NEW YORK CITY

A READER ASKS: Our board is seriously considering installing a playground in an empty lot next to our building. I'm concerned about what it will mean for myself and the other residents that don't have children. How will this addition affect us? Should we be trying to stop it?

Do you live in the apartment on W. 109th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue where young actors Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall were roommates? Or how about the one on W. 89th Street that Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito shared in the '60s? Maybe it was the spot of a murder or another newsworthy event. Inquiring minds want to know. And now you can do, advises Amy Zimmer in DNAInfo.com, where she recommends a host of resources from the old standby — phone books — to New York City databases to more obscure ports of call. Will it make your apartment worth more? Probably not. But it could make it a lot more interesting.

Sometimes you just know when you're found your dream apartment. Unfortunately, it may be someone else's dream apartment as well. Will contacting the seller directly improve your chances of beating out fellow buyers, all else being equal? Possibly, according to the home-hunting website Zillow.com. But a lot depends on the "all else being equal" part. And even a beautifully written missive might fall short of the mark(et) unless you've researched what the buyer may want to hear.

A BUYER ASKS: The lobby in our co-op looks terrible. It’s dark, outdated, and even Goodwill won’t take the couches. The board is afraid of starting a war by jumping headlong into such a controversial upgrade, but something needs to be done. How can we, as owners, convince the board to redo the lobby? And after that, what should be done by the board to make this process as painless as possible?

Pet policies are set in stone in co-ops — except when they're not. In her latest "Ask Real Estate" column, Ronda Kaysen answers a question from a beleaguered owner whose board made an exception to their two-dogs-only pet policy. The writer claims that the three small dogs bark incessantly, and polite discourse with the owner has proved useless. Ronda's advice, starting with documentation of the annoyance and ending with a complaint to the city, appears to work equally well for any noise complaint — as long as cool heads prevail. 

Co-ops may still be less expensive than condos, but that doesn't mean that costs aren't going up. In the last year, Brooklyn co-op prices skyrocketed 71 percent; Manhattan prices rose as well, but only 34 percent. According to DNAinfo, the reason for the price increase is actually the unattainable prices of condos in New York City. Compared to condos, co-ops are currently more competitive, particularly in Brooklyn, where units are more scarce – although, one expert said that available units are up everywhere, as long as buyers are willing to compromise. 

Few things are more of a turnoff to a potential buyer than bad smells in an apartment: pet odors, cooking odors, smoking odors. Yet even the most fastidious co-op or condo owners can find themselves stymied by smells coming in from other apartments — and as one troubled soul writes to Ronda Kaysen in The New York Times' "Ask Real Estate" section, what can one do about the smoker next-door, whose tobacco odor lingers in the hallway outside his door? "We ... have been told by our broker that this cigarette smell can be a deal breaker for potential buyers," the seller says. See what an etiquette expert and a real-estate professional advise. And, yes, cookies figure into it.

Thinking of buying a Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) co-op? Thinking of selling one? You might want to think again. Designed as affordable housing for working people of limited income — teachers, social workers, actors, bakers, police officers and others — they're in buildings that in the past would have been bulldozed for "urban renewal" but instead were rehabbed by homesteaders, each of whom paid New York City $250 to $2,500 to take title. And now those low-income people who got a much-needed break aren't inclined to pay it forward. Instead, they just want to get paid — as in, say, $875,000 for an Upper West Side four-bedroom. But the Catch-22, as Michelle Higgins writes in The New York Times, is that prospective buyers can't earn more than $67,000 a year, and banks aren't inclined to lend to people of such middling means. Or at least not unless such working folk have somehow managed to save for a huge, huge down payment. Affordable housing? Heck with that, dude ... I got mine. See also  "Profiteering by HDFC Apartment Owners Threatens Program's Affordability."

Online building-wide communication systems — the kind that tell you who's at the door, when your packages have arrived and who's bringing drinks for the annual meeting — seem like a godsend to some buildings.

But be warned. While these systems can be a boon for communication between the board and residents, non-essential information (like that drink assignment) can turn into ad hominem attacks: "Did anyone else see Judy spike the punch??" Could the board actually be held responsible for intra-building gossip?

We represent a 120-unit co-op originally sponsored by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). After years of alternating between occasional discussions and benign neglect without any definitive action taken by either party, this limited-equity Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) cooperative received a notice that it was in default because it had failed to pay HPD a portion of the profits earned upon the sale and re-sale of apartments. Simultaneously, the city agency notified all shareholders of the default, creating a fear that the building could face foreclosure, leading to a loss of residents' homes and equity.