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…
In multifamily buildings that hundreds —maybe even thousands—of people call home, it comes as no surprise that unpleasant smells can become an absolute nuisance. The airways that run through the building, the chutes and areas that house the…
Most folks know that turning off lights in unoccupied rooms, taking shorter showers, and turning down the thermostat a couple of degrees can help save energy – and by extension, money. However, helping an entire building or association cut …
When it comes to energy efficiency, mismanagement of energy could be both wasteful and costly for multifamily properties. Scott Burns of Marathon Energy Corp. talks to The Cooperator on what could be done to prevent those mistakes.