Whether a building is a luxury high rise with an in-house movie theater, rooftop pool, and climate-controlled wine cellar or a much more modest low-rise or townhome community with a simple community room or gazebo, managing common amenitie…
Whether change is good or bad often depends on who you talk to; even a welcome change produces a certain level of stress and adjustment. Personal changes are challenging enough, but for co-op and condo residents, a board decision to change…
A snowy winter is a child's dream. What's more fun than the chance to build snowmen, dominate in snowball fights and of course, relish in the pure joy that is a snow day? Oh, to be young, blissful—and mostly ignorant of the havoc wreaked b…
While crime rates are steadily decreasing nationwide—even in the Big Apple—multiunit dwellings are often more difficult to 'police' due to the number of residents, visitors, delivery personnel and third party workers such as contractors. A…
The drop in crime in New York in the last 40 years has been nothing short of miraculous. In the 1970s, the city’s obvious danger was notorious. Muggings were commonplace. Subway cars rolled along the tracks tagged in graffiti and ugly fluo…
Cristina Torre kept her eyes on the kid, as he dropped right into the old mitts. On June 19, 2013, the daughter of Yankees legend Joe Torre caught a 1-year-old baby boy when he fell from the awning of a Brooklyn storefront. Dillin Miller h…
In New York, buying a co-op or a condo goes something like this: Your realtor takes you to see your dream home. You put in an offer—along with a bunch of other people. After a ferocious bidding war, your offer is finally accepted. You subm…
As the autumn leaves change and begin to fall, our thoughts invariably turn to the completion of the hurricane season and the arrival of winter. We are also reminded on an almost daily basis of the lasting results of Hurricane Sandy, or as…
Winston Churchill once said that “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference,” and that couldn’t be more apt for those who live in multifamily buildings. Co-op board members and managing agents sometimes complain that res…
If you own a co-op or a condo, it goes without saying that you want to make sure you get all the tax credits and abatements available to you. One of the most important of those is the New York State School Tax Relief Exemption—more commonl…