New York's Cooperative and Condominium Community

Habitat Magazine Insider Guide

HABITAT

SUFFOLK COUNTY

When times get tough and the choice of paying your mortgage or paying your condo's common charges looms, the bank usually wins. But that doesn't mean a condo board is just going to stand still as arrears build up, so expect your board to take action. How, you wonder? By taking away the very thing that enticed you to buy in the first place: your amenities.

Some condo boards are struggling to pay their association’s bills, and are turning to legal machinations to get lagging apartment owners to pay their monthly common charges on time, or even at all. But one Long Island condominium is using a new strategy to collect from deadbeats: filing a lien against the unit, and then foreclosing on the lien.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, long faces on Long Island, as a the FBI arrests two men they allege ran a Ponzi scheme at their Montauk resort containing over 100 co-op apartments. Another kind of white-collar criminal may be robbing you when you apply for a mortgage. And is it criminal to pay $80,000 for parking space at a car condominium? Plus, the co-op board of The Cambridge House sued the City to get Citi Bike racks in front of its building removed — and now the City says it's above the law and the courts have to stay out!

New York City and State legislators have introduced bills that would institute timelines for when co-op boards have to reach an admissions decision, with one bill that would mandate boards either give a reason why they rejected a potential buyer or swear that the reasons for rejection were not based on discrimination. 

Are these reasonable? For a real-world example, we can look to Suffolk County, Long Island, which in 2009 enacted a co-op admissions law with both time clocks and required reasons for rejection.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, they do love their cigarettes in Queens, a Long Islander may face eviction for burning the wrong kind of firewood and Petey the Pig's "parents" are trying to sell their co-op apartment and fine a more swine-friendly place. There's a Harlem co-op / condo expo April 6-7. And where the wild things aren't is in the late Maurice Sendak's co-op, now up for sale. Plus, for condo and condo and co-op boards, we've advice on mediation.

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Learn all the basics of NYC co-op and condo management, with straight talk from heavy hitters in the field of co-op or condo apartments

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