New Jersey and New York are famous (perhaps infamous) for their residents' philosophy of minding their own business—dress as a giant chicken, sport a revolutionary haircut…nobody minds. This attitude is great if you're a young person exp…

The fires this past October in southern California were a sharp reminder of the power and ferocity of this deadly element. Fire can spread quickly and without warning, often catching the people near it off-guard and vulnerable. Sometimes…

One of the most important things for an urban or suburban dweller to know about his or her condo, co-op or HOA is often the one thing that everyone forgets about—that is, what to do in the event of an emergency. While it's true that the …

Q We have a board of directors who decides to use the proprietary lease when it is to their advantage. We have had a least three separate elections where there have been board members elected who were not shareholders. When a lawsuit is…

Q Our original condo declaration, bylaws, amendments and house rules allow for renovations to interior units without board approval if they do not affect a common area or are not structural in nature. I installed a wall partition (does …

Q I live in a 133-unit HOA in New Jersey with a nice clubhouse. The residents of the HOA are allowed to rent out the clubhouse. My question is, can a clubhouse be rented out to persons not living in the community? The association is look…

For more than 60 years, the Greenbrook Sanctuary has served as an unparalleled refuge of natural beauty and wonder for city dwellers and suburbanites in search of a landscape without cars, without noise and without the flat grayness of c…

Any time a brand-new building or development is proposed in any given New Jersey community, there will be objectors. Residents might voice concerns about urban sprawl or the impact on their neighborhood's character, or they might just be co…

You can't walk around in any community these days without spying a new construction project—rows upon rows of condos seem to go up overnight and there's no shortage of people looking to get while the getting is good on brand new bui…

Ask a veteran building manager about his scariest horror story and he may recount a freezing winter night when the heating system went kaput, leaving a 400-unit building ice cold, or the time the sprinklers decided to kick on for no reas…