Most of your buildings have a shareholder—or maybe two or three—who fit into a particular mold: you know, longer hair, Birkenstocks, vintage Woodstock t-shirts; or maybe yours has the $5,000 suit, $1,000 shoes, and starched attitude. Th…
I often go up to Washington Heights, an area where I lived many years ago, just to walk around. On one recent trip, I decided to take a look into the lobby of my old apartment building on Cabrini Boulevard to see if there had been any …
Astoria Boulevard is the second-to-last stop on the N-W subway line. The N train whistles against the track on a banking turn near 39th Avenue, five subway stops south of Astoria Boulevard. There’s a sign posted inside the train explain…
Few things can be as upsetting as discovering that the funds that fuel a co-op or condo have been mishandled—or worse yet, stolen. For residents, fraud undermines their sense of trust in the men and women who oversee and manage the plac…
Every co-op and condo community has a board of directors in charge of governing the community’s finances, physical maintenance and other day-to-day business. Part of the board’s responsibility also is to keep the community fiscally soun…
Ari Meisel lives in a 4,000-square foot loft in a four-family co-op building in Soho—he also operates several green buildings, consulting and real estate businesses from the comfort of his own unit. He has lived in this building for his…
As the leaders of a private corporation in which shareholders own stock that entitles them to live in an apartment within the corporation’s building, residential co-op board members have a lot of responsibility. Along with this responsi…
Few board members would argue that the time spent serving their buildings and fellow residents can be both very strenuous and very rewarding. For years, they make decisions that affect their community in the present and may continue to …
For most people, “foaming at the mouth” is just a figure of speech. Attorney Ellen Hirsch de Haan, a managing partner in the Tampa Bay, Florida office of Becker & Poliakoff PA, has encountered the real thing—and not at an animal shelter,…
Q “If a unit owner is deceased, what are the inheritance rights of a relative, for example, let's say, siblings, to moving in and taking possession of an apartment?” —Legal Legacy A “There are several iss…