Real estate lore has its share of stories about merciless, if not downright unscrupulous, city inspectors popping in on unaware building owners, conducting unscheduled examinations of all types, and sometimes even demanding payoffs in excha…

Q. I am a condo unit owner with a patch of HOA-owned grass near my unit that was overlooked for many years. Over the past six years, I have slowly landscaped the area in accordance with the landscaping of the complex. No one from the boar…

Q. We have a board member who has been locked out of meetings. According to that board member, the board has formed an Executive Committee that has, for all intents and purposes, shut them out. The board member no longer able to view boar…

A condominium, cooperative or homeowners’ association is only as efficient as the elected board that oversees its day-to-day operations. Considering how difficult it can be to find time for family, leisure, and sleep amid work and assorted …

Attorneys and community association managers can be a godsend for the board of a co-op, condominium or HOA. Most boards consist of volunteers who usually have quite busy external lives themselves, so having an experienced professional on th…

If you live in a condominium, cooperative or HOA, you’re effectively acting as part of a participatory democracy run by an elected group of volunteers. And as with any democracy, those affected by the board’s decisions are encouraged to get…

The board of a condominium, cooperative or homeowner’s association has a fiduciary duty to make decisions in the best interest of the community as a whole. But individual board members may have different ideas as to what those decisions mig…

Q. “Say a shareholder spoke to the president of the board and disclosed his or her health condition. And later on, the president lost re-election to the board and found out that the shareholder did not vote for them. The ousted president …

Plumbing is a minor miracle: clean water, on demand, and at the temperature one chooses in his or her apartment. What would have been the height of luxury just a couple of generations ago is now considered a bare necessity. Miraculous as it…

When it comes to how co-op and condo communities navigate the race to address climate change, a goal like switching to 100 percent renewable energy may seem too tall an order. On the other hand, recycling household glass, paper, and plastic…