Many times, cooperatives and condominiums have commercial retail spaces connected to or below their building. These are immensely valuable as a result of the income generated by these stores and restaurants. Ergo, the importance of a ne…
No, your steam lines are not supposed to be noisy. The Beatles are considered to be among the best musicians of all time. But the cacophony you get from noisy steam lines is far from considered music at all. So what is causing …
The economy cratered—to use a term in popular parlance at that time—in September, 2008, with the collapse of too-big-to-fail Lehman Brothers. While the measures undertaken by the federal government and the Federal Reserve averted complet…
One of the biggest issues in the real estate industry over the past year has been the speculation that government-sponsored mortgage programs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be ending. For the past 70 years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac …
Citizens over the age of 65 comprise nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population—just under 40 million seniors. By 2030, it is estimated that 72 million Americans will be over the age of 65, nearly doubling those numbers. Where this volume…
In today’s legislative world, housing is a big item. Rent-payers, condo owners, co-op shareholders, and developers all have their particular interests—and they don’t necessarily mesh. In the meantime, the ongoing recession threatens all …
Every co-op, condo and HOA community is different—each has its own distinctive character, attitude, and expectations. The same is obviously true for the individual people who manage these communities and help them run their day-to-day b…
With smart-phones dominating the cellular market, people now have Internet access anywhere and everywhere they go. While shopping and “googling” are leading reasons to use the Internet, the rise of social media has changed the way in wh…
A friend of a property manager of a New York co-op recently remarked that “Superman has finally met his match” when a task came in that seemed to have the effect of kryptonite and slowed him down—for a moment at least. With man…
Budgeting is never easy, not for a family of four and certainly not for a co-op or condo community of hundreds or thousands of residents. That fact is made all the more difficult by the lingering effects of the recession, which continue…