Category: Q&A

Q I have a question about a condo owner’s right to smoke in their apartment. Having secondhand smoke infiltrate our units troubles many of my fellow condo owners—including myself. Our property manager suggests that we approach the offend…

Q Several others and I are shareholders in a co-op on the East Side of Manhattan. Our board and management company are putting through Local Law 11. This is not a problem. However, they have refused for any of the shareholders to see th…

Q Our 20-floor co-op consists of two small buildings. The building went co-op in 1982 and the sponsor/owner converted from oil to gas, removed the boiler at his expense, and converted the basement space into a 1,200-square-foot-duplex …

Q We moved into our Chelsea co-op last spring, and when the heating was turned on in the fall, we learned that the west wall fin tube radiation wasn’t working. This means that we have no heat in the bedroom and partial heat in the livin…

Q I have a one-bedroom co-op in a six –story, 78-unit building in the Bronx on the market for $53,000 and have a prospective buyer who filled out the board application and provided the financial information required by the board. After …

Q Our six-story Queens condo is considering replacing our elevator. We have stairs, obviously, but getting up and down six stories will be difficult for some of our older unit owners. What legal obligations do we have as the board to p…

Q After serving on my board for the past two years as a vice president, I have now been elected president of my 83-unit Manhattan co-op. The equity sponsor (and 14 percent shareholder) has always been on the board, and for the last thre…

Q We have only three board members in our building. The current board has been in place for about seven years, and our shareholders would like to remove them because they’re ineffective. They failed to replace a board member who resigne…

Q I’m a resident co-op shareholder, and despite the clearly stated bylaw that washing machines and dryers are not allowed in my building, the resident board president living underneath me illegally has not one, but both appliances in h…

Q I am the current board president of a 48-unit Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) co-op located in Manhattan. Recently, in an effort to bolster operating income, without increasing maintenance assessments, previous boards had…