Q The homeowners of my condo are very unhappy with the current board, and have therefore petitioned for a special meeting for the sole purpose to vote them off as Board of Trustees. A special meeting was granted and the board mailed out a…
Protection against embezzlement, fraud, theft, computer crime, forgery and more are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to crimes at community associations across the United States. During challenging economic times, crime goes up an…
A manager might have to coordinate operations with a single maintenance person or work with any number of doormen, porters, custodians and handypersons depending on the size and nature of the building. When well-trained and motivated, thes…
Though mostly unseen, a building’s plumbing and piping network is one of its most important systems—as anyone who has ever had to endure a freezing February shower, or who has come home to a flooded floor, can attest. Plumbing includes not…
The rarely stated—but all too well understood—Murphy’s Law for Boilers— asserts that if your boiler quits working, it will do so on Christmas or New Year’s Eve, or at 4:45 p.m. on the coldest day of the year. With some planning, though, th…
From the outside, the structure of a condo, co-op or townhouse building may appear to be monolithic; just pieces of brick, steel, vinyl or wood, punctuated with some glass here and there. That's an oversimplification, however. A multifamil…
After this winter, a concrete walkway in our condo property was completely ruined. Several unit owners contend the property manager used rock salt instead of the usual calcium chloride. If we can establish that rock salt was indeed used as …
Q I am the president of a condominium association, and we are very certain that a tenant is maliciously running up the water bills. The problem is that we don’t have definitive proof. Our water bills have gone up from about $2,000 a quart…
Just south of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, one will find the city of Laconia, a popular resort town known in the winter for its skiing, snow tubing and ziplining and in the summer for its extensive beachfront, teeming rivers and c…
With the advent of relatively cheap and accessible television source options such as Verizon’s FiOS TV, Cablevision’s Optimum and Comcast’s Xfinity, it might surprise some to hear that the seemingly antiquated satellite dish is still a mai…