Setting the Bar

Two different paths. Quality of life in a multifamily building is affected by smoking, noise, transient use, cooking odors and everything in between. To govern these issues, a condo’s bylaws give the board the authority to impose rules and regulations, while a co-op’s proprietary lease gives the board the authority to impose house rules. The main difference is in the ways the rules are enforced.

In a co-op, the corporation is the landlord, and when a shareholder violates the proprietary lease or the house rules, the board can go through a proceeding to terminate the lease and evict the shareholder. In a condo, you can’t do that because the unit-owner is not a leaseholder. You have to check the bylaws, but often the condo board has the right to impose fines for rules violations. Boards can also go to court and seek what’s called injunctive relief, which is a court order to get someone to stop whatever the violation is, although that can be a very expensive and time-consuming process, with uncertain results. 

Fair warning. In some properties, when a resident is in default, the board can reduce nonessential services, such as requiring residents to come down to the front desk to pick up food deliveries, for a period of time. You can never take away any essential services, but nonessential ones can be withheld as long as your actions are properly documented. 

In fact, the most important thing to remember when dealing with these quality-of-life issues is to get contemporaneous written reports of what’s happening and document offenses early and often — because no matter what remedy you try to impose, you’re going to need to show that you alerted the offender. You tried. You told them exactly what they had to do to fix the issue, and they still didn’t do it.