Teri Karush Rogers

In the Credit Crunch Age, it's not only new condos that are being labled bad credit risks.

Right now--without you or your board realizing it--you may be unable to refinance your mortgage or sell your apartment to anyone but an all-cash buyer.

That's because banks continue to enforce federal mortgage guidelines with fundamentalist fervor, slapping the infidel label on even long-established co-ops and condos.

• New Yorkers who don't lock their doors? (NY Times)
• What home sellers don't tell buyers (Wall Street Journal)
• Parlor floor vs ground floor apts (StreetEasy forum)

The New York Post reported this week that the hand model who infamously married her doorman was ejected, along with her spouse, from their Upper East Side co-op apartment, for behavior allegedly abusive enough to prompt the staff to seek protection orders.

Of course, besides verbal and physical attacks, there are at least 50 other ways to drive your neighbors crazy in an apartment building.

Q. This is my first winter in my new apartment on West 142nd Street.  Ever since the weather has turned cold, black smoke has been pouring out of the roof of a residential building outside my windows.  

If you want to predict your building’s bed bug risk, act like a state trooper and start profiling the neighbors, suggests a commenter on Brownstoner.

His take on The Most Likely to Become Infested:

"1) old people who never leave their apartments


2) section 8 families


3) transient 20 year old partiers


4) europeans who travel half the year back and forth"

According to at least one observer, the buzz on Manhattan’s cocktail circuit has gone from boom-era bragging to bust-era bravado:   Foreclosures and their oh-sh*t-I'm-underwater cousins, short sales, are losing their stigma among upper income NYC dwellers.