With the New Year underway, The New Jersey Cooperator’s 2012 Condo, HOA & Co-op Expo is quietly taking shape as this spring’s must-attend event for the Garden State’s property managers, board members, trustees and unit owners. H…
Budgeting is never easy, not for a family of four and certainly not for a co-op or condo community of hundreds. That fact is made all the more difficult by the lingering effects of the recession, which continues to wreak havoc with our …
No matter what the size of their portfolio, a property manager must wear a great many professional hats: human resources pro, administrator, mediator, organizer, social director, project manager, sounding board—sometimes even therapist.…
With smartphones dominating the cellular market, people now have Internet access anywhere and everywhere they go. While shopping and “googling” are leading reasons to use the Internet, the rise of social media has changed the way in whi…
Every condo, co-op, and HOA community is different—each has its own distinctive character, attitude, and expectations. The same is obviously true for the individual people who manage these communities and help them run their day-to-day …
The economy cratered—to use a term in popular parlance at that time—in September, 2008, with the collapse of too-big-to-fail Lehman Brothers. While the measures undertaken by the federal government and the Federal Reserve averted complet…
Citizens over the age of 65 comprise nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population—just under 40 million seniors. By 2030, it is estimated that 72 million Americans will be over the age of 65, nearly doubling those numbers. Where this volume…
One of the biggest issues in the real estate industry over the past year has been the speculation that government-sponsored mortgage programs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be ending. For the past 70 years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac …
For most people, few things are as stressful—or exciting—as buying a new home. That can be especially true for buyers and shareholders who sign up to be among the first residents in a newly renovated or constructed condo or co-op comple…
Q I belong to a small self-managed condo of six units. However, there are 2 serious concerns: 1) Recently, I discovered that two of the board members used fund money to repair their boilers so they could pass inspection. They led us to…
Q I Our rules and regulations state that owners may not have more than 2 pets, one of which may be a dog. One of the unit owners—who also happens to be a board member— keeps 4 dogs in her unit as pets. Since she is a board member, the bo…