Q. Can a unit owner demand to see a copy of the monthly list of unit owners’ payments of the monthly HOA? —Owner Seeking Access to Docs A. “Yes,” says attorney Aaron Shmulewitz of the New York City firm of Belkin Burden Goldma…
Q. I need to know if the president of the board (co-op) is allowed to collect proxies from other residents? The president stands in the parking lot and asks everyone if she can have their proxy. Then the night of the meeting to vote for b…
Q. We have a president of our co-op board that has been president for almost 30 years because he collects proxies from the shareholders who will not attend the yearly meeting and uses them to either reelect himself or others that side wi…
While many condominium associations and co-op corporations hire professional property managers or management firms to handle the routine (and not-so-routine) tasks involved in running a multifamily building or HOA, a significant number take…
Indoor plumbing is a minor miracle: clean water on demand, at the temperature one chooses, right out of the tap. What would have been the height of luxury just a couple of generations ago is now considered a bare necessity. Miraculous as it…
Achieving balance between board and management is vital in maintaining a healthy collective. For the resident of a condominium or cooperative, knowing which of the two pillars of the homeowning community to address for maintenance issues or…
If you live in a condominium, cooperative or HOA, you’re participating in a small-scale democracy run by an elected group of volunteers. As in any democracy, those affected by the board’s decisions are encouraged to get involved in the proc…
In our current environment of steeply rising costs, it’s more important than ever to safeguard your reserves to ensure that your association has sufficient funds available for immediate and future capital projects. Unfortunately, many assoc…
In early 2020, our firm was hired to prepare a reserve study for an unremarkable 136-unit, 12-story condominium in south Florida. It was the kind of association you could drive right by without noticing, not much different from all the othe…
Where there are people, there is detritus. It’s an age-old reality — so much so that even the remains of our ancient trash are often the basis upon which archeologists develop theories about vanished civilizations. While we can’t say what f…