As a rule, New England Condominium sticks to the straight and narrow as we contemplate the many players and problems in condominiums. But condo- miniums are, after all, populated with people, and people are human, fallible, and occas…
The management contract defines the relationship between the condominium and management company, but the document's provisions frequently receive only cursory review or discussion by the condominium board. If troubles crop up down th…
The New England landscape has changed considerably since the first condominiums opened here some four decades ago. And the attributes of the condominiums themselves have morphed over the years; there are now high-rises and mid-rises…
Are homeowner association's governmental or quasi-governmental entities? Until last year, most attorneys who practice community association law would have said the answer was clearly, and appropriately, no. But a New Jersey appeals court…
In today's world, it's assumed that business can maintain contact internally or with their customers 24/7—whether via cell phones, the Internet or e-mail. This holds doubly true for the residential management industry. Technology ha…
Most of the time, a condo association or co-op building and its management company enjoy a mutually beneficial partnership—the management company and the individual agents try their best to serve their clients, and their client communiti…
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 attentions. Every once in a while, however, something comes …
Unless they're self-managed, most urban residential buildings employ professional property managers to handle their books, bid out repair jobs, hire contractors and deal with the day-to-day administrative functions that few unit owners o…
Ask Mark Weisman, the president of Brownstone Real Estate in Boston, what makes a good managing agent, and his answer is simple: "You should be able to solve small problems before they become big problems—that's basically it." This des…
Time was, if the tiles in your building's front foyer got grimy, your super would pour some ammonia or bleach in a bucket, grab the nearest mop, and get down to business. If a drain was slow, out came the heavy-duty industrial solve…