2010 Jan
2010 January Vol. 8 No. 1
Focus on...Management
The Second Annual New England Condo Expo
The second annual New England Condo Expo will showcase over 150 exhibitors from
all over New England when the exciting day-long event returns to the Seaport
World Trade Center at 200 Seaport Boulevard in Boston on Wednesday, May 12,
2010.
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Million-Dollar Management
At the vast majority of condominiums, a management company’s duties can be fairly straightforward – maintain the common areas, advise the trustees about operations, and keep
financial documents and other records. But in the rarified atmosphere of $1
million-plus condominium units, the management team takes on an expanded role.
Managers become home service experts, performing a myriad of tasks that are
customized to individual needs. Management becomes such an integral part of the
luxury lifestyle that it’s even touted in the marketing campaigns.
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Self-Management
Self-managed condominiums are a puzzle to many, especially considering that one
major driving force for purchasing a condominium is to offload countless common home ownership responsibilities to
someone else. A community that assumes the supervision and administration of
their condominium without an outside property management firm is viewed as
counter to the purpose of buying a condominium.
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Managing Distressed Properties
In today’s difficult economy, more and more homeowner associations are facing the
prospect of dealing with some form of distress. Whether it’s physical distress from lack of funding for repairs or financial distress from
foreclosures and declining property values, these problems affect not just
individual homeowners, but the entire condo community. There is simply no such
thing as a distressed unit owner who does not impact those around him.
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Desperately Seeking Neighbors
A lot of people buy condominiums because they never want to have to mow a lawn
or shovel snow again. But eight owners of University Park Lofts in Worcester,
Massachusetts, had no choice after the developer at the mostly-vacant 37-unit
community ran into financial problems and stopped servicing the property. For
more than two years, they became default handymen and landscapers in an effort
to maintain their investment in the converted factory. The original developer
eventually went bankrupt.
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Time For a Change?
Usually, life in a condo goes on uneventfully on a day-to-day basis, with
routine maintenance, elections, gardening, move-ins, move-outs and the like
taking up most of its attention. Every once in a while, however, something
comes up that points to things that need to be changed.
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Malden Massachusetts
When people mention “suburbs,” it’s not uncommon to think of quiet towns – bedroom communities – lacking the vibrancy of the nearby city that residents head off to each
morning. Malden, Massachusetts, however, though only a 12-minute train commute
from downtown Boston, is defying that stereotype. “Malden,” says Mayor Richard C. Howard, “is a city of opportunities” working to beautify and improve itself. Thanks in part to his long-term mayoral
leadership, the city is succeeding in doing just that, particularly in the
areas of schooling and housing.
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Q&A: What to Do About Neighbor's Roaches and Mice?
Do you have any information on what to do about a neighbor who admittedly has a problem with cockroaches and occasionally mice? I moved into a new unit about a month ago. I had an exterminator before I even moved in, and after a month, I found a roach in my apartment. My private exterminator advised that as long as my neighbor’s unit is infested I will have a problem. Read More
