Category: Association Operations

These days, pretty much everyone has a smart phone, which means they have a computer in their hands all day, every day. That makes it difficult to take true vacation days, to 'unplug' on the weekend, and to “leave work at work.” Our work li…

While it's pretty much impossible for a condo board, HOA or an employee thereof to commit fraud on the scale of a Bernie Madoff or any one of the greed-driven shysters who have made headlines in recent years, building boards and managers ce…

The first of the month rolls around and it’s time to pay the monthly dues that keep the building operational. Repairs might need to be made, maintenance done, bills paid to keep all the common elements running and those dues make it all hap…

Whether your community is a condo, HOA, or co-op, proper record-keeping is the difference between a healthy property and one headed toward peril. And while meeting minutes and election results require well-organized documentation, records s…

Condos and co-ops are called communities for a reason—families and individuals live side by side with one another, sometimes for years or even decades. Although residents may not exchange much more than a “hello” or “nice day” with their ne…

Like any company, a multifamily residential community generates a lot of paperwork in the course of doing business, from employment records to tenant records and more. It can be an enormous amount of stuff to manage, and knowing what to kee…

In the past, when it came time to do a remodeling project, no one really ever had much of an idea as to how things would turn out. Architects and designers would come by with blueprints or swatches of color and fabric and ask you to just im…

In the past, developers would throw a few chairs and tables into a large room and call it a common area or a recreation room and leave it at that. Today, however, there’s more to designing, maintaining and upgrading a successful common area…

One universal truth on which we all can agree is that kids like to play. They love little more than getting together and having a bang-up good time. And in almost any cooperative, condominium or homeowners’ association, there is likely to b…

The lobby of one’s building is the first thing a unit owner sees when coming home, and the first part of the building any guest (or prospective buyer) sees. In light of that, it stands to reason that comfortable, appropriate lobby furnishin…