Permit for Terrace Fencing?


My neighbor and I are contracting someone to build a wooden fence between our terraces, Do we need DOB permit to do so? Thanks.

Categories: DOB
By diablorojo | 09/21/2010 8:38 AM | Comment

Condo Board Elections Mediation


Anyone knows what to do about condo board not calling for elections? We had our first election on Jan 2009, our by laws call for elections on the last thursday of May, but also stipulate annual elections which means every 12 months. Here is the kicker,after 15 months, we requested “early elections” with more of the 25% required, They are ignoring our petition and started a muddy campaign against the people who want to replace them. They tried,try and will try to sabotage everything we request or demand. We are thinking mediation…how does it work, who we will need to bring in and who will pay for it.

Categories: Legal
By diablorojo | 03/23/2010 9:28 PM | Comment

Condo Elections


Our present condo-board took over from our sponsor last Feb. 2009. The offering plan and by-laws call for annual elections on last Thursday in May. The present condo board is calling for elections for next May 2010. They didn’t call for elections last May 2009 as the offering plan says.
It is my understanding, annual elections happen every 12 months, not 15 or 16 months. Is these even legal. Our Management company agrees with us but can not anything about it. Our by laws stipulates any homeowners can call for a an election meeting with 25% of quorum and need 50% of building percentage to go to elections, our building is still 50% owned by the sponsor creditors. What can we do?

Categories: Legal
By diablorojo | 11/03/2009 8:24 AM | Comment

Condominium Boards Abuse


We are a brand new building, We took the condo board from the sponsor in Feb. 2009 before the May election set in the by-laws. The condo board now want to extend their period from Feb 2009 to May 2010. They are self-serving, taking spaces from the building to storage their own bikes, not disclosing anything with homeowners from building finances, etc. We hired a lawyer back in 2008 when some homeowners got together to sue the sponsor for not finishing the building, Now the are assessed the whole building $34000 for legal fees (the lawyer just requested $2000 to start and at the most $8000 to complete the process) Not even explaining clearly why so much money. One person from the board mention that they are asking so much to at least get half since half of the units from the building, still belonged to the sponsor or his partners. Is this even legal, who can help us, it seems condo-boards have immunity to abuse homeowners. Please advise and help. I’m just about to walk away from my home.

Categories: Legal
By diablorojo | 10/23/2009 10:48 AM | Comment

HIGHVIEW MANAGEMENT PROPERTY


We would like to expose Highview Property Management for what they have done to our condominium. We bought our Park Slope condominiums in January 2008. The sponsor hired Highview Property Management to serve our building, this is a short story of what happen to us:

a) They depleted our working capital fund by paying for repairs with this money and for services the sponsor was obligated to pay for. We were forced to function in a deficit since they ALLOWED the sponsor not to pay for his units common charges for months and did not proactively try and collect these past due funds… they did not initiate liens or late fees as per our offering plans calls for. Highview used our moneys with no regard or ethics until there was no more money.

b) They charged us for a 30 hour per week Superintendent at $15 (they only paid our super $7.50 per hour). Our super was hardly in our building, hardly cleaned the building, and caused more damage than good- a perfect segway for the next point:

c) They hired and brought to our building the most unreliable, irresponsible and unprofessional contractors to serve our building; having to pay twice, even three times on several occasions to solve one problem. Highview used to give out our security code to everyone (contractors, deliveries, repairmen) to get into our building since Highview didn’t want to bother to come and meet/supervise them, also because the super was never here either. On one occasion a delivery person of janitorial supplies was given our code, gained access to our garage and crashed his delivery van in to our garage door trying to pull in. The guy was fleeing away as we stopped him and called the police. This incident took place back in November 2008- as of today we still trying to collect the money from Highview Property Management. The cleaning supply company paid for the damages to our door and the check was issued to Highview of which was never deposited to our account!

d) Due to their observance of Sabbath, they are incommunicado for the weekend starting early on Friday afternoons with no reliable means of emergency response in place. We had some problems with our building’s boiler to which we have had full weekends with no hot water since they don’t have a real emergency service on weekends and holidays.

e) We finally were able to fire them due to the fact the contract was with the original sponsor condominium board. But up to this point we still haven’t been able to collect most of our bills, documents, and important information pertinent to our building. We need to hire an accountant to retroactively review 1-1/2 years of bills and paperwork for the obvious reasons.

f) We have gotten numerous sanitation tickets for garbage being taken out to early or on wrong days. During many winter storms our sidewalk and driveway have been left unshoveled or salted.

g) Home owners request for documentation needed for re-financing and/or other mortgaged related business goes unanswered in spite of multiple requests.

This is just the short story, it will take pages and pages to recount all the nightmares this company put us through.

Categories: Management
By diablorojo | 06/19/2009 3:32 PM | Comment