Once upon a time, like many cities across the nation, New York City had a government-regulated energy market. There was one number to call to make all the lights come on: Consolidated Edison of New York (or, more familiarly, Con Ed). Th…

Saving money is always a top concern of any co-op or condo board, so when energy deregulation first offered customers the opportunity to choose their energy provider in 1998, it seemed that lower energy bills were on the way. But in the…

In 1863, when a tenant at 97 Orchard Street came home from work, he entered a pitch-dark hallway and had to feel his way up the stairs to his apartment. He most likely felt his way with one hand while carrying a bucket of coal for the s…

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) is essentially an assemblage of various statutes enacted to regulate commercial transactions which - to encourage national commerce - are adopted in the same form by virtually every state. Currently, the…

In the post 9/11 world, building owners and managers have to feel a little bit like "Big Brother" the tyrannical, all-seeing, all-knowing holographic presence that George Orwell chillingly wrote about in his classic sci-fi novel 1984. …

A region composed of squatters' shacks, leveled forests, and graveyards might seem an unlikely birthplace for the Dakota, one of the Upper West Side's most luxurious addresses, but to a maverick businessman like Edward S. Clark, the hea…

You might wonder what three Modernist buildings on the Upper East Side have to do with an organization that has historically been dedicated to preserving things, well, historical. But recently, preservation group Friends of the Upper Ea…

It's every homeowner's worst nightmare: you come home from work to find your apartment flooded, or your building smoldering from a kitchen fire that got out of control. After the initial trauma, there could be worse shocks in store if y…

Accidents happen. Things go wrong. It's a simple fact of life. And sometimes the only course of action is simply to protect against the consequences. Liability insurance takes the sting out of the unknown, creating a safety net for those w…

Before last September, chances are that most people didn't give much thought to whether acts of terrorism were covered by their homeowner's insurance. Co-op boards and condo associations were more concerned with whether their "all-risk"…