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 …
The tenant below me smokes nonstop. Her windows are always fully open and the smoke travels directly into my apartment above. My apartment smells like an ashtray and of course leaves us vulnerable to second-hand smoke. Even with our wind…