Q. My co-op recently approved my alteration agreement but is requiring an independent plumber to oversee the work of my contractor’s licensed (and bonded) plumber, and at my expense. My contractor has told me that this is quite unusual an…
Category: Q&A
Q. Hello, I am a shareholder of a two bedroom co-op. There are two occupants of the co-op unit under me. One goes to work, while the other individual is a malingerer. Neither is of the mindset “live and let live.” Neither has a problem wi…
Q. My mother passed away three years ago. I am handling the sale of her co-op in Queens. We emptied and painted the unit completely soon after she passed. I’ve been paying $850 a month maintenance fee for the empty unit while I was not al…
Q. If the particular bylaws of a condo community are continuously not followed, does the bylaw that is continuously misused become a LEGAL bylaw? Do we have any legal precedence here? —Concerned in Chelsea A. “T…
Q. One of our condo units that the owner was renting out to a tenant is now in foreclosure. But before the unit went into foreclosure, the owner (who has been missing in action) was behind on the common charges and the condo board was tak…
Q. A co-op owner purchased her unit in 2005 and has been subleasing it to the same tenant since 2011. The co-op board recently passed an amendment to the bylaws that states that an owner cannot sublease a unit for more than two years, and…
Q. I live in a co-op with some unsold share apartments that are occupied by rent stabilized tenants. This month a woman in a rent stabilized apartment passed away. Will her apartment remain rent stabilized, or can the owner transfer it to…
Q. I have lived in a Mitchell-Lama co-op since 1992 and never received a copy of the complete house rules. I have been assaulted by a neighbor’s husband; he is not a tenant on record yet lives here and is a very dangerous person. Does the…
Q. We recently had to vote to remove our board president from his position, because he was taking small amounts of funds on a regular basis. He said it was all ‘petty cash reimbursements,’ but he never told the board or treasurer about ma…
Q. Why are co-op board minutes so sparse that others who read them—shareholders, lawyers, brokers—have no real idea what goes on at meetings? This is because minutes are routinely ‘sanitized’ to leave out any troublesome issues, any comme…