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Anyone who thinks NYC simply needs to pass more laws & taxes should sit on a condo/coop board for a few years. Thankless job, and dealing with the city bureauc

Anyone who thinks NYC simply needs to pass more laws & taxes should sit on a condo/coop board for a few years. Thankless job, and dealing with the city bureaucracy is awful. Lot of mechanisms setup to punish & tax buildings but not to facilitate the timely curing of whatever they are fining you over. One favorite was after an elevator incident a few years ago, the city passed some new law that required mostly software updates to elevators. It was essentially an update to prevent elevator repairmen from overriding the safety mechanism preventing motion when the door is open. So putting a safety on the safety. However of course there are only like 2 companies in the city and they colluded on how much they'd charge. So in effect it was a $10k per elevator tax on every residential building in the city. Not huge in the grand scheme of things, but in my condo that was a random 4% of budget blown away at the stroke of a pen. And they do this all the time. We had to do facade inspections and the city institutes all sorts of rules & fines around it, but then we ran into a stubborn neighbor with axe to grind with sponsor disallowing access on adjacent side for our scaffolding. City of course does nothing to force compliance by neighbor, it's your problem. Eventually had to be paid off in some manner. Very much city of no.

asah 2y ago
I'll take the city bureaucracy any day, over the stupid, entitled, schmucky owners taking out their frustrations on people just trying to help.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  Absolutely. Was the worst job I ever had, and it's unpaid. I even worked retail in high school & Wall Street for 20 years. Condo board fights are nasty, personal and 24/7. Most of your neighbors are quietly happy with the operation of the building, and 2-5% of your neighbors are insane. We dealt with everything from threats of lawsuits and complaints filed with the state, repeat 1000 word complaint emails, texts on nights & weekends, a group running a shadow building wide mailing list to complain & collaborate on deposing existing board, etc. The biggest complainers were not people who had leaks or actual problems. Actual problems are easily resolved, and BAU for building management. Instead it was people who wanted to lobby furniture replaced yet again, or were unhappy with the fading paint on the back side of the building no one sees from the street. Generally they were underemployed and/or mid-divorce. These peoples problems can never be solved. The best part of getting off the board was watching a few of these nuts get on the board and start fighting each other instead of bothering me.
  - asah 2y ago
    +1000 exactly my experience. But I will say, here in NYC at least, the first thing boards and mgmt companies do is setup systems to efficiently handle these squeaky wheels so theydon't overwhelm everyone's time, energy or emotional capacity. On the plus side, I've learned a lot about general mgmt, policy and communication; learned how certain hardware systems work; and I've made a couple of solid business connections from it. My tenant is thrilled. And great stories!!!

asah 2y ago

I'll take the city bureaucracy any day, over the stupid, entitled, schmucky owners taking out their frustrations on people just trying to help.

steveBK123 2y ago
Absolutely. Was the worst job I ever had, and it's unpaid. I even worked retail in high school & Wall Street for 20 years. Condo board fights are nasty, personal and 24/7. Most of your neighbors are quietly happy with the operation of the building, and 2-5% of your neighbors are insane. We dealt with everything from threats of lawsuits and complaints filed with the state, repeat 1000 word complaint emails, texts on nights & weekends, a group running a shadow building wide mailing list to complain & collaborate on deposing existing board, etc. The biggest complainers were not people who had leaks or actual problems. Actual problems are easily resolved, and BAU for building management. Instead it was people who wanted to lobby furniture replaced yet again, or were unhappy with the fading paint on the back side of the building no one sees from the street. Generally they were underemployed and/or mid-divorce. These peoples problems can never be solved. The best part of getting off the board was watching a few of these nuts get on the board and start fighting each other instead of bothering me.
- asah 2y ago
  +1000 exactly my experience. But I will say, here in NYC at least, the first thing boards and mgmt companies do is setup systems to efficiently handle these squeaky wheels so theydon't overwhelm everyone's time, energy or emotional capacity. On the plus side, I've learned a lot about general mgmt, policy and communication; learned how certain hardware systems work; and I've made a couple of solid business connections from it. My tenant is thrilled. And great stories!!!