If your co-op or condo hasn't been able to "clean up" with laundry-room revenue, you might not have negotiated the best contract. Right-of-first-refusal clauses, for instance, might be keeping you contractually tied to the same company for years despite poor service or a poor split of revenue. But in today's aggressive climate, "Deals have gotten better," says Andrew Posner, senior account executive at Century Management. "It's a lot easier to put together a better package right now." Many companies provide extensive laundry room remodeling to win a contract; some even pay a signing bonus as an incentive for you to that switch laundry providers.

If your contract is up, or even if it's in mid-cycle, here’s what you need to know to get the most from your laundry room. Read More »

Welcome to a new monthly column by HABITAT's editorial director.

Sept. 2, 2008 — "The building is overrun by rats," managing agent Ellen Kornfeld said to me at a recent meeting, citing an 80-unit, Upper West Side building she had recently begun managing. "I'm in the throes of dealing with it." As she spoke, I had a fleeting image of a scene out of Willard or Ben, the rats-are-out-to-get-you horror flicks of the 1970s. Her words also reminded me of my own, much smaller cooperative in Manhattan, and our battle with rodents last year. Read More »

Welcome to a new monthly column by HABITAT's editorial director.

Sept. 2, 2008 — “The building is overrun by rats,” Ellen Kornfeld, vice president of The Lovett Group, said to me at a recent meeting, and as she was speaking I had a fleeting image of a scene out of Willard or Ben, the rats-are-out-to-get-you horror flicks of the 1970s. “It’s not over yet,” she said, citing an 80-unit Upper West Side building she had recently begun managing. “I’m in the throes of dealing with it.” Read More »

Sept. 3, 2008 — You live in a stately, prewar brick building with sandstone window trim, a copper cornice, terra-cotta moldings and years of city soot and grime. What cleaning methods are strong enough to remove dirt and stains while safe enough to protect the delicate details? Can you use the same treatments throughout, or is brick cleaned differently than stone and other materials? You're right to be concerned: The wrong treatments can scar the building and permanently harm its finer historical elements. Here's what you should know before hiring a cleaning company or cleaning the building yourself. Read More »

When the extensive and expensive landscaping at two large co-ops began dying during a drought and its subsequent water restrictions, both turned to the same solution: Install water wells. The technology is dead simple, unchanged for thousands of years except for the ease of modern machinery. And each co-op's water bills have dropped precipitously. Here's how they did it. Read More »

You know the scenario: A couple days before laundry day, you start buying lots of gum and other sundries to start collecting quarters in your change — quarters you have to haul in a heavy bag and feed into washers and dryers. But increasingly, laundry rooms equipped with smart cards and coinless systems are making quarters as obsolete as subway tokens. Is such high-tech sudsing worth the agitation involved in refurbishing your building's laundry room and changing your residents' long-term habits? Aside from removing the gotta-get-quarters shuffle, what's the advantage? Read More »

It may sound like some accessory from your childhood Micronauts, but there's nothing kid-stuff about a microturbine — a gas-powered, on-site device that actually creates electricity for your building and even produces heat you can use for some of your building's hot-water needs. Read More »

Condo-association president Richard Campbell would probably agree with the approach of deadpan detective Joe Friday on the old Dragnet TV series. Whenever a witness veered off on an emotional tangent, he steered her back with a much-parodied catchphrase: "Just the facts, ma'am." And Campbell is after "just the facts" about the operations of his building — using a standard big-business tool that's still new to co-op and condo management. Read More »

Three o'clock in the morning is a time for the sandman, not sandbags. And so if that's the time that flooding hits and the water is rising in your basement or garage, you may not have the manpower to lay sandbags in time — leaving you with the prospect of tens of thousands of dollars' worth of flood damage. Read More »