As residential buildings and the business of managing them have become more sophisticated, the term “super”—as in superintendent—has come to mean “super-qualified.” The days of the building handyman armed with little other than a ring of…
It’s hard—if not impossible—to plan a budget for your building and stick to it if maintenance problems and structural crises are constantly taking you by surprise and depleting your community’s bank account. Capital budgets are the long…
Not for nothing is New York City often called “the concrete jungle.” Thousands of square miles of pavement of all descriptions cover the city, from newly-poured (and quickly graffiti'ed) cement sidewalks to cobblestones left over from t…
Edgar Dworsky is the treasurer of a small condo complex in Somerville, Massachusetts that was built back in 1987. He loves where he lives except for one rather large problem. Water leaks have plagued the complex since it was built. Dur…
Even cavemen knew that fire was dangerous—and they lived in flame-proof caves. But here in the 21st century, people blithely build roaring fires right in the middle of their furnished, wood-filled, carpeted, upholstered and bookcase-jam…
Q Our board president recently made a statement that "our building is essentially controlled by the building Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ." What does this mean? Are there some sort of documents to accompany…
Q My mother recently passed away and I inherited her shares in a Mitchell-Lama co-op building. It's taken quite some time to run down the paperwork, and make preparations to empty the unit, and the building management has not been at al…
Tucked away in the northernmost top of Brooklyn, Greenpoint is a historic New York neighborhood bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at the Bushwick inlet, on the southeast by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg, …
Most of the multifamily, residential buildings found in large cities are either co-ops or condos, and most are run the way co-ops and condos across the country are run. But if you dig a little deeper in here in New York City, you’ll fin…