Recently I’ve been reminded of the arcanity of the New York entity called a “co-operative corporation,” i.e., a co-op.<\/p>\n
I was trying to describe how a co-op works to a couple of intelligent lawyers from another state. I was struck by how difficult it was to distinguish the complexity of the co-op from the simpler entity that seems to dominate throughout most of the country, the condominium.<\/p>\n
It may be that only New Yorkers can fully understand the co-op. And it may also be true that once you achieve that understanding, you forget how miserable the learning process\u00a0 was in getting it.<\/p>\n
Understanding co-op law is similar to a writer’s experience: by the time you read your own work in print \u2014 how brilliant! how clever!\u00a0\u2014 you’ve entirely forgotten the agonies you went through in writing the thing.<\/p>\n
Well, anyway.<\/p>\n
I have mixed feelings about this guest post from real estate broker Malcolm Carter’s Service You Can Trust blog.<\/a> For one thing, it’s a brutal reminder of my abject failure as a co-op board member to interview my own co-op’s prospective buyers, my failure to require a background check, to review their finances. Et cetera.<\/p>\n Norman Schreiber, the writer of this post (and of a novel, Out of Order<\/em>, about a murder in a co-op), lists the qualities in a prospective buyer that any co-op seeks to uncover and reject. He particularly analyzes a proposed statute, Intro 188, that our City Council is considering to establish stricter rules for co-op boards.<\/p>\n For anyone who has never been a shareholder in a co-op or on the board of a co-op, Mr. Schreiber’s diagnosis of Intro 188 will be eye-opening. To put it mildly. And for everyone who has been or is on a board, it might worry you \u2014 especially if you combine Intro 188 with recent court decisions that have already caused anxiety in the board of directors community.<\/p>\n Mr. Schreiber, though, is occasionally funny when he describes what boards can go through when interviewing prospective buyers … and their dogs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently I’ve been reminded of the arcanity of the New York entity called a “co-operative corporation,” i.e., a co-op. I was trying to describe how a co-op works to a couple of intelligent lawyers from another state. I was struck … Continue reading