While we were toiling away at our respective law schools and then studying endlessly for the bar examination, we never expected to be confronted with the wide range of issues that our cooperative and condominium board clients have approa…

Everyone likes to think that they are safe all the time, but often people take for granted that everything in their condo or co-op is up to snuff and they forget about simple things like changing batteries in smoke detectors or securing …

Whenever a co-op or condo resident has a burning question about policy, rules, or procedure in their association community, chances are the answer doesn't lie in some obscure legal document or under lock and key somewhere in the depths o…

Picture this: a co-op resident has a problem with his neighbor who plays loud music into the wee hours. He contacts his board of directors to see what he can do about this issue, but no one calls him back. Thinking maybe he just fell thr…

Most individuals have a healthy sense of ethics, choosing to run their personal lives and business affairs aboveboard. Unfortunately, a few bad apples are inevitable. Co-op and condo board members and managers are in positions of autho…

When dozens and sometimes hundreds of personalities live together in one space, conflict inevitably will ensue. When passionate individuals serve on boards and are responsible for the overall well-being of the co-op or condo which they s…

The board of directors runs on volunteers. They put in hours of unpaid time and effort into making sure your condo or coop runs efficiently and effectively. And then they make a mistake and wham! There is a lawsuit and suddenly they are bei…

If you live in a co-op, as opposed to a condo, in New York State, chances are that your co-op has been organized under the designation of the Business Corporation Law, or BCL. But what is the BCL? The BCL, which has been in force for m…

Being on a board of a condo or co-op is no picnic. There are tons of decisions to be made, disputes to settle, finances to keep track of and a chance of being sued for a slip-up. So why do so many people decide to serve on a board—some for …

Q I live in a building in New York City that is currently operated as a rental. It’s in terrible shape. Many of my fellow tenants and I have considered the co-op route. How does one go about this? —Going Co-op A “I th…