CO-OP WEBSITES, P.2

The website has been a lower priority item, admits Tait, who says that the board members of the 33-unit building pride themselves on being accessible, even if the website itself doesn't have that much information. "It's not intended to be a mission-critical site," says Tait. "At the time that we did it, there was very little that existed" in the way of building websites, and Tait said he created what he thought people would be interested in, and wouldn't get the board into hot water. "I'm not a web programmer at all. It doesn't look screamingly hideous, but you can tell it was done by someone who wasn't a website designer."

Nagle Apartments

When Nagle Apartment Corporation's NaBors Apartments co-op in north Washington Heights, Manhattan, went online six years ago, the goal was transparency, says Steve Vernon, current board president of the 111-unit co-op. "I think a lot of distrust happens between boards and shareholders due to inexperience — not having served on the board before [or] not knowing what's going on."

To that end, the co-op board members have tried to make things as easy as possible for the shareholders. On the co-op's website, shareholders can find copies of key documents, including the proprietary lease, the building's budgets for the past three years, lists of apartments for sale (with the sales price), as well as links to local news media, information about the neighborhood and a Washington Heights events calendar.

Built and maintained by shareholder Eduardo Gomez, the website includes a history of the building, a co-op handbook and just about any factual piece of information a resident or would-be shareholder might need, says Vernon. And the site is extremely user-friendly, something on which the board insisted to help drum up sales: Along with containing price data for apartments on the market, Gomez includes floor plans, the building's documents and much information about the surrounding neighborhoods of  Inwood and Washington Heights.

Now in its third incarnation, the site has improved over the years, says Gomez. "In the beginning, it was a very simple website that I coded manually. Then I upgraded it by using Dreamweaver, which is a web development tool. The most current [site] is done with the application WordPress," a very simple website and blog-content application. The site is hosted for less than $100 a year on PowWeb, a website hosting platform.

Vernon takes pride in the website's comprehensiveness. Whenever a resident needs a document from the management office, it is probably there. "I think it saves a lot of time," says Vernon. "It builds trust and transparency. Everyone knows what's going on."

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