New York City real estate is governed by a number of things: available housing stock, the economy, state legislation, and quite often by major legal cases argued in the courts and then applied by proxy to building communities all over the …
The dream of homeownership often brings with it the independence of owning your own space, decorating it as you wish and living by your own rules. Yet when you reside in a co-op or condominium with possibly hundreds of other residents, you…
To address the problem of steeply escalating taxes on co-ops and condos, the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums (CNYC) created the Action Committee for Reasonable Real Estate Taxes in February of 1990. During their study and…
In the world of co-ops and condos, few people are more important than a organization's legal counsel. Some of the reasons for needing an attorney's help are obvious - how else would complicated contracts be drawn up and ever-changing laws …
House hunters often spend weeks, months, sometimes even years searching for that perfect place to call home. Finally they find it - great space, perfect location, price within the budget. But, before signing on the dotted line, purchasers …
Every New Yorker knows the face of their mayor. But the faces they might not recognize are those of their city council members, a group that wields more power than most state legislatures. Fifty-one individuals make up the New York City Co…
On the surface, moving sounds like a no-brainer: Put stuff in boxes. Move boxes from A to B. Unpack boxes. What's the big deal? But as anyone who's ever moved can tell you, it's never that simple. In fact, it's often a nightmare that leave…
Moving on a budget? No sweat. Here are some money-saving tips: Understand the estimating process. If you're moving long distance, you can and should get a flat fee. Get it in writing, or it will never have happened. If you're movin…
If you take a look at a map of Brooklyn, you'll see that nestled between the Buttermilk Channel and Gowanus Bay, there's a funny kind of hook-shaped spur of land that protrudes off the mainland and encloses the Erie Basin. That's Red Hook,…
The entire real estate industry - from owners and developers to contractors and architects - has been focused on the issue of mold contamination during the past year. However, no segment of industry has been more watchful than cooperative …
Many co-op and condo board members know the difficulty of working to resolve arguments between residents. In mixed-use buildings, the problems may be greater. With both commercial and residential unit owners or shareholders in a building, …
A Brooklyn condominium board learned a painful lesson recently when a jury awarded $55,000 in punitive damages to a unit owner who lived with a leaking roof for 11 years. The verdict in the case Board of Managers of Sterling Condomi…
In this and in future columns, I will be examining decisions of interest to co-ops and condo boards and suggesting what valuable lessons can be learned from these legal decisions. Recently, there were several interesting court decisi…