NEW YORK CITY

A READER ASKS: I'm fighting with my neighbor. It's gotten to the point where I want to sue her for leaving her garbage laying around and letting her dogs bark all day and night. Don't I have a right to a quiet, peaceful home? But my board wants me to try mediation. What is that? Is it worth it?

HABITAT ANSWERS: If you don't want to spend a day in court, try mediation. It can save you time, money and (possibly) some bitterness. What often happens when there is no mediation is predictable: charges, countercharges, lawsuits — and big legal bills. Besides creating bad feelings among the owners, litigation disrupts the building's budget and can quickly become a financial black hole.

Owners of single- to four-family homes in New York State get an annual cap on their property taxes. So do rich folks who own townhouses. You know who doesn't get a property-tax cap? Cooperatives and condominiums. That's because we are — and we're not making this up — Class 2 properties under the tax code, while those others are Class 1. That's right: Co-op and condo owners are second-class citizens, as far as property tax goes. So while this Associated Press story, via Crain's New York Business, may not seem immediately applicable to co-ops and condos, we like to look at it as a start. The gist? A State Supreme Court justice has tossed a lawsuit alleging that property-tax caps are unconstitutional. It may not be much for us cap-less types, but the fact that a judge affirms that caps are constitutional? Like we said, It's a start.

Thinking of perhaps keep a little pied-à-terre in New York, a little home-away-from-home where you can stay when you're in the Big Apple? Well, try to keep its market value below $5 million if a bill that State Senator Brad Hoylman plans to introduce goes to law. The idea, as reported by Crain's New York Business, is based on a proposal by the Fiscal Policy Institute noting that "because of the arcane nature of the City’s property tax, or because such units benefit from tax breaks mainly intended to benefit more affordable housing," non-primary residents "pay a very low effective property tax relative to the real market value of the property. Yet, the high value of their property depends on local tax dollars supporting the infrastructure and public services that contribute to the city’s quality of life and attractiveness."

The bill follows the Institute's math, which says a tax starting at 0.5 percent for the first $1 million in value over $5 million, rising to 4 percent for the value over $25 million, would generate an estimated $665 million from the 1,556 coops and condos in that price range and owned by non-primary residents. Which, if you're a Saudi or Chinese billionaire, is basically the change in your couch.

It is rare for a co-op to ever go without a mortgage. Most move from one loan to another at the end of each borrowing cycle since, for many buildings, the mortgage supplies a pool of capital ready and waiting for ongoing needs. "Most co-ops use refinancing to pay for capital improvements," Tudor Realty Director David Goodman explains.

The whole process of refinancing a co-op's underlying mortgage – fully investigating the issues, getting the best possible terms, and then completing the deal and the associated paperwork — can take almost a year. The worst part? That's under the absolute best circumstances. And it doesn't take into account how much the co-op may have to pay anyway. And the problems start with that matter of prepayment penalties.

A number of co-op and condo board members have reported that their neighbors are suddenly turning into watchdogs. Some of them hope to create a shadow board to monitor the elected board's every move. Others want their boards to put major expenditures to a vote of all residents. They often believe co-ops and condos be a participatory democracy rather than a representative democracy.

Illegal hoteling is one of the many banes of co-op and condo boards, and one that stings particularly hard because of the the security issue off non-background-checked strangers roaming your building's halls and stairwells. There's also the loss of sublet fees paid by approved residents who play by the rules, and the fact banks won't offer mortgages to people buying an apartment in heavily rented-out cooperatives and condominiums. Plus, New York law forbids apartment rentals for less than 30 days, in buildings with three or more units.

Airbnb and similar short-term rental sites don't much care about any of that. In fact, Airbnb and the organization Peers began a PR and lobbying campaign this spring to try to overturn our laws governing short-term rentals. But now to combat that deep-pocket carpetbagging comes a coalition of more than 100 affordable-housing advocates, community groups, elected officials and others attempting to highlight the impact of illegal hoteling.

A READER ASKS: I've noticed lately that many of my fellow shareholders throw out their plastic laundry-detergent containers instead of recycling them. There aren't any obvious signs that we have a recycling area, but it is there! How can I help increase awareness and help other residents understand how important recycling is?

HABITAT ANSWERS: Your first stop should be the Apartment Building Recycling Initiative, a two-hour program offered monthly by the city's Department of Sanitation (DSNY). There you can learn about all the quick and often free fixes that can be made to increase the amount of recycling in your building and ensure the proper things are going into recycling bins.

First, don't call them "grab bars" — call them "balance bars" and stress how helpful they'd be after a skiing accident or a kid's bad fall skateboarding. You'll find these and other co-op / condo sales tips from a broker and an interior designer in this "Home & Garden" column in The New York Times. Since removing such fixtures leaves holes in the walls, the main advice is to upgrade them and turn liabilities into assets. Sure, a curbless shower is good for wheelchairs — but just check out at how cool and streamlined they look!

Kim Velsey in The New York Observer writes, quite entertainingly, of the travails facing diplomats seeking co-op or condo housing in New York. At many places it's "Diplomats Need Not Apply," as boards worry about diplomatic immunity, security details, endless sign-offs from the State Department and others, and, of course, the dreaded scourge of cocktail parties. Not to mention: You approve one diplomat, there's a coup, now you've got a whole new neighbor to contend with. We learn that while the UK and New Zealand have been given the red carpet, poor France got turned down at River House and Qatar had to buy a townhouse. (We know ... big hardship.) Attorney Steven Wagner offers an amusing anecdote about a bad diplomat in Astoria, Queens. And you don't even want to know what diplomats from poor countries have to contend with. Two words: studio apartment.