After years of wear and tear from the elements—or just the impact of a single catastrophic event like Superstorm Sandy this past fall—the siding on the exterior of a condo, co-op or townhome can start to look a bit under the weather. …
They say a house is only as strong as its foundation. A bad roof or shoddy plumbing can set your building back a lot of money, of course—but a foundation in disrepair can put the entire building structure at risk. It can also cost tens …
After the four walls of a given structure, the roof is sometimes referred to as the “fifth plane”—and just like the walls that hold it up, the roof is an all-important structure that can make or break a building’s performance. New Jerse…
Managing or sitting on the board of a condo, HOA or co-op is certainly not an easy task. The position can be downright challenging. There are vendors to hire, budgets to balance and complaints to field. How do you find the right profes…
Q Our building was badly flooded by Hurricane Sandy, which “killed” our boilers and elevators, and the building is terribly short on funds at the moment. Are FEMA loans applicable to condos? Is this something our management company shou…
Fire in the home can be an absolutely terrifying and life-altering occurrence. In 2011, there were 1,389,500 fires reported in the United States. These fires caused 3,005 civilian deaths, 17,500 civilian injuries, and $11.7 billion in …
Every news channel in the tri-state area, if not the entire U.S., aired minute-by-minute accounts of Superstorm Sandy's brutal march up the Eastern Seaboard. The accounts and pictures of the devastation were indelible. Weathermen and n…
Snow, ice, freezing, thawing, refreezing all take such a toll on New Jersey properties that it’s practically a cliché—but it’s a cliché that condo and HOA board members and managers have to deal with every spring. Harsh weather …
Time was, if you said that a co-op or condo building was 'going to the dogs,' it was a bad thing. These days however, that's not always the case. According to the American Pet Products Association, 39 percent of all U.S. households own …
It’s the same dilemma that single-family households across the U.S. are facing: What bills need to be paid immediately and what bills can wait? And should we stretch ourselves thin, taking more out of our bank accounts to pay for privat…