MANHATTAN

Another blow to the city's powerful real-estate interests.

The hardest renovation jobs are the ones that require subtlety.

Controversial Upper West Side luxury tower could undergo a “top chop.”

Tax Reform Commission cites $238 million condo's low tax bill.

This condo board avoided the common clashes over aesthetics and money.

Sometimes the job gets downright prosaic.

DOB violations are multiplying, but workarounds exist.

Landmarks Preservation Commission agrees to bend the rules.

Meticulous facade work restores century-old building’s luster.

Co-op boards have presidents. Usually. But sometimes they have a queen, who takes property by royal fiat and ensconces her heir, the prince.

Such was the case at 4 W. 105th Street, just off Central Park West in Manhattan Valley — a neighborhood that changed dramatically from gang-ridden to high-biddin' in the timeframe involved. Not that this six-story, 35-unit building, completed around 1900, has itself changed that much. Then and now, it's a co-op in the nonprofit Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) program, created to provide affordable housing for low- and middle-income individuals. Yet until this past December, apartment 4A has stood outside the program — populated by missing individuals, people with aliases and even the queen herself when she illegally sublet her own apartment down the hall.