If one aspect of New York has remained constant since the city’s founding, it’s that nothing remains constant. New York’s own Washington Irving, the writer for whom Irving Place is named, groused in his September years that the city he r…

In the 1950s, televisions were pieces of furniture the size of deep freezers. In 2008, TVs are flat and hang on a wall. The 50’s were about jukeboxes; the 80’s saw the Walkman and CD player and, today, it’s the small-but-mighty iPod. And…

When one looks at the real estate market in New York City—which, excluding such homeowners’ havens as Bay Ridge, Bayside and Staten Island, usually means the apartment market—one sees a picture similar to last year. All over the country, on…

As the housing market boomed in the early parts of the last decade, apartments in New York City seemed to be snapped up mere days (sometimes mere hours) after being put on the market. As the trend continued, thousands of people set out t…

As 2007 came to a close, it seemed that the real estate market in nearly every part of the country had cooled. But in New York City, although movement had slowed, the market did not take a downturn as many had expected. Co-ops and condos…

Our co-op elected its new officers, as usual. However, this year, there were two  amendments to the proprietary lease, one for staggered board terms and the  other to change our transfer fee, or flip tax, from one month’s maintenance to two…

 Certain shareholders in our building keep some personal belongings (i.e., bikes,  baby strollers, skates) in the hallways next to their apartments. Sometimes we  have to squeeze by their hallway clutter to get to our own units. Is there an…

The original condo declaration, bylaws, amendments and house rules allow for  renovations without board approval to interior units if they do not affect  common area are not structural in nature. I installed a wall partition (does  not affe…

 My building has a rental apartment that was bought from a previous shareholder. Apparently, an amended document was not filed with the state attorney’s office, so there are still shares attached to this apartment. These shares were voted b…

I’m a president of a new condo and have no experience running one prior to this. There is an apartment in the condo that consistently has children dropped off. After some inquiry it turns out to be the children of relatives, around 4 or …