Category: Q&A

Q. Why are co-op board minutes so sparse that others who read them—shareholders, lawyers, brokers—have no real idea what goes on at meetings? Our minutes are routinely ‘sanitized’ to leave out any troublesome issues, any comments by vario…

Q.  “I live in a building with storage lockers for cooperators on the ground floor and one storage locker on each floor. All the lockers are closed, so the contents are not visible. The building porters inspect the rooms in which the locke…

Q. I am a shareholder and current member of the board of directors running for reelection. At the elections, we did not have a quorum, and the other members decided to keep the elections open for a month. So the ballots were given to mana…

Q. We recently had to vote to remove our board president from his position, because he was taking small amounts of funds on a regular basis. He said it was all ‘petty cash reimbursements,’ but he never told the board or treasurer about ma…

Q. The bylaws of [my co-op] currently charge utility costs—water, sewer, heat/AC, and electricity—to our shareholders on the basis of the number of shares each unit is assigned. The shares apportioned are variable depending on unit size, …

Q.  I serve on the board of my co-op in Forest Hills, and own one unit. Our ‘unsold unit owners’, as they demand we call them, have been in control forever. Originally, there were two sponsors, but both have since passed away, one leaving …

Q. I sit on the board of directors of a Nassau County cooperative. The building has a no-pets policy that residents are obliged to comply with. A few residents have cats that were grandfathered in prior to rules changing. On occasion, we’…

Q. My co-op board just voted to require all shareholders to buy homeowners insurance. I’d like to find out if that’s a common thing, but I don’t know who to ask. Thanks!                                 —Can They Do That? A. “Requiring…

Q. One of our condo units that the owner was renting out to a tenant is now in foreclosure. But before the unit went into foreclosure, the owner (who has been missing in action) was behind on the common charges and the condo board was tak…

Q. In 1999 I inherited a low-income HDFC co-op, which at that time the president told me I could rent out. When my relative passed away in 1998, I had just bought myself a condominium, so I took the president at his word and rented the co…