LEGAL/FINANCIAL

No good deed goes unpunished. Many times, boards are subjected to second-guessing and criticism unfairly. Sometimes they are even accused of being too shortsighted, of not being open to suggestions from other shareholders, and even of getting paid or, worse, paid off by someone. Everyone's a critic. Anyone who has ever served on a co-op or condo board in New York can attest to it.

Being on a board is hard work, and sometimes shareholders make it more rigorous than it already is. This can be damaging to the building if board members get tired of putting up with unnecessary grief and leave. After all, who needs the aggravation if you can't do the job? There's good news, though. There are some steps boards can take to keep the peace.

Read more

Just days after a piece of Plexiglas fell onto two parked cars from luxury megatower One57, a sheet of plywood ripped away by high winds from a condo construction site fatally struck a woman in a parking garage at 175 West 12th Street. Police officers told the Daily News that "Tram-Thuy Nguyen, 37, died Tuesday at Bellevue Hospital shortly after the freak 5:50 p.m. tragedy near the former site of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the West Village." She was hit by a 4-foot-by-8-foot sheet of plywood, which was torn from a construction site security fence on West 12th Street, police said — where the shuttered St. Vincent's Hospital is undergoing conversion into a high-end condo development called The Greenwich Lane. According to the National Weather Service, winds in Manhattan at nearly 6 p.m. topped out with gusts of 38 mph. The Daily News reports that "the W. 12th St. building was the subject of numerous complaints during construction in 2013 — but no complaints were made in 2014."

Read more

At the Brevard, a co-op with more than 400 units on East 54th Street, Forbes-Ergas Design Associates relocated the concierge desk to a more central location and added several closets directly behind the desk. Although it looks like an elegant wood-paneled wall, the structure is actually quite functional, hiding the closets that contain packages, dry-cleaning, and even laundry bags, which can be stored within easy reach of the concierge.

Another issue is that the amount of information that can be provided to the concierge and to residents is expanding. Part of this comes from improved security monitors and cameras that can better cover the hallways, elevators, and other parts of the building. Monitors can be placed within the desk so that a concierge is sitting or standing behind or just over them.

Read more

Steve Day is satisfied. He wouldn't have said so just three years ago when the five-person board of his 490-unit Queens co-op faced ever-increasing energy costs. The decades-old windows of the 23-building garden apartment complex, The Estates at Bayside, were deteriorating, the roofs were leaking, and the six heating plants were unreliable. And it was all very costly.

"The windows we had were probably the second set of windows that were in here," says Day, "and we were having quite a few problems with them: they were leaky, they were drafty, and heat was just going right out."

The board decided to take on the problems one at a time, tackling the windows first.

Read more

Construction at the megatower on Billionaires' Row may almost be finished, but it has stopped for the third time in less than a year. According to the Daily News, the Department of Buildings (DOB) halted construction at One57 after "a four by four-foot piece of Plexiglass fell from the 22nd floor of a glitzy new tower at 157 W. 57th St., crashing onto two parked cars." Yikes! The Wall Street Journal, which originally reported the story, adds that "Extell Development can’t resume building until it shows it can carry out the job safely." Luckily, nobody was hurt, but after three incidents, people are getting increasingly anxious about walking anywhere near the building. You can't blame them, either. Even if it had been a single incident, falling glass from a building, especially one that tall, is pretty scary indeed. 

Read more

Bank statements, Social Security numbers, birth dates. Are they secure? And if they are not, are you protected?

It's time to talk about cyber insurance.

"One of the big misconceptions in real estate is that because they aren't a retail store conducting online transactions, [co-ops and condos] don't have cyber exposure. But if they store personal information, they have exposure," says Jim O'Neill of the New Empire Group, a company that offers cyber insurance for co-ops, condos, and property managers. If that data lands in the wrong hands, the co-op has liability that can cost the building thousands of dollars in legal fees and/or settlement costs.

As a result, building associations and property managers are picking up cyber insurance, since any company that keeps personal information is responsible for protecting that data. Breaches are costly and not covered under traditional protections, such as Directors & Officers liability or crime insurance.

Read more

The idea of heading to the local watering hole to unwind after a long day or an even longer week certainly has its appeal for many. But it's one thing to go to a bar, and quite another to live anywhere near one. Trust us, some of us know. Take Wednesday, for example, typically a work night for the 9-to-5 set. It's 11 p.m. and you're ready to tuck in for the night because you have to be up at 6 in the morning. Except that it's karaoke night at the bar across the street, that one guy is singing "Ice Ice Baby" for the millionth time, and the revolving door of smokers talking and laughing without a care in the world will carry on until 3 a.m. or so. A group of residents who live along the perimeter of Seward Park, who are reportedly part of the SPaCE block association, know all about living near bars. They live near three of them. Three bars located within two blocks. A proposal for a fourth establishment, a Mexican restaurant with a full liquor license and a 4 a.m. closing time, reports Bowery Boogie, has fueled the group to launch a grassroots campaign to stop it from opening. "Flyers were littered around the vicinity this weekend ahead of tonight’s Community Board 3 meeting of the SLA subcommittee. The message is simple — no more bars for Essex Street." This is why when you live near a bar it's a good idea to invest in a white noise machine.

Read more

Josh Fox has been on the board of the 206-unit condominium at 340 East 23rd Street for the entire seven-year life of the building, and president for the last three. In that time, he has proven himself a certain kind of board member, one who is more than a board member. He acts more like manager — a take-charge guy who has obsessively turned the idea of money-saving into an art form. Among his accomplishments: he has negotiated lower utility rates with the gas and electric companies; found a different bank to lower banking fees and interest rates; found a new landscaping company at a reduced cost; reupholstered outdated building furniture to avoid replacement costs; started e-mailing building documents to board members instead of printing them; and has instituted a dozen other practices intended to decrease costs and/or increase revenues. Such actions shouldn't be surprising, either: Fox is the founder and CEO of a company called Bottom Line, which analyzes nonprofit corporations and municipalities and helps them control their costs.

Read more

A READER ASKS: I'm a doorman in a midsize co-op in Yonkers. I read your article about how boards can back up the concierge when a building resident puts him in an awkward position about the building rules. I really identified with it, especially because we have one of those building carts that building residents can use to take packages and groceries up to their apartments. That's what my problem is about. We only have one cart, and some people will take it and then not return it. Others wheel it back into the elevator and leave it in there, but don't call me at the desk to let me know so I can grab it and put it away — which can be annoying to anyone else using the elevator. When the cart goes missing and someone else needs it, I have to scramble to track it down while apologizing to the frustrated tenant. What can I do to improve this process and prevent the cart from vanishing? How can I get the residents to cooperate? 

Read more

You might say it was fun while it lasted. The luxury market was on fire, and developers were testing those one percent waters to see how high prices could climb. As 2014 drew to a close, however, experts warned that the bubble would burst and a slowdown would begin. Sure enough, old man winter did manage to slow everything down. And now, as the Daily News reports, it looks like developers are getting "real about real-estate prices." That's right. Developers are slashing prices by as much as 25 percent. That sure sounds like a lot, but of course when you're not a gazillionaire, there simply isn't much difference between $40 million and $29.95 million or between $110 million and $82 million. It's interesting to see, however, that even the super rich, who arguably according to many have money to burn, can spot when something is overpriced. You can't blame the developers for trying their luck, though. The Daily News calls it "the real-estate equivalent of throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks" and quotes one developer as saying, "at the beginning of the sales process, you have nothing to lose when you list your penthouse at a pie-in-the-sky price." You never know when someone rich enough is going to bite.

Read more