have to escrow when you see that that water usage is artificially low, you have to be able to look and see, okay, I know that's too low. You know, I can look at an elevator expense line item the same way Danny and Peter can and know, okay, there's four elevators in that building or there's one. So you have to look for these things and your

property accountants and your property managers have to have that extra level of expertise to say, okay, that water bill is not realistic. we don't wanna necessarily go out and proactively reach out to the water billing agency and tell them because it's obviously an advantage to our client to.

essentially have that interest-free loan with the underbilling, but you have to escrow for these kinds of things.

Carol Ott (23:37)
Let

me ask you, most management companies, and I presume the three of you do too, provide a management report on a monthly basis. For boards who may not be used to that, that management report, how does that interface with the budget and with real dollars going in and out? Dan?

Dan Wollman (23:57)
It interfaces very well all of the reports are sort of designed to Look at your expenses on a monthly basis compare them to the budget that you have for that specific month and then do it on a year-to-date basis we craft the budget in a way that it is either seasonal or

set up to align with the payments that a building is going to make. So if a building is going to pay their taxes, let's say twice a year, There's only two line items as opposed to one each month. And they're good tools. They're not the only tool that we use, but they're good tools.

Carol Ott (24:35)
Peter, are there other tools that your firm uses besides the management report?

Peter von Simson (24:39)
Yeah, sure. So for our boards, we have a dashboard. So they see their real time bank balances, their open payables and their arrears. And that's a good reminder to them if they're they can't claim ignorance that there's $46,000 in payables and no money in the bank account. why didn't you tell us that that obviously is gone. It also is a constant reminder that we've got to figure out a way to correct it. So if that's been really helpful.

As part of our management report, we load up the budget. So every month they see the budget versus actual. That's important for us too, right? We're looking for variances that are increasing, but they're seeing the end result. Where are we opposed to the budget? And if we're tracking below that and you know the money is not there, you better get a report and a project and a program together to make that correct as soon as possible.

And that has been really helpful. I was not a big supporter of the dashboard idea, because I thought a lot of boards would not really follow it close enough and it would just become a distraction, but it's actually been really helpful.

Carol Ott (25:38)
Before we conclude, I wonder if each of you could comment on what kind of work is involved in taking on a new client in your firms and specifically what the incoming board can do to make the transition easier. Michael, can we start with you?

Michael Feldman (25:56)
mean, the number one thing is to put us in touch with the outgoing management company. We have a lot of formidable competitors. Sometimes it doesn't work out with our predecessor for whatever reason. And so it is easier if we can just work directly with the management company that's outgoing in terms of data migration. We also have a couple of people that are assigned specifically for migrations. That's all they do. So every month we have

incoming business. And it's really critical to have those experts that, you know, set up the bank accounts and get everything going. Enter the budget, for example. So you have a credible budget versus actual right from the jump.

Carol Ott (26:38)
So let me

ask you, I'm gonna call that the administrative transition. How long should a board expect an administrative transition to go on before

you have full understanding of the financials and all the other stuff in a building. Dan?

Dan Wollman (26:54)
So I think it should take 30 days. There are some companies that it's going to take longer to do that whole migration, but it should take 30 days. think, you know, one of the important things is having the board involved. in these migrations, we have tons of documents. We log in the documents. And part of the tricky part is

you don't know what you're missing. So let's just say they replaced the roof three years ago. There's a warranty for that roof somewhere. You didn't know that they replaced the roof. So you didn't know that you were missing the warranty. So it's those kinds of things that sometimes get a little trickier. It's important for the board to be involved in in the process, or at least when we're closer to completing the process.

But I think generally we all work with a series of lists. We all have sort of similar procedures and it's really a question of the outgoing company being cooperative, you know, and giving us all the data.

Carol Ott (27:54)
I'm so now you've done the administrative work and the board may be helpful. but the board probably had some other issues besides just the sort of paperwork and the administrative work. Some boards might think, I don't want to tell you all the issues. I want you, I hired you as a professional to come in.

and give me your assessment of what's going on. Would you prefer that? Or after you've got your administrative work tied down, how do you get the board to tell you, this is kind of really why we left the other people and what we're hoping for you?

Peter von Simson (28:28)
Yeah, I'll

jump on this one. So the administrative part is obviously important because you can't run the building without it. But it's not usually that that's that's forced the board to change. it is really you've got to create that site presence. You've got to meet the staff. You've got to walk the building, not just your manager, but the compliance department. the firms that we work with in New York City, and I think most of them are

been 20 years since I think I've been running into one that I was really like, wow, this guy's not what he should be. You know, the people in this industry today, we're all vetted, we're all professional. If one of these guys called me up, if for some reason a board told me I'm going to choice or I'm going to Gumley, I would understand. would say, listen, we're going to work this out and I would do everything we could to make it as smooth as possible. I don't think that's really the rub. For us, you got to create a site presence.

The strength of all the people on this call is that we are not virtual. We will be at your building. If there's a problem, if there's a meeting, if there's a staffing issue, you're not going to get an email from overseas that says, hey, you have a problem. You're going to have a person, a New Yorker or a person from this neighborhood, this area who understands co-ops and condos, understands how to talk to people. And it's really a much higher skill set than I think any of us really even give ourselves credit for.

We're gonna come to the building, we're gonna meet your shareholders, we're gonna speak to your staff, we're gonna cut to the chase faster than any other entity. Management companies in New York City are the best bang for your buck of any service that exists. I wish it weren't true to a certain degree. I wish we could once in while get overpaid. It just doesn't happen. And because of my competition, the guys on this call, I know how hard we have to work every day. So part of that transition is proving why they hired you.

all the guys here, we've all done the same thing. And so you check off all the admin boxes and you'll find a couple things, but if they don't see boots on the ground and Carol to your point, they might not even ask you if you visited the building for a transition. I'll tell you this though, they know. They know because they talk to the staff, they know because they're looking at the cameras, and we better have a higher bar than what they expect or we're just going to be running this whole process through to the end in another year.

And because I know I don't get building from the guys on this call, I'm sure they're doing the same thing. And I think we should be much prouder of the services that we provide to the city. I think that we provide more health and safety standards and quality of life improvements than any other business that's out there. No one says it. And Carol, don't know if you would even say it so much. It's engineer is great. the fantastic water.

It's the property management companies that take the slings and arrows, that answer the calls on Sundays, that get the person whose sewage is pouring down. Where is our award? Where is the Manager of the Year award? And where somebody says, you guys, thank you so much. Where is the mayor who wants us all to come to their garden behind Gracie Mansion and thank us for all our services that basically, if you figure it out by the hour,

Carol Ott (31:03)
Thanks.

Peter von Simson (31:29)
we're probably getting paid maybe minimum wage. So I would say it's a fantastic industry. I think it's only getting better. I think technology is helping. It's never going to replace the people on the screen. Thank goodness for us, I guess. And I think thank goodness for all of our clients. And ⁓ the future is bright for us and the city. But now I think you could send some more positive vibes our way.

Carol Ott (31:53)
Okay, Michael.

Do you have anything to add to this?

Michael Feldman (31:57)
Yeah, well, I love Peter's sentiments. I think about COVID when we were all essential workers and coming in and driving around and going to buildings when the city was like a ghost town for a little while there. So I certainly echo those sentiments. But yeah, mean, in general, we really view our clients as our partners and we want them. And I think

The vast majority of them largely view us as their non-equity partners. I always try to sit on physically next to them, shoulder to shoulder. So I'm on their side of the table, in a literal sense, but also we want our clients to feel that figuratively. And so as to the question of, does the board want to kind of figure out and see how smart you are and see how you can find things that they already know about?

To me, that's not a true partnership. I'd much rather have that conversation and say, hey, look, we're your counselor here. Let us know if there's things that you didn't tell us during the vetting process, during the courtship process. Now is the time because we want to have all of that information at our disposal rather than sort of like a gotcha game. We absolutely want that back and forth communication.

Apathy is certainly not our friend in our industry. And so you want clients to care and you want them involved. And certainly you want them to be disclosing things they know about that are potential issues.

Carol Ott (33:24)
Terrific. Thank you all for a very thoughtful and interesting discussion.

Dan Wollman (33:29)
Thank you. Thank you. Take care.

Peter von Simson (33:29)
Thanks, Carol. Take care, guys. Nice to see you, everybody.

Michael Feldman (33:32)
Thanks guys.