You may live in the most well-run and self-sufficient building in the city, but no building is an island, not even in developments from the sprawling Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan to Co-op City in the Bronx to the s…
For most New Yorkers, the search for housing is perhaps the least favorite part of the New York experience. If the size is right, the price is wrong; if the price is right, the neighborhood’s wrong. And then there’s that hideous wallpap…
The age-old adage from Benjamin Franklin perhaps says it best: nothing is certain but death and taxes. And without some assistance on the legislative front, taxes are likely to increase significantly for New York City co-op an…
Most of the multifamily, residential buildings found in large cities are either co-ops or condos, and most are run the way co-ops and condos across the country are run. But if you dig a little deeper in here in New York City, you’ll fin…
Q My mother recently passed away and I inherited her shares in a Mitchell-Lama co-op building. It's taken quite some time to run down the paperwork, and make preparations to empty the unit, and the building management has not been at al…
Despite the collapse in housing prices in much of the country and a definite slowdown in sales, new residential development in New York City—and Manhattan in particular—continues, though at a much more modest pace than in recent years. T…
Ever since New York City was New Amsterdam, landlords have made extra money by converting unused space in their buildings into residential lofts. While many apartment-seekers gravitated toward these conversions, artists, bohemians, and o…
Emma Lazarus perhaps said it best in her immortal poem in which she spoke about the wave of immigrants that were welcomed to American’s golden shores. Generation upon generation of newcomers have chosen to settle in New York City and its…
For the past year or so, PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s sustainability initiative (“sustainability” being a new buzz word for “environmentally friendly” or “contributing to a better quality of life”) has taken center stage at …
Imagine the biggest three-dimensional puzzle you can. Now imagine fitting eight million people into this puzzle. Putting the pieces together takes more than just luck. It takes enormous skill, precision and foresight. Those are three att…