New York's Cooperative and Condominium Community

Habitat Magazine Insider Guide

HABITAT

NEW YORK CITY

A READER ASKS: I'm on the board of a midsize co-op in Manhattan. We've had a rough couple of years. Two tenants are in arrears and my fellow board members and I are arguing about the pros and cons of taking them to court. Another tenant has spent the last few months threatening to sue us for everything under the. He has a reputation in the building for being very irate so we want to tread lightly and carefully but at the same time put a stop to the negativity. And if that weren't enough, two neighbors are feuding with each other and threatening each other with court action. Do you have any advice on how to deal with all this? I'm personally at my wit's end! 

Frank Sinatra told us all those years ago that if you can make it here in New York, you can make it anywhere. Life's tough in the Big Apple — never mind expensive. For one New Yorker, it's been an especially tough year. Since January, he's had to move from place to place, twenty in all, including crashing at friends' places and even in his own office. What happened to Art Teman? Well, if the name doesn't ring a bell, you might assume he couldn't afford rent in the big city anymore. Maybe he lost his job. But Teman, who describes himself as "homeless" now, didn't is still employed and wasn't having money troubles until he had to start shelling out cash for sublets and hotels. Teman found himself on the dreaded and infamous tenant blacklist after his Chelsea apartment made headlines last year for being the scene of an orgy. And he wasn't even invited. According to Brickunderground, Teman's "Airbnb guests turned his rental into a 'XXX Freak Fest orgy.'" Hope he's not a germophobe. As a result of the raunchy debacle, his broker dropped him and no new broker wants to give him the time of day. It seems like New York has chewed Teman up and spat him out. According to an open letter Teman wrote to Airbnb on his Tumblr blog, he can't get anyone to offer him a lease in the whole of the city, not even with promises of paying a full year of rent up front. "And now," writes Brickunderground, "we have an answer to the age-old question, 'What could be worse than coming home to find a BBW orgy in your apartment?' Getting stuck on the tenant blacklist, apparently." Duly noted.

It's official! The One World Observatory at One World Trade Center opened today to the public. And what a view it is. The observatory is on floors 100, 101 and 102 of what is — for now, anyway — the nation's tallest skyscraper. To mark the big debut, webcam content, technology and services provider EarthCam released a commemorative time-lapse movie showing the completion of construction from October 2004 to Memorial Day 2015. Hundreds of thousands of high definition images were captured throughout the past eleven years and hand-edited for the exclusive time-lapse movie. Click "Read More" to check it out! 

They may not always be popular, but in a co-op community, house rules are very important. Along with bylaws and proprietary leases, they help to establish criteria that maintain the value of the building and aim to keep peace amongst neighbors. House rules are regulations governing behavior, usually intended to prohibit illegal, objectionable, or anti-social conduct, such as excessive noise, keeping bikes in the hall, housing pets, and so on. But although having written rules is vital to running a building smoothly, it is just as crucial to know when to revise them. Times change, and so do the people living in a building. Outdated house rules can lead to confusion and discontent within your community. When's the last time you took a look at yours?

We all have at least one neighbor from hell story: he has parties every weekend, she smokes, he stomps up and down at all hours, she puts the television on ridiculously loud at the crack of dawn every day (including weekends), he smokes weed constantly, she has loud parties every weekend. The list is endless and usually filled with issues that are understandably annoying, but usually not scary. But sometimes these things escalate, and objectionable conduct has led to eviction. Objectionable conduct is the topic of this week's Ask An Expert column on Brickunderground. "My neighbor has broken into my apartment, vandalized my door, issued death threats to me and my family (I have this on video). He screams at me and other neighbors through our walls — the list goes on. He has multiple police reports for harassment from multiple neighbors, but my building just keeps telling me to document incidents (which I have been)," a shareholder writes to Brickunderground. The shareholder wants to know what he can do to start an eviction process. According to the shareholder, "everyone in [the] building and board wants him removed and so do the lawyers … yet no one will take action against him." It's a situation that's beyond frustrating. It's downright scary and highlights just how time-consuming the eviction process can be, even with all the documented incidents. Brickunderground's experts advise the shareholder to consider getting a restraining order. "Because of the inherent delays in the Housing Court proceedings that would be entailed in evicting a shareholder, a quicker and likely more effective response would be to secure an order of protection from the local precinct," says real estate attorney Dean Roberts of Norris, McLaughlin & Marcus. As for giving this apparent neighbor from hell the boot, the experts agree "there's no reason for [the] neighbors, the board, or the building's lawyers to be dragging their feet…. One of the perks to living in a co-op in this situation is that there's protocol to evict a wayward shareholder, a process that's much more difficult in a condo building." It's still a lengthy process, but there's no time like the present to get that ball rolling. 

Anyone who lives in a co-op or condo understands all the time, money, and effort that goes into tackling capital improvement projects — never mind when it feels like everything in the building needs fixing at the same time. The unfortunate reality is, of course, that nothing lasts forever and nothing is exempt from wear and tear. So even if your building just spent a small fortune replacing the boiler, the windows, or the roof or revamping the lobby or the pool, it's important to keep an eye on things and stay ahead of potential problems with general checkups or simply by double-checking that no major problems have been overlooked. This is the type of situation where a walkthrough inspection can be advantageous to your building. 

Last week, we took a look at the stage in the bidding process where boards get to meet vendors in person. In this fourth and final installment, we review making last-minute changes to bids, deciding who gets the project, and drawing up the contract. Sometimes you might have to request changes to all the vendors' bids after they've come in. "One contractor will say, 'You left [something] out of the request,'" says Warren Schreiber, president of Bay Terrace Cooperative Section 1 in Queens. "Sometimes it can be a contractor who is just looking to drum up more work, but in my experience, more often these are just people who are really knowledgeable, who have been doing it 20, 30, 40 years, and sometimes you'll reexamine the project and say, 'That's right, we did overlook this.'" When that happens, he says, "we ask [the vendors], 'Could you also give us a bid on this particular item?'"

Last week, we took a look at the bid proposals that come back from the companies you reach out to. In this third installment of a multi-part series we will be taking a look at the vendors. Before any bids are submitted, the board, its managing agent, and its architect or engineer will meet with the vendors at the job site. This is to show vendors the physical location and answer questions they may have. It also allows the board to go over job specifics and clarify any issues. Finally, the board can see samples of materials.

Temperatures are finally starting to climb, and we're thawing out at last. Condo owners and co-op shareholders with terraces may be getting ready to dust off their barbecue grills. Now is a good time for boards to review their policies on grilling, so they can keep all building residents up to speed on the rules. Some condos and co-ops prohibit grilling on the terrace, while others allow it with a few caveats – and let's face it, it may be disruptive to neighbors above, below, and next door. Regardless of where your building stands, however, it's still in a board's interests to remind building residents that they must firstly, comply with the building's rules, and secondly, comply with the safety standards outlined in the NYC Fuel Gas Code and NYC Fire Code

The Downsides of Following a Design-Build Approach

Written by Jennifer V. Hughes on May 22, 2015

New York City

Early last week we told you about design-build — a time-saving and money-saving approach wherein a board hires an engineer to prepare job specifications for a given capital improvement project. But rather than send out requests for proposals to a number of contractors, who in turn, submit sealed bids for the job, in the design-build approach, an engineer functions as the contractor on the job. It worked for the Neptune, but is design-build for everybody? Here, we examine its downsides.

Ask the Experts

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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

Professionals in some of the key fields of co-op and condo board governance and building management answer common questions in their areas of expertise

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