By Richard Siegler and Eva Talel For decades, Business Corporation Law §501(c),1 which mandates equality of shares in a corporation, has been a limit on actions of cooperative housing corporations, culminating in the 1985 Court of Appeals decision in Fe Bland v. Two Trees Management Co.2 which expressly applied §501(c) to co-ops.
When Boards Determine Not to Act, New York Law Journal
Urban living usually means sharing walls, ceilings, floors, hallways and lobbies with neighbors. This close living and sharing of space may lead to disputes between neighbors. In co-op and condominium buildings, the aggrieved party often looks to the board of directors or building manager to solve or alleviate the problem at the source of the Full Article…
How to Handle City-Issued Violation Hearing, Apartment Law Insider
By Adam Leitman Bailey If you get a city issued violation from certain city agencies, such as the Department of Buildings (DOB), the NYC Fire Department, or the NYC Department of Sanitation, and you want to fight it, you’ll need to appear at the Environmental Control Board (ECB) for a hearing. Here’s what you’ll need Full Article…
Negotiating Laundry Room Contracts, The Cooperator
By Adam Leitman Bailey and Dov Treiman It’s amazing how good building owners and managers are at increasing and garnering revenue from residential tenants while at the same time leaving themselves to the will and whim of laundry room operators who impose contracts lasting for decades with automatic renewals, rights of first refusal and other Full Article…
Corruption in Mitchell-Lama Co-ops! How Boards Can Fight Back: Part 1, Habitat Magazine
By Adam Leitman Bailey The New York City Mitchell-Lama program provides 54,000 homes to low-income buyers. And as with many things designed to aid the poor and the helpless — some of them uneducated, sometimes some of them old and frail, some of them optimistically naive — corruption pervades the process. Like grain shipments to Full Article…
Select Issues in Representing HPD Supervised Mitchell-Lama Cooperatives, New York Real Property Law Journal
By Adam Leitman Bailey New York City Mitchell-Lama cooperatives provide heavily publicly subsidized maintenance payments to those lucky enough to call them home. The New York City Mitchell-Lama program provides 54,000 homes to persons whose financial circumstances would otherwise negate such a possibility. As a result, Mitchell-Lama cooperatives are extremely popular and have decade long Full Article…
Board Turns Down Loan Refinancing, The New York Times
By Adam Leitman Bailey Q. I want to refinance the share-loan on my Manhattan co-op apartment. The refinance will be for the same amount as the original loan, but at a lower interest rate. When I bought the apartment, I financed 70 percent of the purchase price. The board will not approve the refinance, however, Full Article…
Condominium Conversion Reserve Fund Obligations, Real Estate Weekly
By Adam Leitman Bailey While sponsors of new construction condominiums have extensive obligations regarding the physical construction of their projects, Sponsors of condominium conversions really only have one material obligation (other than actually converting the form of ownership) — to provide sufficient funds to create reserves for capital repairs, improvements, and replacements required for the Full Article…