MANHATTAN

So, enjoy our selection of the top 10 co-op / condo quotes (or groups of quotes) uttered in 2011. And feel free to add your own favorite 2011 co-op / condo quotes in our "Comments" section at the end!

When the existing board at a 60-unit Chelsea building came into my office a little more than five years ago, the condominium had $20,000 in reserves and had completely drawn down a $150,000 line of credit that had been used to finance an electrical upgrade. Full payment of the line was due within the year. The new board immediately focused on how it could continue upgrades while minimizing the impact on unit-owners and still meet the condominium's financial obligations.

At the co-op 1107 Fifth Avenue, an apartment that was once the city's largest has been sold to hedge-fund honcho Mark Kingdon, founder of Kingdon Capital Management, for $30.9 million, reports the New York Daily News. And this marks the end of a circuitous journey for the 10-room penthouse with a wraparound terrace, which Peruvian billionaire Carlos Rodriguez Pastor had previously wanted to buy. So did the co-op board's president, Maureen Klinsky. She bid $21 million, Pastor bid $27.5 million, and the board naturally accepted Pastor's higher offer. Which then begs the question of who was behind the board suddenly deciding it was going to build a shared roof deck for all the shareholders — accessible only by the penthouse terrace? And then shifting gears and deciding it was going to do repairs that would limit an owner's access to the terrace? Pastor sued and withdrew his bid — though Klinksy still didn't get to guy it. As Curbed.com has written of all this: "Co-ops: They're just like high school except nobody graduates unless they die."

The latest dilemma for co-op board president Prem Lachman, of the 67-unit Lion's Head Condominium in Chelsea, is one to which any board member can relate: How do you perform required capital repairs with the least amount of financial pain for residents?

This is what confronted Wall Street hedge fund manager Lachman when Merlot Management president Beth Markowitz, the condo's property manager, delivered some bad news from Rand Engineering and Architecture's Local Law 11 report. The front and back façades needed immediate repair, penthouse additions to the roof required the removal of a stucco-like substance that was possibly causing leaks and a new roof had to be installed. Total cost: $1.25 million.

The smell of oven gas. Every apartment-dweller dreads it. Even the faintest odor can trigger panic among residents who fear a leak will lead to sickness, costly repairs, weeks without heat and hot water or, worse, an explosion like the fatal one in East Harlem earlier this year.

As the city changes the way it copes with gas leaks — in June, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the Fire Department will respond to all gas leaks first instead of the utility company — property managers say it's more important than ever to understand what happens when there's a report of a gas leak.

The average price of an apartment in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods is now higher than that of Manhattan co-ops and condos, according to a StreetEasy study cited by Crain's New York Business. While the magazine notes the "obvious caveat" of comparing neighborhoods with an entire borough — where apartments in Inwood and other upper-Manhattan locales sell for far less than in such luxury area as Central Park South or Tribeca — at least two Brooklyn spots blow Manhattan's $890,000 median out of the water: DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Underpass), at $1.5 million, and the Columbia Street waterfront, running through Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, at $1.147 million. DUMBO, in fact, averaged less than just a half-dozen Manhattan nabes. On the bright side, Kensington is still very affordable.

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.

A misleading and in some instances factually inaccurate New York Post article regarding an Airbnb-related lawsuit was re-reported by outlets including The Real Deal, the New York Business Journal, Curbed.com, Gothamist.com, Habitatmag.com and others, creating misimpressions of the case's significance and attributing to a judge a statement he did not make.

As even disability-rights advocates like Service Dog Central point out, case law relating to the federal Fair Housing Act allows even a bona fide service animal to be removed from an apartment building "if the presence of the animal causes a fundamental alteration of the goods and services offered to other tenants. For example, a dog that nuisance barks keeping neighbors awake at night...." Yet as the New York Daily News reports, a family at an East 86th Street co-op is suing the board in order to keep a support dog that the board's attorney says is a barking nuisance — with the family rebuffing requests to train the dog to diminish barking or to soundproof the apartment. Harriet Woodard says her 32-year-old daughter Elizabeth suffers from mast cell activation syndrome, and her dog Olivia instinctively alerts her to trigger foods or to lie down when her blood pressure is about to spike. All well and good. Still doesn't explain the family's selfish refusal to soundproof.

$1 million will buy you a pretty good, though hardly high-end, New York City co-op or condo ... or one parking space — because that's the price tag on each of the 10 being offered by the developer of the under-construction 42 Crosby Street condominium at the corner of Broome and Crosby in SoHo, reports The New York Times. The spaces — first come, first served for buyers in the 10-unit building — are bigger than a single lane, some as large as 200 square feet, each with storage space and a charging station for electric and hybrid cars. Technically, they're just being leased for 99 years, which means if you sell the condo you have to give up the space. A Tribeca sparking space sold for $345,459 last year, with the average being $136,052, the paper said.