Increasingly, those who manage residential rental, cooperative, or condominium apartment dwellings in New York are learning they must walk a fine line in setting house rules that govern the ownership and acceptance of animals in their buil…
Search Results: adam leitman bailey (118)
Q What do you do when a board/board member rejects you as a prospective buyer for self-serving gain? My husband and I were in contract on an apartment where we were paying in cash, had no mortgage, could easily pay the maintenance ev…
While for many laypeople cooperatives and condominiums are essentially interchangeable, from the legal point of view they are radically different institutions. Much of this difference can be attributed to history. Co-ops have …
Most New York residents—and certainly most New York attorneys are aware of the Warranty of Habitability. Few may know that its origins are statutory, and fewer still care that it contradicts common law, but most would be surprised by the t…
Q Who owns the handicapped parking spaces set aside in the parking facility of a newly constructed condominium? —Keeping it Accessible in Kings County A “Sponsors of newly constructed condominiums are responsible for creating th…
Most buildings in flood zone areas already maintained flood insurance as a result of lender requirements and therefore were covered by Sandy. The biggest surprise was those persons who use their homes as home offices or the building rents …
Some of the most intense combat occurring in modern times is not that which has taken place on battlefields, such as at Normandy, Pork Chop Hill, or in the la Drang Valley, or currently in the mountains of Afghanistan, but rather in the…
Recently, the Appellate Division First Department, in Fletcher v. Dakota, Inc., involving a shareholder in The Dakota, a historic luxury co-op on the Upper West Side, held that the business judgment rule does not protect individual con…
Many times, cooperatives and condominiums have commercial retail spaces connected to or below their building. These are immensely valuable as a result of the income generated by these stores and restaurants. Ergo, the importance of a ne…
Q I live in a self-managed co-op and we are getting conflicting information about whether co-ops can disallow roommates or not. We've heard that the board of directors has absolute decision making power over whether or not to allow room…
Q When an applicant applies to buy into a co-op and pays the high application fee, yet is denied by the board, shouldn’t they be given a reason why they were rejected? I feel strongly that the board is wrong in turning someone away with…
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 In our Queens co-op (containing 68 apartments) we do not allow laundry washing machines. A few owners have had them from years back, others have recently renovated and installed washing machines in their apartments. This cau…
Two state laws make the illegality of a tenant’s use of rented premises a matter of considerable concern to property owners of all kinds, including cooperatives. One empowers local prosecutors to bring eviction proceedings against both …
Q We have a shareholder who has posted notices around our co-op that condemn the co-op and the board. They are in plain view of potential buyers. When the buyers read these notices, they refuse to even look at the available unit that…
Co-op and condo communities tend to cover all their bases when it comes to allowing someone new into their community. In most instances, applications and interviews are the norms. But you can’t exactly predict what someone will do in the fu…
Not every co-op or condo in New York City has grassy areas on the property. But for those that do, the question of what is allowed on them often comes up. Sure we’ve all passed by buildings surrounded by lush grass lawns protected by a s…
You can screen potential residents before letting them buy into your co-op or purchase a condo unit all you want, but that doesn’t mean you’ll catch everything. Sometimes things just go undiscovered during the initial screening process for …
In last year’s presidential election, Donald Trump lost New York City, resoundingly. According to final election results, he received 461,174 votes across the five boroughs, or 18.4 percent, compared with 1,969,920 ballots cast for Hillary …
Q. I live in a Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) building in the Bronx. My building has no meetings or elections, and shareholders are not informed of our financial status at all. The treasurer’s son has taken complete control a…