Tag: Transparency

One truism of home ownership is that there is always something that needs to be fixed or upgraded. That’s true in condo and co-op communities as well, both large and small. There’s always a roof to replace or a boiler to upgrade, or a lobby…

Paper, or electronic? It’s now a choice for everything, from the books we read for pleasure to the books we keep on our associations and corporations. Even restaurant menus are digital today in the wake of the need for ‘touch-free’ environm…

Is a condominium -- or any type of common interest community -- a democracy? Do the shareholders in a co-op have the right to access the documents and information their boards use to make decisions? Can they demand to see those documents? T…

Co-op buildings, as we know, are governed by boards of directors elected by the shareholders of the co-op. Candidates often campaign for a seat on the board, not unlike politicians campaigning for public office. But is a co-op a democracy? …

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…

In a recent piece for the New York Law Journal , attorneys from Manhattan-based law firm Ganfer Shore Leeds & Zauderer delve into the issue of privacy as it pertains to the personal information of shareholders and unit owners - and…

A few years ago, I was on the phone with a homeowner. He was irate with how his community’s money was being spent. He was unhappy with the budget increase. It was a call I took regularly from any one of my homeowners (and more often than no…

Editor's note: This article is Part 2 of a two-part series from the authors examining some of the many legal questions and considerations raised by the global pandemic for co-op, condo, and HOA boards, as well as landlords and building owne…

The motivation for volunteering to be an uncompensated (and sometimes underappreciated) co-op or condo board member is usually a sense of civic duty combined with the desire to protect one’s own investment and quality of life. This means th…

Most buildings will have to undergo some kind of exterior or facade-related work at some point in their useful lives - it's inevitable. But sometimes those projects can be noisy, dusty, and disruptive to not just the building being worked o…