Turn on daytime television and you might get a false impression that people like to go before a judge to work out their differences. There are so many cookie-cutter court shows like where they make the process look simple and quick. Th…
Remember Stanley Roper from the 1970’s sitcom Three’s Company? To some, he might still be their idea of a property manager—the upstairs landlord or the guy you’d call when your plumbing’s on the fritz. And indeed, when the plumbing in you…
In a competitive industry, management companies must continuously find ways to retain current clients while honing an edge that makes them appealing to new customers. This is especially true in these tough economic times, as many indiv…
Building boards and their managing agents function best when they work together as a team. Ideally, the two parties collaborate to implement policy, carry out administrative duties, and make decisions about the efficient operation of th…
As anybody who’s ever been to an “all you can eat” sushi buffet can tell you, bigger isn’t always better, and if “more” is mediocre, sometimes you’d rather have less. The same applies when it comes to property management companies. Manag…
No matter what the job—be it flipping burgers at a chain restaurant or running a multinational investment firm—employees should be given periodic reviews of their performance to assess how they’re doing and identify both their strengths …
During the day, J.R. “Sankarasivam” Jeyaranjan works 40 hours a week as a bank risk manager. At night and on weekends, and during pretty much any spare time he has, Jeyaranjan is president of his Jersey City co-op’s board of directors, …
Conventional wisdom holds that if you have to have neighbors, you’re better off living next door to owners than renters. By definition, owners have a stake in their building, and are supposedly better neighbors. They are cleaner, quiete…
Sometimes, no matter how much it may pain us to do so, we all have to say or do unpleasant things. That can certainly be the case for co-op and condo board members, most of whom will one day face the dreary prospect of raising maintena…
It’s sometimes hard to grasp how fast technology has evolved in such a short time. Whether it’s finding cheap plane tickets or finding a date for Saturday night, the Internet can do it all. Technology has transformed the way we communic…