LEGAL/FINANCIAL

Every day, hundreds of bills intended for the city's condos and co-ops arrive at the back offices of property management firms. Delivered in unassuming envelopes, they request payment for goods and services as varied as the buildings themselves. From the price of a new light bulb to a plumber's fee to the staggering cost of a new roof, the demands that the bills set forth must all be met to keep the wheels turning. Yet while management firms employ a complex processing system to ensure that vendors are paid correctly, the room for error is vast.

Read more

Under Local Law 84 of 2009, large buildings must record and keep track of their energy and water use — and then the city posts the results for all to see. The letter grades are linked to a numerical score called the Energy Use Intensity (EUI), which measures the energy used by a building per square foot, per year. The median EUI for multifamily buildings in New York City is 132.1. Score a 109 or lower and you earn an A; higher than 160 is a D. But in practical terms, how well do these grades translate to real-life energy use?

Read more

Condominium associations, unlike cooperatives, can't turn down a prospective purchaser except in one way — by exercising its "right of first refusal" and buying the apartment instead. It doesn't happen often, since condo boards usually have just a short amount of time to come up with the cash or let the sale go through. And if the association doesn't have enough money on hand and can't get a conventional loan in time, what's a board to do?

To quote Mel Gibson in The Road Warrior: "You come to me."

Read more

I live in an unusual condominium. Consisting of two gut-renovated buildings in Manhattanville, also called Central Harlem or West Central Harlem, the 50-unit property is in the city Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD) portfolio of affordable housing. It is designed for median-income residents. And, although we're a condo, HPD rules require the units to be owner- occupied.

Read more

In general, boards do not involve shareholders in the particulars of an elevator redesign. Most residents simply want to know when the machine will be out of service and for how long — they don't particularly care whether or not it will have a Fritztile floor. Sometimes a condo or co-op board will establish a committee to consider design elements and then bring recommendations to the full board. You don't always need to do that — but you do always need to consider not only the mechanical parts of elevator replacement or refurbishing, but the design as well.

Read more

Along with taxes and, for co-ops, the underlying mortgage, energy costs are possibly the single biggest non-discretionary budget item. You have to heat your cooperative or condominium in cold weather, keep the lights on in common areas and power everything from smoke alarms to garage gates to swimming-pool filters. There aren't a lot of corners you can cut here — but that doesn't mean there's no way to save money. Our latest Teachable Moments column offers some tested, real-world strategies by three longtime property managers who have found it doesn't take a lot of energy to save on energy.

Read more

The St. Tropez Condominium at 340 East 64th Street in Manhattan appears to be a nice place to live. The historic 34-story building — famous in real-estate circles as the first condominium in New York City and probably New York State, completed a year after passage of the state's Condominium Act of 1964 — sits in the tony Lenox Hill neighborhood of the Upper East Side, and boasts a pool, a gym, a garage, a roof deck and a children's playroom among its amenities. According to one survey, its 301 apartments sell for an average of nearly $2 million each.

So why would its condo association hold a homeowners meeting in a vacant commercial space with uneven floors rather than in a nice, safe community room or somewhere similar? Because it just seems that if the board members had only asked themselves that question they could have avoided all the unpleasantness that followed.

Read more

The process of terminating the super begins with what is colloquially described as "writing him up." This can take a relatively short or relatively long time. "Documenting incidents is key," says Nadir Maoui, vice president of a 150-plus-unit co-op in Sunnyside, Queens, that recently fired its superintendent. The board spent almost two years preparing a list of offenses. "We went from [oral] warnings to write-ups with the union, and we went as far as suspension," Maoui explains. "If you go for union arbitration with no [prior] warning [to the super] whatsoever, the first thing they'll ask is to give him a chance. You have to show you gave him warnings and can't deal with him anymore. Otherwise, it's your word against the super's."

Read more

Dec. 19, 2013 — Maro Goldstone is a shareholder of Gracie Terrace Apartment Corporation, at 605 East 82nd Street, a.k.a. 1 Gracie Terrace, in Manhattan. She and her husband, Thomas R. Newman, suffered extensive damage to their apartment when a 10,000-gallon water tank above them overflowed in 2003. The co-op's plan for remediation required a 50-square-foot reduction in the 1,400-plus-square-foot apartment. Goldstone objected, claiming the proposal violated the terms of the proprietary lease. So: May a cooperative corporation, when repairing an apartment, reduce its size?

Read more

The engineer's 10-year plan for 240 East 46th Street called for virtually a total makeover — renovating the lobby and replacing the roof, boiler, both elevators, water tank and all hallway carpeting and wallpaper. The cost would come to about $1.7 million. Now the big question: How would the condominium association pay for it?

Read more