Buying a home for the first time is a major life event, right up there with getting married, having children, or driving your first car. Especially for longtime New Yorkers who have previously rented, it's a big step towards owning somethi…
Even the most laid-back, harmonious community will periodically experience conflicts -- maybe between board members, between neighbors, or between residents and the board. Resolving these issues without litigation or lingering acrimony is k…
In a scene from the 1985 historical drama Out of Africa , Lord Delamare (portrayed by Michael Gough) asks the Danish writer Isak Dinesen (played by Meryl Streep) if she had insurance after her coffee farm in Africa burnt to the ground. “…
Halloween may be over, but that doesn't mean that living in a co-op or condo community can't be scary sometimes. And while multifamily real estate is rarely haunted in a truly spectral sense, eerie goings-on still take place, sending chills…
Q. We have an apartment/shares in a Brooklyn co-op. In 2016 we experienced two leaks in our shower room (which is in the bathroom, but separate from the bathtub). With the first leak, the building plumber broke part of our shower wall, re…
Q. I live in a manufactured home co-op, and earlier this year we switched property management companies. At first, they lost a check – which I guess can happen. Then a few months later, a group of us received demands for rent and were ser…
In residential properties, lighting – both its quality and its efficiency – is often as important as the fixtures in which bulbs themselves are placed. This applies particularly to LED light bulbs, since they’re directly tied to monthly ene…
Though it has been in effect in New York City since 2009, questions about the City’s benchmarking law have re-entered the public conversation since the law was revised last year to include an additional 10,000 mid-size buildings. If you are…
If you think about it, a multifamily building isn’t that much different than the human body. Both house important complex operating systems and organ-like pieces of vital equipment; both take in fuel and produce waste; and both require regu…
When we think of a co-op, condo, or HOA, it’s easy to picture a towering high-rise, or a suburban development that sprawls across acres and acres, and is home to hundreds, maybe even thousands of residents. While those communities certainly…