So, it’s the holiday season again and everyone is feeling generous, even you. You seem to have gotten past your Scrooge-stage and feel like splurging on someone else for a change. You don’t mind going the extra mile for your neighbor or run…
Nearly 100 percent of New York City co-ops have an underlying mortgage of anywhere from a few thousand dollars to millions of dollars. If you own a co-op, having an additional multi-million dollar mortgage hanging over your head might sound…
The board of a co-op is required to perform an ongoing balancing act, weighing both the needs of the individual shareholders and the good of the whole. Nowhere is this more apparent than the controversial issue of subletting. While owners f…
To paraphrase Sy Syms, "an educated board member is a lender’s best borrower!" That concept underlies all of the articles I have written about co-op financing. Since my last article for The Cooperator ("Dial ‘M’ for Mortgage," December/Janu…
About ten years ago, Doug Anderson, the board president of 1125 Park Avenue, and some of his fellow board members walked though their building’s basement and saw a wall which, according to Anderson, "didn’t make sense." The inquisitive coop…
Never before have there been so many ways to become "wired" in The Big Apple. Innovative companies are readying New York City’s co-ops and condos for the new millennium by making state-of-the-art electronic amenities a mere click away from …
With the recent indictments strewn about New York’s real estate industry, co-op and condo boards have become more and more choosy about the professionals they select to protect themselves and their homes. Knowing the angst involved in makin…
Before 1989, during the height of the real estate market, shareholders were buying and selling apartments at an accelerated rate. But when the recession hit the market, between 1989 and 1993, co-op sponsors (holders of unsold shares) couldn…
The recent onslaught of millennium madness has made Y2K a household term. Once just the concern of computer aficionados and a select few with technological foresight, Y2K is now a universal problem. In fact, Y2K has become such a prevalent …
Successfully combining her talents as an artist, architectural and interior designer, Rebecca Alston, president of Rebecca Alston Inc., a design firm in Manhattan, recently renovated a 3,600-square-foot loft condo in Tribeca. Her clients, a…