![]() Interior and exterior inspections performed by the municipality may not be on an annual or other regular basis. Instead, a complaint to the department may lead to an inspection or the department may have a schedule pursuant to which a department inspector visits different areas of the municipality periodically. Those inspections are usually to identify and address dangerous and hazardous conditions, but may also include aesthetic issues like painting. Some municipalities will also inspect interior common areas in multifamily residential buildings. Those inspections are usually to identify and address life safety issues, as well as any other dangerous or hazardous conditions. ![]() Generally, regulation of structural and aesthetic conditions of a building falls to individual municipalities, and is accomplished through local building codes and other ordinances,” says Kris Kasten, an attorney with Altus Legal, a firm specializing in community law in Chicago. “Many municipalities have a department that periodically inspects the exterior of buildings. ![]() “The Illinois Condominium Property Act does not contain any provision requiring regular or periodic inspections of a condominium building of any size. There are provisions in the law that allow for extending the cure period, and in 2020, the DOB enacted more comprehensive façade examinations, cavity wall probes, reporting requirements, and increased civil penalties for noncompliance, among other updates. Among other things, if unsafe conditions are found in the inspection of the façade, the engineer or architect must notify the City and the building owner and advise what appropriate protective measures are to be taken.” Greenstein adds that Local Law 11 also requires that conditions found to be unsafe must be corrected within a certain time from the date the DOB is notified, and a form be filed with the DOB when those conditions are corrected. It was initially more limited in the façade areas to be inspected, but was then expanded to the current requirements. While it does not require an inspection of the entire building, this has been a very effective law. He says there is no clear mandate for inspections in the New York State Condominium Act - however, “The New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) Façade Inspection Safety Program, also referred to as Local Law 11, requires that owners of buildings with more than six stories have a professional engineer or registered architect to examine the building's exterior walls every five years. Rather, that is left to local regulating authorities to enact.”ĭennis Greenstein, an attorney with Seyfarth Shaw, a global law firm with offices in Manhattan, concurs. The Act is not intended to, nor does it contain, any requirements or language mandating when and what types of inspections, repairs or replacement are to be made to buildings, including the frequency thereof. It’s left up to the boards of each building to determine the building’s needs and make repairs and replacements consistent with those needs, as well as enact budget and policy subject to the specific language of its governing documents. It is intended to provide the basis for which the offering plan is prepared, the requisite disclosures made, and the building is governed, used and managed. It is not intended to micromanage the day-to-day operations of any building. “In New York State, condominiums are governed by Article 9-b of the Real Property Act,” says Mark Hakim, an attorney specializing in co-op and condominium law with the firm of Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg & Atlas. “The Act provides a framework for the formation, operation, and management of condominiums in New York.
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