Mold

May 23, 2013 — Some condominium and co-op boards don't keep minutes. Strange but true. It's rare, but you'll find boards of small buildings who "don't see the need for them," and boards of the buildings of the 1 percent, where members feel they're too important "to act like a secretary." Other boards, even at sizeable, 100-unit buildings, simply don't feel like it, and yet other boards where English is not the dominant language feel they can't keep minutes in English. For those boards and even any residents who wonder, "Why bother," here's what to tell them. Read More »

May 21, 2013 — As regular readers of Board Talk can well attest, that forum is fraught with unhappy co-op / condo residents and board members alike charging dishonest tactics at the annual meeting where shareholders and unit-owners vote to elect a board. How are you going to assure everyone that the election isn't rigged? Although attorneys and managing agents swear fraud is rare, homeowners need assurance that everything is on the up and up. Here are ways to help make that happen. Read More »

May 21, 2013 — In December 2007, the original sponsor of 75 East End Avenue's 1974 co-op conversion sold Simon Elias and Izak Senbahar unsold shares representing 18 apartments. The proprietary lease states that unsold shares stay "unsold" until an actual occupant buys them. Because Elias and Senbahar did not purchase the shares for occupancy and never lived in the apartment, their shares remained "unsold." Selling these unsold shares required only the consent of the managing agent, but the co-op board also had a policy, the "financing rule," that said the board wouldn't consent to a sale if the buyer proposed to finance more than two-thirds of the purchase price. And therein came the hitch. Read More »

May 20, 2013 — Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, Zeckendorf Towers goes smokeless, the folks at Alwyn Court and The Briarcliff go homeless, and thanks to 24-hour construction crews, a Rockaways co-op goes sleepless. Plus, three Lower East Side co-ops install fuel-efficient boilers to save money heating 2,700 apartments, Airbnb lobbies politicians to take the "illegal" out of illegal hoteling, and people debate the pros and cons of the proposed co-op admissions disclosure law. Read More »

May 17, 2013 — UPDATED 5:23 P.M. — New York City contractors' boardwalk reconstruction near a Sandy-devastated co-op in Queens has created intolerable disruption, the co-op's attorney charges, including destruction of recently repaired private property. And the City ... well, the City responded to him within days and plans to make good on everything.

Wait, what? Something worked like it was supposed to? Here's how it happened. Read More »

May 16, 2013 — The  Beachwalk Landing Condominium in Long Beach, on Long Island, was having its share of problems. The oceanfront property — two buildings nearly 30 years old with a total of 72 units — was suffering from wear and needed all sorts of work, ranging from replacing terrace doors and air-conditioning sleeves to repairing the balconies and terraces. While there was little argument that things needed to be done, paying the price tag of $3.75 million for all that capital work was an issue. Some residents simply couldn't afford it to pay their share of the needed assessment. Or could they? Read More »

May 16, 2013 — Con Edison has a pool of about $1.5 million available to help co-ops, condominiums and other New York City buildings convert from oil to gas. Incentives vary based on the size of the building. For example, buildings that have between five and 75 units can get up to $22,500 for the conversion process and up to $5,000 for purchasing a highly efficient boiler. For larger buildings, customized incentives are available. Read More »

May 14, 2013 — Our bags were gone. 

My fiancé, Mike, and I had come home after having dinner at my parents' house. While he was parking, I took a few bags of groceries upstairs to our sixth-floor walk-up apartment and left a suitcase and another bag of groceries in the lobby for Mike to bring up when he came in.

But by the time he arrived — only a brief 10 minutes later — the bags had disappeared. After knocking on a few doors and finding that no one had seen or heard anything, we realized that our bags had been stolen — from our locked lobby! Read More »

May 14, 2013 — A reader asks: Our co-op is undertaking an exterior repair program, which includes Local Law 11/98 repairs and roof replacement. Our engineering firm informed us that as part of the project, we are required to have "special inspections" conducted on structural steel, concrete masonry walls, brick veneers and other construction elements. Fellow board members and I don't recall having to do special inspections on previous repair work at the building. Are these inspection requirements new? What do they entail? Read More »

May 13, 2013 — Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. Lots of news for boards in particular this week, as one co-op board sues the developer of One57 — the condo with the crane — and other boards face lawsuits against them because of superstorm Sandy. And it's board member vs. board member at The Bronx's Brady Court. Plus, a third of all homebuyers don't know what an "annual percentage rate" is. And while we'd bet that Ben Stiller (at left) does, he and his actress wife Christine Taylor still lost a million selling their co-op duplex on the Upper West Side. Read More »

May 10, 2013 — New York City has extended its deadline for property owners and managers to provide their buildings' 2013 energy-benchmarking data, following a cyberattack late last month at the U.S. government website where that information is entered into a database. Buildings falling under the benchmarking requirements now have until May 31. However, buildings wishing to use the government's spreadsheet template for entering information into that "Portfolio Manager" database, rather than entering information manually, have only until May 15 due to the planned release of an upgraded database. Read More »

May 9, 2013 — The board of our 233-unit Manhattan co-op wanted to revise the bylaws in our proprietary lease. They had remained unchanged from the very beginning of our cooperative, 45 years ago. We also wanted to change the size of the co-op board, which was set at 13 members. That size can make it hard to operate; when you foster an environment that gives everybody the opportunity to speak, the more people you have at the table, the longer everything takes.

As well, we had trouble just getting enough candidates to fill the board, and felt its size was out of proportion to a building our size. We also wanted to put in board eligibility requirements; for instance, there were no requirements whatsoever about whether or not board members had to be in good financial standing. We felt very strongly that board members should not owe any money.

We took those ideas and many other changes before the shareholders for two years in a row, and we were coming up 15 or 20 votes short each year. Why? Read More »

May 9, 2013 — So you've convinced your residents to switch to electric submetering, in which each apartment is separately metered and each owner pays for his or her own electricity. Now what? What are the physical steps that your contractor will take to convert your cooperative or condominium building from master meter to submeter? When residents ask how long it will take and how disruptive it will be, what will you tell them? Read More »

May 7, 2013 — Want to ensure a quorum at your next annual meeting? Do a lousy job throughout the year.

"That's the irony," notes attorney Phyllis H. Weisberg, a partner at Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads. "When everything is running smoothly and everybody's happy, it's harder to get a quorum."

"People come from far and wide if there are contentious issues," agrees longtime co-op board member Grant Varga, of the 57-unit 17 West 67th Street in Manhattan. "But when everything is going smoothly, people say, ‘What's my motivation to go?' So we work hard to convince them to show up." So how do you ensure that your building has the required quorum to make the annual meeting legit? Read More »

May 7, 2013 — From the first inklings of marital discord that surface as screaming matches in the lobby to the protracted endgame where couples divvy up their apartments, co-op and condo and boards are often caught in the middle of divorces. In one recent case, a co-op board president received a note from a shareholder warning him that her husband might try to forge her signature on documents. A short time later, the husband delivered doctored transfer documents to the board for approval. In another case, a small condominium in the Flatiron District couldn't collect maintenance fees from a couple for more than a year while the two sparred over finances from abroad. Read More »

May 6, 2013 — Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, sponsor abuses stir up the latest call for a co-op ombudsman in the Attorney General's office, a Queens condo board changes apartments' locks to keep owners out during Sandy repair — commandeering one home for a construction office — and West Village co-opers sue to keep away bicycle clutter. For condo and co-op boards, we've the latest hoteling lawsuit. Plus: Condopedia! Which we're sure is as accurate as regular Wikipedia. Read More »

May 3, 2013 — Marijuana is becoming legal, to various extents, in a lot of places. Some states such as New Jersey and California allow if for medical purposes. Colorado just plain allows it. Some predict that sooner or later it will pretty much just be legal, basically everywhere.

The question is whether condo and co-op boards will be able to ban marijuana in instances where the state says its legal. Will a board be able to just say no? The answer is not so cut and dry. Read More »

May 2, 2013 — The board of managers of a condominium had a serious common-charge collection problem caused by a defaulting unit-owner. There was no equity in the unit since it was purchased at the top of the market and the mortgage exceeded its current value. What are the steps to take in a situation like this? The step not to take is to give up and do nothing. Read More »

May 1, 2013 — A City Council measure intended to provide consumer protection to co-op buyers was alternately praised and vilified at hearing of the Committee on Housing and Buildings across the street from City Hall on Tuesday.  More than two dozen witnesses testified and about 70 individuals attended. Read More »

April 30, 2013 — How would you like to make sales dry up in your building? Or guarantee you'll lose every challenge to your authority as a board? What if you couldn't charge assessments, collect flip taxes or go after people who were in arrears? Nutty, right? Well, not so nutty if you're one of those condo or co-op boards that don't keep minutes. Read More »

April 30, 2013 — Rising insurance rates might be unavoidable, but there are steps condo and co-op boards can take to keep control of runaway rates and prepare for the unavoidable increases. Here are three simple steps every building should contemplate. Read More »

April 29, 2013 — Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, the case may have involved a rental landlord, but a court approved "heavy surveillance" to build evidence of an illegal tenant. Condo and co-op boards dealing with illegal hoteling, take note. Elsewhere, the chickens come home to roost and the co-op board says they have to relocate, and at $125 million, a co-op penthouse becomes the most expensive publicly listed home in New York City history. Plus: Co-op board presidents tell their horror stories! Read More »

April 26, 2013 — A bill has been introduced in New York's City Council that would substantially impair a co-op board's rights to approve prospective apartment purchasers. 

On very short notice, a hearing on the bill — Int. No. 188 — has been scheduled for Tuesday, April 30, at 1 p.m. We understand that the bill is being strongly supported by the real estate broker community. However, we recommend and encourage you and your fellow co-op board members and managers to promptly reach out to your City Council representatives and express your views in opposition to the bill. Read More »

April 26, 2013 — In a recent decision that sent shivers of concern across New York co-op and condo boards, the state's highest court held that the Business Judgment Rule does not protect individual condominium and cooperative board members against some personal liability. In response, real estate and insurance attorneys are reviewing directors and officers (D&O) policies and the law to try determine whether you're protected in the event of a claim of discrimination. Here, two veteran attorneys explain the background and what some of your options may be. Read More »

April 25, 2013 — Every night, Zoltan Papp would watch the sun go down from his office at a 100-unit Greenwich Village cooperative and the floodlights in the backyard flicker on. They would stay on all night, casting chiaroscuro shadows in the empty outdoor space until a timer switched them off at dawn the next morning.

Needless to say, the co-op board found monthly electricity bill an eyesore. With lights on around the clock in the lobby, corridors, elevators and staircases of 51 Fifth Avenue — familiar as the exterior location for Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt's home on Mad About You — it was obvious to the building superintendent no one had ever seriously looked at what the building could do to eliminate the unnecessary electricity costs. Read More »

April 25, 2013 — A reader writes: I serve on the board of my condominium and plan to renovate my unit. I am concerned that an injured construction worker may bring a lawsuit under New York's so-called Labor Law. I understand that it is difficult to defend against such a suit. What is the Labor Law, and what should the board and I do? Read More »