NEW YORK CITY

New York State’s School Tax Relief Program, or STAR, is designed to give a rebate on school taxes to homeowners who make $500,000 or less a year, and to senior citizen homeowners who makes less than $84,550. Many co-op boards have treated the STAR rebates the same way they treat abatements under the Cooperative and Condominium Tax Abatement Program – that is, they levy an assessment on shareholders equal to the rebate and abatement. Other boards pool the STAR rebates, distribute the benefits to all shareholders, then assess that amount. The shareholders suffer no pain (or gain), while the co-op gets a valuable revenue infusion.

But boards who snatch the STAR rebates are over-reaching, attorney Steve Wagner, a partner in the firm Wagner Berkow, tells Brick Underground. “The law mandates the cooperative and/or its managing agent to administer the tax rebate and to credit the STAR tax exemption only to those tenant shareholders who qualify for the exemption,” Wagner says.

Only shareholders who use the apartment as their primary residence qualify for STAR rebates and the abatements. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has strict rules on how co-ops should handle STAR rebates.

Make sure your board isn't practicing fuzzy math.

Thinking of raising money by turning your building into a set for a movie, TV show or commercial? The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting offers guidelines to co-op and condo boards. Here's a vital to-do list:

Many superintendents in co-op and condo buildings do minor repair and maintenance jobs on the side for shareholders and unit-owners. It’s a common practice that’s loaded with uncommon perils – ones that boards should consider carefully before they get into deep, and costly, trouble.

Your co-op is in need of major capital improvements – a new roof, say, and replacement of both elevators – and your board has agreed that refinancing the underlying mortgage is the best way to pay for the work. Should you award contracts before taking out the loan? Or should you get the money in hand and then award the contracts?

This isn’t quite the chicken-or-the-egg question it initially appears to be.

Many New York City hospitals are on life support. Every time one gives up the ghost, it seems a developer is ready to convert the building – or the land – into condominium apartments. The former St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village – now known as Greenwich Lane – is one of the most visible examples. The penthouse there was priced at a heart-stopping $29 million.

The latest entry in this trend is Gramercy Square, a $350 million condo complex that will occupy the site of the Cabrini Medical Center, which closed in 2008, the New York Times reports. ( www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/realestate/from-hospital-to-condo.html?_r=0 )

A troika of real estate interests – Clipper Equity, Chetrit Group and the Read Property Group – are creating 223 condo apartments on the 1.4-acre site by demolishing some of the original buildings, modifying others and adding one new structure. The property extends from East 19th to East 20th Street, between Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan.

The development will include nearly half an acre of landscaping, designed by MPFP. The project’s architect is Woods Bagot. Indoor amenities will include a pool, a golf simulator and a wine room. A bit of country club living right here in the city.

At a 30-unit condo in Queens, leaks had been a fact of life since the first unit-owners moved in a dozen years ago. After repeatedly patching the sources of leaks in the roof and exterior walls – as well as repairing water damage in the affected apartments – an exasperated member of the board said, “We can’t keep throwing money at this. Let’s get an engineering report.”

Be careful what you wish for.

Ever get the feeling your property taxes are too high? That something just doesn't seem quite right about them? Follow that instinct because sometimes it pays to challenge a bill from the city’s Department of Finance (DOF).

When President Dwight Eisenhower proposed the interstate highway system back in the 1950s, he crowed that it would require enough concrete to make “six sidewalks to the moon.” Today, the unsightly, unloved New York City fixture known as the sidewalk shed is giving Ike’s interstates a run for their money.

There are now 9,000 sidewalk sheds in the city, according to the Department of Buildings, up from just 3,500 in 2003. That’s 1 million linear feet – or enough to encircle the island of Manhattan six times, as reported by Crain’s. Eat your heart out, Ike. Some sheds, which are supposed to be temporary, remain standing for a dozen years or more.

The proliferation of sidewalks sheds and scaffolding can be attributed to two factors: the current building boom; and a 1980 city law, passed in the wake of a lethal masonry collapse on upper Broadway, that requires regular facade inspections and repairs to all buildings over six stories tall. Since then the city council has added new provisions, giving rise to the $1 billion sidewalks shed, scaffolding and facade-repair industry.

Sidewalk sheds may be unloved – they take up sidewalk space, cut off light and hurt businesses – but the need for them was highlighted in December, when a large section of bricks came loose from an Upper East Side high rise and crashed to the street. No one was injured, and the sidewalk shed may have been a factor.

“New York is insatiable right now when it comes to sheds,” says George Mihalko, a shed equipment supplier in New Jersey. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 30 years.”

Every co-op seems to have at least one: the disruptive resident who never stops bombarding the board with complaints. Unfortunately, co-op boards can’t dismiss the impossible-to-placate shareholder as a whiner and a mere nuisance. Boards need to determine if all complaints are legitimate, and then act appropriately. It sometimes requires the skills of a psychiatrist, a diplomat and a cop.

But it can be done.

Leaky roofs, mold, unpaid back taxes. These are just a few of the things that win laurels as a “Worst Landlord” in New York City.

Of the 196 Manhattan buildings to rate an ignominious place on Public Advocate Letitia James’s “Worst Landlord” list, 33 are Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) co-ops, DNAinfo reports.

The city’s department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which created the HDFC program as a way for low-income New Yorkers to become home owners, is considering steps to improve the mismanaged properties. HPD is working with a non-profit to provide financial management training for boards and shareholders.

Critics of the program say residents don’t receive adequate training and support. Many of the mismanaged co-ops also owe millions in back taxes to the city.

The HDFC co-op at 448 St. Nicholas Avenue had 213 violations for such things as a leaky roof and mold, which shareholders reported by calling 311.

“None of these buildings are supposed to be on this list,” said Elisia Vasquez, a housing advocate. “The fact that they are calling 311 on themselves is appalling because at the end of the day these co-ops are supposed to sustain themselves, but instead they’re giving themselves all these violations.”