Suddenly, the room was shaking and the plants around Ron Tepperman’s desk were moving—it took a second for him to register what was happening. Until a real live earthquake shook the city and created panic along the East Coast, that grou…
Out of nowhere, someone is regularly using the parking space you have had for years. And strangers are appearing regularly in your building’s hallways, though you’re not sure where they belong or if they should even be there. Strangely, …
While a lot of the day-to-day business of running a co-op or condo building happens in the management office or on-site at the level of maintenance and staff management, meetings—board-only and resident alike—are the forum where importa…
A key to success and functionality in any relationship is clear, consistent communication. In a residential community, part of achieving functionality is managing the information in the governing documents and records which detail the …
For some, stairwells are the dark little secret places between floors, where the kids go to drink beer at night, or where others go to do who knows what. While residents of most buildings will have few reasons to use their building’s in…
Back in the late 1800’s, an army officer named Henry Martyn Robert wrote a distillation of Parliamentary Procedure (which was used by the American Congress at the time), to help people run smooth and effective meetings, whether it be a …
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…
Most co-op and condo buildings in the city have a laundry room for residents to use that is more than just an amenity; it’s practically a necessity. Nearly all of these co-op/condo laundry rooms are maintained by laundry contractors who…
Residential buildings are constantly under attack—not by barbarians or marauding bandits, but by a force far more subtle and insidious. The most tenacious enemy of a residential building is not fire or structural collapse—though a build…
With multifamily buildings, who is in charge of the property and how well those people are trained are critically important factors in the successful operation of the community. Board members are a part of this management class, which i…