NEW YORK CITY

Want to maximize commercial rents without affecting your tax status? Until the end of 2007, the so-called “80/20 rule“ of the federal tax code limited the rents that many cooperatives could collect for commercial space (only 20 percent of a co-op’s income could be non-shareholder). When the 80/20 rule was liberalized in 2007, it was suddenly possible for many cooperatives to adopt new techniques used by commercial landlords to collect more rent.

A shareholder in a co-op had his dryer vent cleaned after 10 years and was shocked to discover how much lint had backed up. It led him to ask: who’s responsible for cleaning such potentially dangerous blockage, the shareholder or the co-op?
“Ten years is definitely dangerous,” Howard Lupowitz, owner of Brooklyn-based Air Vent Medics, tells the Ask Real Estate column in the New York Times. “It’s definitely a fire hazard.”

Dryer vents should be cleaned at least once or twice a year, depending on how frequently you use the dryer and the length of the vent, says Maria Vizzi, an owner of Indoor Environmental Solutions in the Bronx. “Ducts need to be respected,” Vizzi tells Habitat, adding that her technicians use miniature video cameras to pinpoint obstructions hundreds of feet deep in HVAC ducts and dryer ventilators. “(Ducts) are the lungs of the building, and if there’s a blockage it’s going to impact the airflow and create these types of quality-of-life issues.”

City codes require that dryer vents be cleaned, but don’t specify how often. To determine who should pay for the work, consult your building’s governing documents, advises real estate lawyer Leni Morrison Cummins.

As a board member, reading your building’s monthly management report isn’t enough. It’s just the beginning. Once you’ve finished reading the report, here are seven steps you need to take every month.

So your board has decided to open the doors to film and TV crews, in the interest of turning your building’s charm into some cold cash. Now the real work begins.

Suppose a rent-regulated tenant in your co-op has a nasty habit: rather than making repair requests to the board or the super, he picks up the phone and dials 311. As a result, your building has a backlog of complaints with the city – which can tarnish a building’s reputation among potential buyers. What to do?

“No matter how you slice it, the correction of violations is ultimately a building owner’s responsibility,” real estate lawyer Lucas Ferrara tells the Ask Real Estate column in the New York Times.
Furthermore, rent-regulated tenants are not usually bound by the terms of the co-op’s proprietary lease, so the complaining renter is probably not required to follow the building’s process for making repair requests, adds Bradley Scott Silverbush, a lawyer who represents landlords.

Bottom line: to silence such complainers – and protect the building’s rep – boards need to be aggressive when it comes to addressing repairs. This is yet another case where procrastination is not an option.

Nearly 75 percent of all Americans 50 and older want to remain in their current homes as long as possible, according to a study by the Jewish Federations of North America. The desire increases with age, which means that as 79 million baby boomers start to retire, the number of people aging in place will swell as never before.

This is a looming challenge – as well as an opportunity – for co-op and condo boards.

Federal and state authorities on Thursday announced a $3.2 billion settlement with Morgan Stanley over practices that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, including misrepresentations about the value of mortgage-backed securities, the New York Times reports. 

In the nationwide settlement, the bank acknowledges that it increased the acceptable risk levels for mortgage loans pooled and sold to investors without telling them. Loans with material defects were packed into the securities and sold.

Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $150 million in cash to New York State, plus $400 million in consumer relief, said state attorney general Eric Schneiderman.

The Morgan Stanley settlement is dwarfed by Bank of America’s $16.6 billion payout, and it leaves Goldman Sachs as the lone bank yet to work out a settlement with the working group appointed in 2012 by President Barack Obama.

New Yorkers live, quite literally, stacked on top of each other, and smells are a common nuisance of urban life, with smoking, cooking and pet odors the most frequent olfactory offenders. Boards need to address all odor complaints quickly, to keep them from wafting from the co-op to the courtroom.

In a move that could help avert heat wave-induced power outages and blackouts, Consolidated Edison Inc. has chosen IBM to build a platform that will allow New York City customers to monitor and control their power demand in real time.

The platform is part of ConEd’s $1.3 billion plan to install millions of smart meters for customers in its service territory that will track their power and gas use, Bloomberg Business reports. When up and running, the program will offer consumers access to demand data every 15 minutes, faster than other services of its kind, which now take several hours or even a day, according to ConEd.

Customers receiving their power demand in real time can more easily participate in programs that pay them for cutting use in critical situations when the grid needs it most, such as a heat wave.

“We see it as a game changer for the residents of New York City,” says Tom Magee, general manager of ConEd’s advanced metering team. “We are in a new phase.”

If you’re like most co-op and condo board members, your eyes glaze over at the sight of the monthly report from your managing agent. Big mistake. That report may be the most important document you’ve never read.

Ignore it at your peril.