2018 April
Focus on... Landscaping & Lawn Care

When it comes to purchasing a unit in a condominium, co-op or homeowners’ association, everyone is rightly concerned with square footage, baths, beds, kitchen aesthetics—all of the hallmark bells and whistles. But before a potential buyer c…

Along with the exterior appearance of buildings themselves, landscaping is the first point of contact for potential residents and visitors to a condo or HOA community. While it’s tough to quantify the effect of beautifully curated and maint…

The sun stays up a little longer, the breezes are warmer, and the flowers begin to bloom. The signs all point to the arrival of spring, when we can cast off the dreary grayness of winter and look forward to blissful summer days. It is the p…

Cities and suburbs can be dirty places – and unfortunately, getting that dirt off the façade of a building takes more than just a scrub-brush and a bottle of Mr. Clean. How a building is cleaned depends on two factors: what materials the bu…

Education, awareness, and cooperation between management, boards, and residents can make a huge difference in deterring crime in and around a building. Some basic behavioral adjustments – such as making sure nobody follows you into the buil…

While many of the co-ops, condos, and HOAs that struggled to stay solvent during the Great Recession of the mid-aughts have largely recovered, the truth is that regardless of the overall economic climate, there will always be buildings and …

Attractiveness and so-called ‘curb appeal’ are both vital to a building or HOA’s sense of community pride and overall value. After all, it’s hard to attract prospective homebuyers if your association’s grounds are scattered with litter, the…

Overall crime in the 30 largest cities of the U.S. was estimated to be down nearly 3 percent in 2017, according to a recent study by  New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. For New York in particular, the crime rate…

People often say, “If these walls could talk...”, when considering the variety of experiences that a room  has absorbed over the years and would now relate if it only could. But while talking walls are a purely hypothetical construct, prope…

Timeshares are a mystery to many. What are they really? An investment? A vacation club? Some combination of both that affords an opportunity to have an ‘insider’ vacation with the vague sense of property ownership? The product often seems m…

Whether you live in a condo, co-op, or HOA, board elections are a complicated process, especially when it comes to voting and counting ballots. Yet electing (or re-electing) a board is probably one of the most important exercises the reside…

Every co-op, condo, and HOA has rules and regulations that residents and their guests must abide by. For the most part, they’re usually pretty straightforward: no smoking in common areas, limits on pets, no hockey-playing in the hallways. T…

The Attorney General is the chief legal officer of the State of New York, and the head of the New York State Government’s Department of Law, often referred to as the Attorney General’s Office. The office traces its history all the way back …

One of the components that makes co-op ownership unique is its financing structure. Unlike a condominium, the property is owned as a whole, fee-simple estate – and so the entire property can be encumbered by a permanent, long-term loan. Thi…

Q. My brother passed away in August of last year. He was a cooperator at Rochdale Village, in Jamaica, New York. When we went to sit down with management, we were informed that the deposit my brother put down in 1992 is all that can be ex…