MANHATTAN

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, sponsor abuses stir up the latest call for a co-op ombudsman in the Attorney General's office, a Queens condo board changes apartments' locks to keep owners out during Sandy repair — commandeering one home for a construction office — and West Village co-opers sue to keep away bicycle clutter. For condo and co-op boards, we've the latest hoteling lawsuit. Plus: Condopedia! Which we're sure is as accurate as regular Wikipedia.

How would you like to make sales dry up in your building? Or guarantee you'll lose every challenge to your authority as a board? What if you couldn't charge assessments, collect flip taxes or go after people who were in arrears? Nutty, right? Well, not so nutty if you're one of those condo or co-op boards that don't keep minutes.

Every night, Zoltan Papp would watch the sun go down from his office at a 100-unit Greenwich Village cooperative and the floodlights in the backyard flicker on. They would stay on all night, casting chiaroscuro shadows in the empty outdoor space until a timer switched them off at dawn the next morning.

Needless to say, the co-op board found monthly electricity bill an eyesore. With lights on around the clock in the lobby, corridors, elevators and staircases of 51 Fifth Avenue — familiar as the exterior location for Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt's home on Mad About You — it was obvious to the building superintendent no one had ever seriously looked at what the building could do to eliminate the unnecessary electricity costs.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, a Brighton Beach condominium goes from lawsuits to protests over a public toilet its residents say is in the wrong place — blocking their ocean views. Plus, the noisy saga of 199 Bowery continues; a condo buyer who pulled out of a deal not only lost the deposit but owes $577,000 in legal fees; and looking to buy? Dont' overlook The Bronx! Plus, for condo and co-op boards, we've a Sandy-related lawsuit, a lawyer's thoughts on absentee ownership and more.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. Quite the tabloid week this week, as police tell more about the Penn South embezzlement, as international money-laundering sends a Chelsea condominium apartment into auction, and as a suspect is arrested in a Co-op City killing. Plus, a bathroom may block views, a "maintenance-free" co-op and are Manhattan apartment prices up or down?

Ed Fields, who has lived in Tribeca since Halloween 1982, has seen his neighborhood change – but still regards it as a “a small town” located within the vast city. He notes that change can be good, and points to the condominium he has lived in for the past 20 years as an example.

The building, at 55 White Street, was constructed in 1861, and features a striking cast-iron facade, with large picture windows, Corinthian columns, and intricate designs in the brickwork. It was one of many beautiful buildings that resulted in the neighborhood being designated the Tribeca East Landmark District in 1988.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. Yet another restaurant, yet another building fighting it: Like the planned Denny's in FiDi and a still-unnamed Mexican place in Tribeca, the Atlantic Terrace co-op in Brooklyn (left) wants to say arrivederci to Tony Roma's. Plus, a shareholder's riled in Riverdale and we remember the Rembrandt, New York City's first co-op. And co-op / condo boards won't want to miss the lawsuit alleging a scam of Weekend at Bernie's proportions!

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, State Senator Tony Avella tries to bring home the bacon ... or, rather, keep the bacon home, in a co-op issue involving a pet pig. Plus, for condo and co-op boards, New York City wins an illegal hoteling case, a co-op racial-bias lawsuit moves forward, and the boards of a Fifth Avenue co-op and a nearby condominium band together against a building proposed to rise between them.

In February, a 105-unit condominium near Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn saw its insurance premium spike by 30 percent to $44,000. A 148-unit condo on the Upper East Side of Manhattan watched its bill jump 10 percent, to nearly $72,000. And a doorman co-op in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, recently swallowed a 9 percent premium increase. Condos and co-ops across New York City are bracing for an expensive insurance market, as insurers raise rates for the first time in years.

No building seems immune. Even co-ops and condos that are fully insured and haven't filed claims are watching their rates jump by as much as 9 percent and their deductible limits rising. Other buildings are discovering that their carrier simply won't cover them anymore.

Setting a co-op's monthly maintenance fee or a condominium's common charges isn't a precise science. Are you charging too little, and your building is suffering for it? Or you charging too much, squeezing your residents and making apartments less attractive in the sales market? To help with you with this balancing act Habitat presents journalism professor and former co-op board president Steve Wolgast's third, roughly biannual survey of Manhattan maintenance fees.