I’m a sucker for rages to riches tales. On the news the other night, I heard about Indra Tamang, the butler who was left an estate valued in excess of $10 million, including two apartments at the venerable Dakota (1 West 72nd Street), where he’d cooked and cleaned for 35 years for his former employers turned benefactors, Charles and Ruth Ford. I had to know the rest of the story. Read more »

The flip side of the freedom that comes with buying condos is that it’s easier to get in and harder to get out. Complain all you want about those pesky co-op boards that can put you through the wringer before they approve you. But if they don’t approve, they can reject you, which sometimes is exactly what you want. So what can you do? Read more »

OK, the market is getting better, or so it seems for now. Still in this economic climate skittish buyers have devised novel ways to get out of deals – from challenging floor plans to declaring the financial meltdown an Act of God, though it remains to be seen how many of these will succeed once they wend their way through the courts. So just what you can do to free yourself with impunity from the contractual bonds should the need arise? Read more »

I’m sure by now you’ve read about that Qatari diplomat in flight from D.C. to Denver to visit a fellow citizen imprisoned for terrorism, who took a smoke, then joked he tried to set his shoes on fire. Even though the authorities called in the FBI, and fighter planes, he got off with barely a slap on the wrist. But that poor chump who ducked under the security ropes at Newark Airport a few months back to give his girlfriend a goodbye kiss was arrested and ultimately pled to defiant trespass. Wny the different treatment and what does it mean for your building? Read more »

It’s a question I hear all the time, even more now that the spring selling season is getting underway. But it’s not the right question – at least not in the first instance. Because whether or not the board is agreeable, the co-op’s documents may put a wrench in the transaction. So what can you do? Read more »