Owners of co-ops and condos in New York are apt to find that the neighbors down the hall live according to a different set of rules and often pay less then they do for the same apartment. Thanks to the state law in effect when most cooper…
We all hope for good neighbors when we move into a new building or community. The same is true for commercial properties in residential buildings. Making a good match, one that benefits both the commercial tenants and unit owners, can go a …
In 1955, when many city neighborhoods were deteriorating and the flight to the suburbs was going full blast, the Mitchell-Lama bill, named after state Sen. McNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred Lama, was signed into law in New York State. …
Accepting a board position for a homeowners association is no easy task- you can please some of the residents some of the time, but rarely if ever can you please everyone. For board members, serving the community they live in may seem like …
When you live in a multifamily building, however, peace and quiet can be hard to come by. From the guy upstairs who gargles loudly at precisely 6:47 a.m. every morning to the neighbor with the yapping Chihuahua—at some point the soundtrack …
It happens in business, government, and industry every day: employees learn the rules of a new job, and before long they know those rules so well, they start going around them or taking short cuts. Rarely is this done with malicious intent.…
Being on the board of a co-op or condo is a big responsibility—one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. While some people may run for a board seat just to have the title, they need to be prepared to govern fairly and make decisions that are in …
The presence of unfamiliar cooking aromas, 'foreign' music in the hallways, multilingual chatter in the elevators, and increasing numbers of younger newcomers collecting their mail in the lobby alongside older longtime residents—these are s…
Buying an apartment in New York can be a real odyssey—finding a place that fits your budget and other requirements, securing a mortgage, gathering reams of paperwork for the closing...all very stressful and tedious. But for those buying int…
Are you a building manager who wants to retrofit your building with energy-efficient lighting? Or maybe you're a board trying to re-do your central air conditioning system, but you don’t know if you have it in your budget? Thankfully, there…