Category: Board Operations

It is an annual rite of passage for owners of co-ops and condos. Once a year or thereabouts, they gather in a common area—in my old building it was the basement, right off the washers and dryers—and vote for next year’s board. Sometimes …

Like it or not, e-mail is a permanent fixture of contemporary business communications. In real estate, board members and property managers use e-mail to discuss the most official and the most personal matters of their lives, from sched…

Sobering studies have recently been published by organizations like the International Energy Association and the National Petroleum Council suggesting that the planet's supply of traditional energy sources may not meet demand by as soon …

Running a successful co-op or condo—whether you're a shareholder or a manager—requires a lot of outside help. There are landscapers to contract, attorneys to query, owners to deal with and hundreds of other tasks each day that require in…

When Bob Madison, a unit owner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, tried to contact a board member to talk to them about an ongoing problem he had in the building, he was told "board members don't give out their e-mail addresses." He wa…

The homeowners association is, in theory if not always in practice, democracy in action. Once elected via popular vote by the members of the association, the board members—again, in theory, if not always in practice—represent the organiz…

Whenever an HOA resident has a burning question about policy, rules or procedure in their association community, chances are the answer doesn't lie in some obscure legal document or under lock and key somewhere in the depths of the assoc…

All too often, a disagreement between neighbors, or between a board and a resident, goes from minor to heated to nasty—and then turns litigious. Our culture seems all too ready to sue at the drop of a hat, but lawsuits are not only expen…

Members of co-op, condo and HOA boards often give a great deal of their personal time to make decisions in the best interest of their association, cooperative or condo community. These volunteers are charged with protecting the community…

The drawbacks of being on a board are legion. For one thing, it's a lot of work. Hours and hours and hours of work, of poring over spreadsheets, of talking to property managers and vendors and residents and tenants when you could be watc…