Joan is absolutely right! In my building, the current "sponsor" is denominated the H.U.S. (Holder of Unsold Shares), and prior to becoming the HUS, he was the Sales Agent of the original sponsor, which means that every person who ever lived, bought, or rented here, is an asset of him, having been planted here through his employee, a real estate broker who sits in the board representing the Sponsor. This person, not even a shareholder, casts 2 votes for the "Sponsor", and brags about having "power with the board". Of the 120 units in our building, I only got to know about 2 dozens bona fide owners. The rest are either vacant apartments which have been vacant for years, or sponsor's units rented out to transients, or belonging to absentee owners who had either moved out, or died long ago, but their names continue appearing in the list or owners. Many of them them have the same name but different faces from the ones we met 5 or 7 years ago. So, there is identity theft here, in addition to all the other thefts, grafting, illegal surcharges, excessive assessments, unnessary renovations by insaciable "vendors", harassment, accidents and "suicides", etc etc etc. Replacement of elevators is a favorite one. We have 2 elevators which were installed only 25 years ago, which were renovated only 5 years ago, and now have bee replaced again to the tune of $260K. (The price for this in the market should have been onlly $80K total ). Our Managing Agent, an instrumentality of the "Sponsor", have increased our debt from $1,7 million to almost $3 million ($2.810 million) in 8 years, and still, in spite of all these extra borrowing, he still runs the coop at a deficit: $1.9 million accumulated deficit in the past 8 years, which will have to be added to the debt, of course, when the chips are down. Of the original "refinance", $2.3 million, in spite of having paid 1 million and a half of "interest" in 10 years, we still owe a $2.25 million balloon payment 4 years down the road. These are the "secrets" of predatory banking, of which people like Carl and Steve don't seem to know nothing about. They are naive fools.
The US Attorney is now suing and fining billions of dollars to the big banks who engaged in predatory practices that caused the big crisis of 2008: Bank of America, Well Fargo, Morgan-Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, etc... The turn will surely come for NCB (National Cooperative Bank), now functioning almost as a monopoly bank for Coops...but, by that time, they probably will have taken the money and run, emigrated to Israel....May the gods have pity on us, the gods who presided upon the creation of our great nation, the marvel of the ages! Kyrie, eleison...Miserere nobis.
Gerard Grosof - Concerned Citizens for Coop Reform.- g5grosof@outlook.com. Join me in the study "the Magic of Compount Interest, and other financial matters affecting the Coops.