Residents of the landmarked Tribeca Clock Tower Building are wealthy enough to own multi-million dollar condos, but for a while at least, they’ll be taking out their own trash.  Fifteen building workers who act as porters, concierges and maintenance workers at 108 Leonard Street began a strike Tuesday morning, alleging the building’s property manager is […]

Birds that stop in the Big Apple on their way south for the winter are dying by the dozen thanks to a ritzy Central Park condo with avian death traps for windows, advocates say.   Read the article………………………..

Condo common charges—covering operating expenses like staff, repairs, amenities, property management and insurance—are high partly because the cost of doing business in New York City is high. But that’s only part of the story, our experts say, who warn of sharply higher fees to come.    Read the article………………………..

Autumn is officially here, which means winter is you know where. And this year, winter promises to bring soaring energy costs that will stretch the budgets of even the most far-sighted co-op and condo boards.  Con Edison has predicted that a typical customer’s electric bill in its territory in New York City will climb 22% […]

Residents in White Plains are cutting ties with the Trump name.  The Trump Tower City Center will now be called the Tower at City Place….”People want to live their life without being associated as a Democrat, a Republican or whatever…this is your home,” says Price.    Read the entire article……………………………….

The list of rising expenses for co-op and condo boards keeps getting longer — from property taxes to energy, insurance, facade repairs, staff pay and the looming cost of reducing building carbon emissions. Now boards can add water to the list.   Read the entire article……………………………….

Monthly maintenance in co-ops and common charges in condominiums will continue to rise over the long term. But, Brick Underground reports, there are certain red flags that may indicate to residents and buyers that steep hikes are coming.   Read the entire article……………………………….

With those four jubilant words on Tuesday afternoon, Kyle Bragg, president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, caused more than a million New Yorkers to breathe a sigh of relief. Negotiators for the union and the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations (RAB), which represents building owners, including co-op and condo boards, […]

With a strike deadline looming on April 20, negotiators for building owners and the union representing building service employees are turning up the temperature.  The Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations (RAB), which represents co-op and condo boards and rental landlords, has circulated a memo to members urging them not to sign a so-called Me […]

New York City has always had a fraught and controversial relationship with its real estate, with the ownership and rentership of properties being a historically important source of wealth, status and power. While the players and dynamics have changed over the years, property ownership is still the most reliable flashpoint for conflicts over who the […]

Wages are on everybody’s mind these days. Negotiators are working to reach a new four-year contract for the 30,000 building service employees in New York City who belong to Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. Meanwhile, co-op and condo boards that don’t already pay their employees prevailing wages are debating whether to raise […]

We’ve all heard horror stories about construction defects even in the priciest new condo developments. They range from water leaks to drafts, flooding, balky elevators, shoddy workmanship and electrical explosions. But a new lawsuit claims that a multi-million-dollar East Village condo came with the amenity from hell: carcinogens.   Read the entire article……………………………….

Nonetheless, negotiators from the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations (RAB), which represents co-op and condo boards and other New York City residential building owners, will sit down at the negotiating table tomorrow with a team from Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union.          Read the entire article……………………………….

A chunk of falling ice from an 84-story “Billionaires’ Row” building in Manhattan injured a woman driving in Midtown on Friday night, police said.  The 35-year-old motorist was on W. 57th St. near Sixth Ave. at about 5:30 when the ice fell from the Steinway Tower, a 1,428-foot luxury building that contains condominiums priced in […]

There’s sticker shock. And then there’s the shock an Inwood co-op board got when it set out to replace its aging oil-burning boiler with a new dual-fuel model in order to meet the looming demands of the Climate Mobilization Act. The board’s consultant estimated that the cost of the conversion to natural gas would be […]

Many co-op and condo boards in New York City have begun grappling with ways to reduce their buildings’ carbon emissions so they can avoid looming fines under the city’s ambitious Climate Mobilization Act. But even the best intentions can run up against a cruel economic reality: the appetite for clean energy systems appears to be […]

Good fences may make good neighbors. But bad neighbors can definitely make for more expensive facade repair jobs. Just ask Leon Geoxavier.  “Sometimes the protective measures are worse than the disease,” says Geoxavier, an architect at Stone Engineering & Architecture who’s overseeing a mandatory facade repair job at a 16-story, postwar condominium on the Upper […]

Cyclists in Queens are again sounding the alarm on an Astoria condominium that they say isn’t living up to its agreement with the city to keep its public space open.   Read the entire article……………………………….

Hurricane Sandy did a number on The Sailmaker condominium on City Island in the Bronx. Wind and the churning waters of the Long Island Sound sent boats from the nearby marina smashing into the property’s retaining wall, punching holes, damaging it beyond repair.   Read the entire article……………………………….