2018 January
Focus on... Management

It is not easy being a board member. There are meetings to attend, documents to review, decisions to make, and neighbors to mollify. There are also a number of rules and regulations that must be followed in order to ensure that the individu…

Everyone can use a little help now and again. The residents of condominiums, co-ops or homeowners’ associations are no exception. There are tons of tasks that just cannot be left up to the board or residents who are busy people themselves, …

Owning a unit in a multifamily co-op or condo carries a great many benefits in the form of shared responsibilities, but it also requires compromises along the lines of control: what your board, management, and building staff can or cannot d…

A condominium, cooperative or homeowners’ association thrives or falters based on how all of the various stakeholders involved can come together in effort to achieve a common goal: the maintenance of a successful and stable residential comm…

Among the many positive aspects of apartment ownership (rather than renting) are long-term stability and long-term occupancy.  Long a city of mostly renters, New York City has transitioned into more and more a city of owners over the past 4…

Just as it was last year, the real estate market–including the market for co-ops, condos and HOAs–is on an upswing. The economy seems to have largely (if not completely) recovered from the 2007-08 recession, and professionals don’t see any …

From the far West Side to the Lower East Side to Downtown, scaffolds are being raised and new residences are being built all over Manhattan. Just a few years ago, new construction of these types would have been scoffed at. Now the times the…

Members of a condominium or co-op homeowners’ association (HOA) have a fiduciary responsibility to manage their community’s funds wisely, and to protect the financial interests of all owner/shareholders. Breaching this duty carries the real…

Q. What do you do when the president of the board, property manager, and super are all one family? I tried waking up the shareholders with memos and flyers about the conflict of interest to no avail. Our beautiful Garden of Eden has becom…

Q. I live in a 194-unit co-op where many shareholders are breaking one or more of the house rules. Our management claims the rules cannot be enforced because the courts do not recognize them. If this is true, how does a co-op protect its …

Q. Does the co-op have any liability for a live-in super doing work for shareholders that is deemed the individual shareholder’s responsibility and paid for by that shareholder?                           —Inquisitive Neighbor A. David…