Say that you and your neighbors have been living a quiet, peaceful life on your tree-lined city block for years and years. Suddenly, you see construction workers digging in that vacant lot next to your condo or co-op building. So you go dow…
Every property manager has a horror story or two—or three, or four, or forty-seven—about the sub-zero winter night when the boiler in a 400-unit high-rise went kaput, or what happened when the sprinkler system decided to turn on for no disc…
A few generations ago, even the largest residential buildings had basic electrical needs, such as lighting the building and running some washing machines. Residents back then generally only had a TV, a radio, some lamps and a few kitchen ap…
It creeps in silently and is everywhere at once. It is totally invisible to the naked eye, but often carries potentially dangerous materials. It can cause sickness and discomfort without ever being detected. What on earth could it be? …
Apartment buildings, whether cooperatives or condos, are inherently fragile. When that many units share the same plot of land, and the same walls, the same floors, the same elevators and stairways, standpipes and boilers, lobbies and roo…
It's easy enough to find a property manager —just flip open the Yellow Pages and you'll see dozens. That doesn't mean it's easy to choose one, however. Your managing agent is a fundamental member of your association's operating team, and…
Carrying on The Cooperator's popular series of "roundtable" discussions for professionals in various disciplines of the city's residential real estate industry, a group of representatives from the worlds of co-op and condo law, finance a…
As Jules Verne may have quipped: "the future is now." Everywhere you look technological advancements keep getting integrated into our daily life. From VoIP to MySpace to YouTube to a host of killer apps, an insatiable need for bandw…
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 …
Sobering studies published last month by the International Energy Association and the National Petroleum Center suggest that the supply of traditional energy sources may not meet demand by 2015, strong evidence yet again that electric co…