Teri Karush Rogers

Having had some experience being blown off by a managing agent (present company excluded), we decided to ask one for some tips on getting attention.

Generally, says Michael J. Wolfe, president of Midboro Management in Manhattan, calls before noon should be returned the same day.    With most managing agents carrying Blackberries these days, “email tends to work better than calling,” he notes. “But be very specific about your question—not just ‘call me.’"

Be persistent, not pestilent: Calling twice a day is okay—every half hour is annoying.

A friend recently cut $721 from her family’s monthly household expenses and agreed to post the slash-and-burn details here:

•    Canceled AT&T phone service and switched to digital service by Time Warner Cable.  Savings: $95/month

•    Cut out premium cable channels except for HBO. Savings:  $34/month

•    Lowered minutes on Verizon monthly cell phone plan: Savings: $25/month

If you can’t seem to get squeaky clean after your shower, it may be because your building has added sodium silicate to your water.

“In the old buildings with some iron pipe in them, it stops the rust.  And in the new buildings sometimes, to cut down on brown water they actually end up coating the iron particles,” says Phil Kraus, the president of Fred Smith Plumbing & Heating Company, which services around 850 Manhattan co-op and condo buildings.

Since we started planning BrickUnderground 18 months ago from our dining rooms in the same Upper West Side co-op building, our apartments are worth a whole lot less and so are we. 

For many owners, including us, the fantasy of trading (or renovating) up has been downsized to making the most of what we've got. Our mission here is to give New York City homeowners  a place to leverage their collective intelligence about the art and science of owning an apartment (or a house) in the country’s densest urban metropolis.

As first-time apartment buyers six years ago, we never really stopped to think about the size of the building we were buying into.  It was all about the apartment itself (was it big enough and could we afford it) and the neighborhood.

If you’ve ever wondered what your doorman's thinking, you may be interested in hearing from one of Manhattan's liveried, who requested anonymity to protect his job:

• “We don’t like it when the residents pull up when they come back from the weekend and blow the horn and whistle at us to come help them. It makes us feel like a pet.”

• “We get complimentary newspapers from the delivery people and some of the residents kind of know that we get it so they come down and borrow it and never return it. That’s annoying.”