Category: Law & Legislation

State legislation and city ordinances can provide a condo, co-op, or HOA board with guidance on how to effectively deal with a disruptive or unruly shareholder—someone whose abusive, harassing, inappropriate or chronically litigious behavio…

Whether your community is a co-op, condo, or HOA, proper record-keeping is the difference between a healthy property and one headed toward peril. And while meeting minutes and election results require well-organized documentation, records s…

Who knew? Who'd ever thought that your weekly movie screening inside your condo or co-op's rec room could get your HOA into possible legal trouble? Incredible as it may be, but that seemingly innocent and fun activity with your neighbors c…

Editor’s Note:   The web article  published on 7/14/16 “Give Me a J-51” by John Zurz on legislation sponsored by State Sen. Tony Avella and Assemblyman Edward Braunstein  on the J-51 tax abatement program, has been corrected to clarify tha…

For the last three years State Senator Tony Avella, D-11, who represents the Queens neighborhood of Bayside, has been trying to get co-ops and condominiums in the state of New York reclassified under the tax code so as to lower the amount o…

Residents of the Sky House condominiums at 11 E. 29 th St., a 55-story building that once towered over its Madison Square Park neighborhood, have launched a successful zoning challenge against a newly proposed condo across the street, te…

Airbnb's stake in the New York housing rental market could hit a major snag thanks to state lawmakers. The New York State Senate passed a bill on June 17 that would prohibit users of the popular online hospitality marketplace from adve…

Legal pros sound off about the most common legal blunders boards are prone to. 

According to the Washington, DC-based online database, the Gun Violence Archive, a mass shooting is an incident in which four or more individuals are wounded or killed. In 2015 alone, the U.S. faced 372 such incidents, leaving 475 people de…

Though many—in fact, most—co-op buildings flatly forbid shareholders from subletting their apartments to rental tenants, many co-op (and many more condo) buildings have populations of subtenants residing in them. Sometimes an apartment owne…