NEW YORK CITY

New York City's aging infrastructure can have costly consequences. It can spell bad news to co-ops and condos, particularly smaller buildings, which are trying to stay afloat in an increasingly expensive city. Unfortunately, emergencies can strike at any time, whether or not your building is financially ready for them. There are steps your board can take right now to save some money instead of being caught unawares.

Here are some creative ways your board can save money.

Finding mold is never fun. Where there's mold, there's probably a leak. And once a co-op or condo board is notified about the presence of mold, it needs to move quickly to not only eliminate the mold safely but also find and fix the cause. The board at one particular condo in Hudson Heights, Manhattan, doesn't want anyone's health to suffer, but it doesn't want to get fleeced by a contractor, either. "When mold companies inspect a building for mold, they have a vested interest in recommending mold remediation. Because of this, our condominium is having difficulty interpreting the test results, which seem in part to be a marketing ploy," the board writes to Ronda Kaysen in this week's "Ask Real Estate" column in The New York Times. Although the condo board's concern is a valid one — people have been fleeced before — Kaysen stresses the need to move quickly. "If a resident were to report the condition to 311 and a city inspector found mold, the condo association would receive a violation and be ordered to clean it up. If a unit owner was responsible for conditions that caused the mold to grow, the board could pass the costs onto the resident, but the board still has to do the work," she explains. Kaysen follows up the cautionary statement with some sound advice: "Consider hiring an industrial hygiene consultant to determine the scope of the problem. To avoid a conflict of interest, select a consultant who does not also do remediation." 

As in a cooperative or a condominium, membership in a homeowner's association (HOA) means there are rules, eliminating the risk that a next-door neighbor might decide to paint his home bright magenta or that another neighbor could create a public spectacle with elaborate year-round lawn ornaments. How those rules are applied — and whether they can be applied at all — is the question in Jasinski v. Hudson Pointe Homeowners Association.

Peter and Margaret Jasinski owned a home in the Hudson Pointe Homeowners Association in Queensbury, New York. They had placed a political sign by the road that bordered their home. The HOA objected and fined the Jasinskis for their display, alleging that the sign broke an HOA rule prohibiting the public portrayal of "advertisements and other signs." When the Jasinskis did not pay, the HOA filed a lien against their home. But there were complications. 

Last week, we took a look at how to prepare a bid request — or request for proposal — so your board can nab the best contractor for the best price. In this second of a multi-part series we will be taking a look at the bid proposals that come back from the companies you reach out to. Your architect or engineer will almost certainly include two things in the bid-proposal package: a "schedule of values" — a line-item breakdown of each phase of the work, for which the vendor will bid a price — and a "unit-price schedule" — the cost per unit of materials.

A cursory scroll down our home page gives you but a glimpse of all the new buildings being constructed in New York. It's undeniable that we've seen a construction boom, with co-ops and condos rising all over Manhattan, particularly luxury towers. But despite all the new apartments available for the taking, Crain's reports that there's a record shortage of homes on the market in Manhattan — and it's the luxury market that's helping to skew the numbers: "Unlike the last construction peak, in 2008, when developers generated more supply to meet demand, a number of factors have converged to warp the economics of owning and selling a home in Manhattan — and in the rest of the boroughs — making it more expensive for businesses to retain the highly skilled workers who can keep the city's economic engine humming." According to the article, of the 850,000 apartments in Manhattan, only "5,200 were available for sale in the first quarter of 2015. That's 26 percent below the historical average and just 25 percent above the low of 4,164 in 2013." Fueling these dismal results is the fact that, like it or not, co-ops and condos together make up just 25 percent of available apartments in Manhattan. The rest are rentals. With resale inventory stagnating, potential sellers are skittish about putting their own homes up for sale. Who can blame them? "Because there are so few listings, sellers are nervous that they won't be able to find another home. Even if they do, those apartments one step up will be pricier as well. As a result, they're holding on to their apartments, further subtracting from the potential number of listings," the article explains. And that vicious circle is going to keep pressure on those prices.

A READER ASKS: I live in a midsize co-op in Brooklyn, and have been on the board for nearly ten years. I've been keeping up with all this Airbnb business, and it's made me really think about our building's security. We don't have a written policy about security — or privacy, for that matter. One of my fellow board members says that having a written policy relating to security and privacy may paint us into a corner, that once we have a written policy, we have to substantially comply with it. I say that that's what our lawyer is for, so we can craft a policy that protects the building. My fellow board member adds that we need to define clearly in that policy who has access to information — that is, clear definitions of who can access security data and what privacy rights residents can reasonably expect. What factors might we keep in mind while drafting something that makes everyone happy? 

A report published by housing analytics company RealtyTrac shows that, as many of you may have guessed, lucky folks who buy and flip property in New York City stand to reap among the greatest profits. "The strong returns of home flippers in the first quarter demonstrate that there is still a need in this recovering real estate market for move-in ready homes rehabbed to more modern tastes," said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. The report found that property flippers in New York, Northern New Jersey, and Long Island had an average return of investment of 47.1%. Additionally, home flips made up 3.7% of all sales in the New York and New Jersey metro area. Click Read More to view chart and video. 

Last week Habitat shined a spotlight on annual meeting presentations. It was part of a series of articles showing some behind-the-scenes of board life for anyone who is interesting in running for the first time. This week, in the final installment, we look at the agenda.

The generic agenda for an annual meeting, as typically specified in association bylaws, divides the gathering up into four basic parts: formalities designed to comply with arcane legal requirements; presentation of informational reports; voting; and the Q&A/gripe session, referred to euphemistically as "unfinished business" or "new business."

In a bizarre turn of events, two financially healthy co-ops have recently learned that purchasers have been unable to get loans from a commercial bank because the nonresidential portion of the building’s income is more than 15 percent.

"It's like one step forward, two steps back," laments Mitchell Unger, controller at the management company The Lovett Group. He found out the hard way about this new rule, which the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, instituted on March 31. A broker handling a sale at Forest Hills South, a Queens co-op Lovett manages, "was working with Citibank, who notified the broker that the buyers were being turned down at this tremendously healthy building since [the cooperative corporation] had more than 15 percent of its income generated from non-shareholder revenue." Citibank also turned down buyers at another Lovett property, the tony 49 East 96th Street.

Your board has done its homework, and there's nothing left to do except approve that capital project — that roof replacement, new boiler, or structural work on your façade. You want the best contractor you can find and at the right price. So what are the next steps? The first is preparing a bid request — a "request for proposal" (RFP) — to send to contractors. The second is analyzing the bids and choosing a vendor. Doing the two things correctly is the basis of all successful capital projects.

"The key to a board successfully managing a bid process is to craft the RFP so that you're getting back bids that are apples to apples," says Matthew Providente, director of operations and compliance for Akam Associates. "If there's no well-crafted RFP, you'll get bids back that are all over the place."