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…
Every co-op shareholder knows that their board president is responsible for making decisions that affect the entire building community—but not as many grasp the amount of responsibility and decision-making that a person undertakes when t…
Boards of directors are usually made up of ordinary people, elected or appointed by their neighbors to run their building smoothly and efficiently. Most board members do their utmost to fulfill that expectation, but occasionally, even th…
Historically, co-op buildings have had the market cornered on board-mandated restrictions, strict bylaws, and procedural red tape, while condos have been more black-and-white: co-op shareholders own shares, and condo owners own real estate.…
Any transfer of ownership of a cooperative unit will require the cooperative corporation to cancel the old stock certificate and issue a new one. Many see this step as a simple clerical task, and often it is the managing agents that keep th…
As a financial professional who has served metropolitan New York's cooperative community for over 25 years, I must say that this is probably the most challenging time in recent history. Everywhere we turn, rapidly escalating costs coupled w…
Co-op and condo buildings can often seem like their own little self-contained worlds, with drama, politics, and debates aplenty. Given that, it's understandable why shareholder/owners might think the people who run their building—the boa…
As the legislative session in Albany winds down, with the Legislature passing the budget on time for the first time in two decades and the City Council continuing with its business, now is a good time to take a look at some of the housing-r…
While not a common practice, boards of directors of New York cooperatives have, at times, reached the decision to evict a shareholder based on objectionable conduct. Nearly every cooperative corporation's proprietary lease contains a sectio…
On Wednesday, March 16th, The Cooperator hosted its 18 th Annual Co-op & Condo Expo at the New York Hilton in Midtown Manhattan. The event featured more than 200 exhibitor booths and drew over 4,000 registrants from all corners of th…