The boards that direct co-ops, condominiums, and HOAs across the country are made up of volunteers who donate time to help govern their communities. Among their duties is selecting vendors to provide goods or services for those communities—…
As more and more of our daily lives become more intertwined with online entertainment and services, internet access has become a home utility along with electricity and running water. Boards can take for granted that every resident in their…
Co-op, condo and HOA living represents a unique social arrangement; it’s a paid-for membership club and a home at the same time. Many people enter into this arrangement without a complete understanding of the responsibilities of membership.…
Although it may sometimes feel as if our pets have the run of the land, humans are still the masters of their own domains. In order to maintain this status quo—especially in a communal environment such as a condominium, cooperative or homeo…
As any manager, board president or building administrator rightly knows, protecting your building community against a man-made catastrophe, natural disaster, act of God, or just basic negligence, is not a trivial task. Property casualty in…
A town with a reputation for the elite, and nearest metropolitan neighbor to Boston, Brookline, Massachusetts is the birthplace of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, late night comedian Conan O’Brien, and the last home of Pulitzer and Nobel…
The annual New England Condo Expo is returning to the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston on May 24, bringing with it more than 175 exhibitors and thousands of trustees, board members, managers and residents from all over the New Engla…
The more things change, the more they stay the same. This French adage, generally attributed to French novelist Alphonse Karr, could have been penned as a tagline for the community association world. There’s no doubt that advances in techn…
Exteriors of buildings aren’t always smooth brick walls. There are all sorts of indentations and protrusions, from terraces to stonework to cornices. There are also items that are not part of the building, but are affixed to it, like scaffo…
Earthquake insurance is very common in California, for obvious reasons—but what about in New England? Tremors may be rare here, but nonetheless, they do happen. And they can cause damage to condominiums and other structures. On Octob…