On July 1st, about 10,000 New York City buildings must start phasing out their use of high-polluting fuel oil. Under the city's “Clean Heat” mandate (a part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s Greener, Greater Buildings Plan New York initiat…
It's almost a mantra: the more you know, the better off you are—certainly when it comes to doing the job of a cooperative, condominium or HOA board member. No matter how enthused and engaged a new board appointee may be, they don't come…
As the directors of a cooperative corporation, co-op board members have a number of duties to their shareholders, chief among them to preserve and improve their investment and to maintain and/or improve shareholders’ standard of living …
These are hardly the best of times for those who manage co-op and condo buildings, charged as they are with overseeing financial well-being, maintenance goals, legal issues and an almost unpredictable kaleidoscope of other daily concer…
Remember Stanley Roper from the 1970’s sitcom Three’s Company? To some, he might still be their idea of a property manager—the upstairs landlord or the guy you’d call when your plumbing’s on the fritz. And indeed, when the plumbing in you…
We’ve all heard that “first impressions are important” when meeting people; so too with buildings. A potential buyer’s or visitor’s first impression often determines their opinion of the building and its apartments and has a dramatic imp…
If you want to be a doctor, you go to medical school -- if you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school. But what if you want to be a property manager? Do you go to property management school? Actually, no. Despite the wide rang…
All she wanted to do was to sell her co-op apartment. Although she used her ground-floor property both for work and as a residence, she wasn’t quite sure whether it could be sold as a live-work apartment. So she did what she thought sh…
Six years ago, a scandal rocked the New York State real estate management industry for the second time in a decade. Thirty management company owners, agents and contractors were indicted for taking kickbacks for contract work at many New Y…