New York, NY,  August 30, 2010  — Recent news for co-op boards and condo associations.

Questionable charges, stupid questions, noisy neighbors and what about ... ILSA? These are just a few of the issues involving co-op board and condo board this week. We've also got the latest board lawsuits, targeting golden retrievers, Hindus and a tree. Plus, everything apartment buyers and sellers ought to know about the latest real-estate rip-off and broker relations — now they scrubs floors? Magic Johnson  goes all condo in Brooklyn, Liam Neeson sells his Central Park West co-op and New York City conquers the phantom menace. Read More »

Aug. 27, 2010 —  A residential co-op on Manhattan's Upper West Side has achieved a rare victory in silencing a rooftop bar whose loud music into the early-morning hours made its shareholders' lives intolerable. How the co-op board did, and how it persevered through more than a year of effort, can prove instructive for other co-op and condo boards fighting bad-neighbor bars, cacophonous clubs and other noisy nightspots. Read More »

August 31, 2010  — Many co-op boards and condo associations are wary of change orders on capital-improvement projects, suspecting they are a sneaky way for unscrupulous contractors to jack up the price of a project they've won with a low bid. And sometimes they're right. But change orders — which at one co-op recently added $58,000 to a $400,000 exterior repair and roof-replacement project — are a fact of life. It's impossible to identify all of the underlying conditions in a building or predict every potential problem before a project begins. Therefore, the key questions are: What are legitimate change orders and how much should be allotted for them? We'll explain both now simply and quickly. Read More »

A new section, reporting on stories we have in development. Please feel free to share your experiences with us.

August 30, 2010 — I never thought much about it, but some board members think they should get paid for what they do. My small, 22-unit Manhattan co-op, like others of its type, flirted with this idea some years ago when a board member took over as the manager. Our smallish management company had been falling down on the job, and one director — who worked at home anyway — found himself taking on more and more of the manager's duties: dealing with contractors, keeping watch on the building systems, responding to shareholders' requests, even going to the Department of Buildings to appeal rulings.  When we had finally had as much as we could take from our manager (at one meeting, I asked why some longstanding task had not been completed, and her response was: "Well, you can pick up the phone and make a call to the contractor, too, you know"), we decided to hire our director as manager. We had to pay him, of course, but we were traditional enough to have him step down from the board. Read More »