Winter is coming, and they’re looking for a cozy place to hunker down, stay warm and dry, and maybe raise a family. And like relatives stopping in for a vacation, they’re cute at first, but more than likely will overstay their welcome. …
When you live in a multifamily building with possibly hundreds of people residing under one roof, cooking, cleaning, dusting, and breathing, it’s no surprise that the airways, chutes, and garbage rooms can get clogged and dirty over tim…
Every resident living in a building with more than two stories understands the convenience an elevator affords. While antiquated forms of the modern elevator date back to Ancient Rome, the first passenger hydraulic elevator was installe…
It’s a very special formula, says Ralph Noblin of the professional engineering firm Noblin & Associates. In New England, we literally went close to 20 years without that formula coming together. As a decades-long veteran of condo engine…
Holiday decorations are a bit like art—you know what you like when you see it. And our own sense of neighborliness and desire to live in a friendly community, combined with our need to respect freedom of expression, mean we must recogni…
The boiler squats at a building’s core, churning out heat like some hulking behemoth of the deep. We tend to take the boiler and its labyrinth of pipes entirely for granted, except when it fails to work properly. Ignored in spring and s…
For most of us, winter is dreary enough without worrying about the grit and grime that often accompanies it. From December through March, the snows that fall require almost non-stop attention, from making sure the sidewalks stay ice-fr…
Q I am a member of the governing board for our condominium. One of our unit owners has a buyer for her unit and the buyer’s proposed mortgagee asked our board to sign one of the new FHA Project Certification forms—should we? —Sign…
Our condo association, which is private, has a situation that seems to be going nowhere. One of the units in the association has been for sale for over 2 years and the owner has not paid their HOA dues in 3 plus years. We as the board f…