Category: Building Operations

Community living – the very basis of co-op, condo and HOA life — is based on the idea of trust. In a community of potentially hundreds or thousands of residents, every resident can’t be involved in the making of every decision. Too many coo…

Upgrading, retrofitting, or replacing building equipment and fixtures can be a tough sell -- sometimes it's hard to get residents to understand that money spent now can mean even more money saved later. In this quick clip, find out about te…

Like just about everything else we encounter and use every day, the lines of communication in a co-op or condo building have been scrutinized, analyzed, and updated for the cyber age. The question is whether that new approach has made co-op…

Property management may not be aircraft control or open-heart surgery, but anyone who tells you it's 'easy' is either lying, or not playing with a full deck. Managers of communities both large and small face an array of challenges every day…

Co-op and condo boards must remain vigilant against all kinds of potential hazards in their buildings; everything from Legionnaires' disease in rooftop cooling tanks to deteriorating pointing on brick facades, to unsecured window-unit air c…

One of the facts of life that apartment dwellers live with -- particularly those in older buildings -- is the window-unit air conditioner. Certainly the upside of having one is that it gets you through the airless, sweaty nights during the …

Unless you call a sprawling Wyoming cattle ranch home, chances are that in your life, space comes at a premium. And while living in close quarters in places like New York City is often fodder for jokes, the problem of not enough space (or t…

For the board members and managers handling the successful operation of a co-op or condo community, one of their biggest responsibilities revolves around their fiduciary duties. They are, after all, dealing with people’s biggest assets: the…

Cleaning products should, ideally, have one primary function: to make things less dirty. But once one delves deeper into the overall goal, things get more complicated. For instance, what makes something really clean? Does it mean to look sh…

The majority of residential buildings in New York City obtain power from Con Edison or secondary energy suppliers. But in recent years, boards and managing agents have investigated, and in some cases, installed “cogeneration” systems that a…