From Friday’s Daily News, with the headline “Co-op board voids ‘steal’ at auction”:
Linda Salamon thought she won the real estate lottery last May when she bought a $400,000 one-bedroom co-op apartment on the lower East Side for $33,000 at a public auction.
Three months later, her ticket was voided when the Seward Park Co-Op board that runs the sprawling building complex … claimed the sale was no good because the price was too low.
Salamon of Roslyn, L.I. is now suing the co-op and Chase Home Finance, which put the apartment on the block after the current occupant defaulted on a $349,000 loan.
There are a bunch of lessons to be learned from this story, about co-ops, foreclosures, defaults, bank auctions, the power of co-op boards to reject potential buyers for a number of different reasons, and why Linda Salamon is suing the co-op board.
I am particularly interested in this story, since my co-op might find itself in a similar situation. And there’s a huge tip about what co-op boards can do in these circumstances — a tip I am hardly likely to forget, since I thought of it quite a while ago.
If you’re like me, or are thinking about buying a co-op apartment at auction, you’ll want to read every single word of this article.