CO-OP/CONDO BUYERS

Forget snooty boards. You might instead find your attempt to buy a co-op stymied by the fact the building has a doctor's office. Wha?

As BrickUnderground.com's "Ask the Experts" column reveals, a little-known lending hurdle involving Fannie Mae rules may kill a sale. In one case, the culprit is lenders misinterpreting one of those rules. Good to know. The other instance is a little more complicated and concerns whether the office is technically part of the co-op. While the article erroneously refers to co-op loans as mortgages, and doesn't go into condos and actual mortgages, it does offer possible solutions in things you can do and places to which you can turn. And that could be just what the doctor ordered.

Read more

The client's tale: A 130-unit garden-style co-op had a house rule that generally prohibited pets and banned feeding wild animals on the common grounds. A shareholder’s spouse loved to do just that, attracting feral cats, raccoons, and other wild creatures. The presence of the wild animals was most annoying to several of the nearby residents, who were also concerned about animal excrement and the threat of rabies, among other things. The managing agent and I sent many letters to the shareholder requesting that the spouse stop feeding the wild animals. Fines were issued. 

Read more

Talk about your real estate being underwater: According to a new report by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, updated flood-zone maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cover 84,596 structures in the five boroughs, up from 23,885 in the 2010 maps. That comes out to 400,000 residents, the report says. These newly analyzed flood insurance rate maps (FIRMs), which were proposed last year and are awaiting federal approval, could increase flood-insurance rates by as much as 18 percent per year for similar levels of coverage, the report says.

And more increases could be coming since, the report adds, "The currently proposed maps, which are due to take effect in 2016, were initiated in 2010 and as a result do not even take into account flooding patterns observed during Superstorm Sandy." The report urges the City to invest in "resiliency projects that will safeguard our shorefront communities," valued at $129 billion. It's also a whole lot of people's lives and livelihoods. On the other hand, there are also a lot of luxury waterfront apartments — so should taxpayer money also protect those private developments with deep-pocket owners? Just asking.

Read more

You can't fight City Hall, but you can laugh at its jokes. "We're telling landlords who are playing games, 'Hey the heat is on,'" says Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, referring to Heat Seek NYC — a pilot program that installs a digital thermometer in apartments and sends temperature readings to a central computer. Tenants and public advocates then can access that data to see if landlords aren't providing the legally required minimum of heat. The data can also let landlords knows if they're overheating apartments, wasting money and energy. Right now the program is confined to Brooklyn, with participants including the Carroll Gardens Association and Bedford-Stuyvesant's Bridge Street Development, reports Crain's New York Business.

Cooperatives fall under rental regulations regarding heat, so the device would be of benefit both in terms of shareholder comfort and board energy-management. It similarly would be of benefit to condominiums — although in one of those quirks of law, condo boards actually are not required to provide adequate heat. (See the second item here.)

Read more

You're a co-op or condo board president and most of the residents in the building don't really know the super, the management or even one another. How can you go about bringing people together in your building and beyond? Here are some tips for creating a sense of community among your residents.

Read more

There is nothing certain but death and taxes. And there are peaceful deaths surrounded by loved ones and miserable, horrible deaths involving ... well, you don't want to know. Similarly, there are fair, reasonable taxes and then there's the tax structure visited upon New York co-ops and condos like a plague upon biblical Egypt. That's cooperatives and most condominiums are "Class 2" residential buildings, which pay ridiculously more in property taxes than do single- to four-family homes and brownstones, which are "Class 1," clearly in every sense of the term. Ronda Kaysen's latest "Ask Real Estate" column in The New York Times answers two reader's questions about this very topic, and concludes, in that oh-so-Timesian way, that, "The potential for baffling inequities is huge." Unfortunately, the potential for a fix anytime soon is miniscule.

Read more

Ask any middle-class or working class New Yorker, and they'll tell you that limited-equity Mitchell-Lama co-ops such as Manhattan's Penn South, The Bronx's Co-op City and Brooklyn's Cadman Towers are miracles that allow them to keep living and working in an increasingly expensive city. But the problem, as BrickUnderground.com writes, is that there are only 45,400 Mitchell-Lama co-op and rental apartments left, in 98 buildings, down from the 105,000 apartments in 269 buildings constructed under the program beginning in 1955. So when we hear that New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein (D - 34th District) proposed in December that $750 million be funneled into revitalizing the program over five years, well, a lot of people raised their glasses in toast to State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred Lama for creating the program in the first place. Of course, we being middle- or working-class, we're toasting with an inexpensive sparkling wine rather than Champagne. But what the hey ... l'chaim! Oh, and write your representatives to encourage them.

Read more

In a court decision that may shine a light of hope on condo boards — which unlike co-op boards have a huge lack of options when apartments go into arrears or foreclosure — a judge ruled last week there are instances where a board may legitimately exercise "self help" and lock a delinquent owner out of his or her apartment. As the New York Law Journal reports, the family in Penaflorida v. The Copely Condominium and Club was not entitled to return to its foreclosed-on apartment in the Upper West Side's Lincoln Square neighborhood since, the judge wrote, "return would be futile and ... would only forestall the inevitable eviction." As well, none of the immediate family members were living there — a niece was staying — and the owners admitted they were holding onto the place solely to drag out a bankruptcy auction.

The foreclosure had occurred in 2009 and the owners by now owed $100,000 in arrears and $200,000 in interest, the Law Journal said. This is an example, the board's attorney, Adam Leitman Bailey, told the paper, of foreclosed condo owners trying to "game the system" and "live for free" in the apartments. Maybe this ruling is a first step into having that stop.

Read more

A lot has been written about secondhand cigarette smoke, and some New York co-ops and condos, including Manhattan's massive Zeckendorf Towers, have initiated building-wide smoking bans. But what of secondhand pot smoke migrating from one apartment to another? Though pot has been "decriminalized to some degree," writes Ronda Kaysen in The New York Times' "Ask Real Estate" section, it's still illegal in smokable form — medical marijuana not being smokable — so that's a complicating factor when a neighbor is lighting up. Assuming that you're neighborly and don't want to harsh his mellow, here are some options to keep yourself and your family from possible contact high and lung irritation. As for what a co-op or condo board ought to do, well, that's a joint of a different color.

Read more

Lots of articles offer advice on how to prepare for your co-op board admission interview: what to wear, how to act, whether to bring the dog and kids. In the ever-expanding annals of this service subgenre, BrickUnderground.com offers a handy list of standard questions and, even better, the well-thought-out reasoning for why you want to answer them in certain ways. Of course, board members reading this will know you're doing that — but you know they know you're doing that, and they may not you know they're doing that. But even if they do know, you know they know you know they know you're doing that. And you know what? If you've gone to the trouble to learn this and do that, they'll probably respect you for knowing all this.

Read more