In a tragic turn of events last week, a troubled Upper West Side condo owner who said his building harassed him about his pitbull took his own life just hours after euthanizing his healthy five-year-old dog.

According to two articles this weekend in the New York Post ("Condo...

Compared to owning a place, renting is supposed to be a pretty hassle-free existence. If your dishwasher leaks or the window won't open or the radiator starts screaming, you tell your landlord (or the super, or the doorman) and someone comes to fix it.

That's the theory.

In reality, getting...

A recent New York Times story characterizing 2011 as "the year of the [board] turndown" held out a sliver of anecdotal hope for rejected buyers: a broker tells the Times that she persuaded an Upper East Side co-op board to reverse its decision simply by resubmitting her lightly-employed...

Rest unassured: In the city that never sleeps, bedbugs are still a major cause of insomnia for thousands of New Yorkers trapped in infested apartments and buildings. Whether you're renting or buying, here's how to minimize the chance that they will be waiting behind your next front door.

Renters

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Admit it: When you hear the real-estate maxim "location, location, location," you think about great neighborhoods and awesome transportation.

That's fine -- unless you're looking for an apartment. In that case, you also need to assess the location of the apartment within the building. It can affect your quality...

If you are using a real estate agent to buy, sell, or rent an apartment, you will need to come to peace with the fact that agents earn their living at your expense -- and probably to a greater extent than you think is appropriate.

That said, you do not,...

My first place in Manhattan was a shared, seedy, shag-carpeted room in an SRO hotel that looked as if it had hosted many boozy lunchtime trysts. It was one of a large block of rooms in which NYU sequestered transfer students like me in so-called "on-campus" housing 25 blocks from...

Test driving isn't just for cars. Occasionally, condos and even co-ops come with a rent-to-own option, in which some or all of your rent over a certain period of time (commonly 6-12 months) is applied toward a pre-determined purchase price.

Whether these arrangements make sense for buyers is a matter...

In the high-rise jungle that is New York City, there's a lot more to your next apartment than meets the eye or the checkbook. Don't plunk down your money until you rule out (or at least open your eyes to) these eight quality-of-life factors that could seriously mess with your...