The past year has seen a lot of changes in the codes governing New York City's buildings, both inside and out. Rules covering lead paint, carbon monoxide detection, and construction permits have been introduced or revised, and it's up to bo…

When you're on the board of a co-op or condo building, sometimes it can feel like you need a law degree to understand all of the paperwork that gets thrown at you. Depending on where you live, there are bylaws and proprietary leases and hou…

As the legislative session in Albany winds down, with the Legislature passing the budget on time for the first time in two decades and the City Council continuing with its business, now is a good time to take a look at some of the housing-r…

A03813 -- Automatic Application Approval --Requires applications to purchase condominiums or cooperatives to be acted upon within sixty days. Failure to do so would result in an automatic approval. 02/04/2005 referred to Housing 04/0…

Co-op and condo buildings can often seem like their own little self-contained worlds, with drama, politics, and debates aplenty. Given that, it's understandable why shareholder/owners might think the people who run their building—the boa…

Using the services of a trained professional and making sure you have the input of your constituents - in this case the residents of your co-op or condo building - are two elements of a project that are sometimes hard to reconcile, particul…

For the past couple of decades, interest in the environment and "greening" of residential buildings has been creeping into our daily lexicon; nowadays, the theories have become practice, and renewable or "green" power is now more accessibl…

While not a common practice, boards of directors of New York cooperatives have, at times, reached the decision to evict a shareholder based on objectionable conduct. Nearly every cooperative corporation's proprietary lease contains a sectio…

There are five main rules that must always be considered when designing apartment building lobbies. Each project has its own set of circumstances and goals. And these goals must also coincide with the aesthetics, the inherent building style…

Patricia is a 65 year-old woman who is in good physical and mental shape. She exercises daily, sees her physician regularly and is active in the community. She lives alone in an apartment and doesn't even want to consider moving to an as…