Can a Shareholder Pass on a Building-Wide Window Replacement?

Sept. 15, 2015 — This week's Ask Real Estate column in The New York Times illustrates perfectly why it's in a board's best interests to keep the lines of communication open with building residents. Arguably, a significant amount of grief can be prevented if building residents are allowed to see why boards operate the way they do and understand the types of everyday building-wide situations they constantly confront. It sounds like things are about to get tense at a co-op on the Upper West Side. One building resident there writes to Ronda Kaysen: "Our co-op board has announced a window replacement project for the entire building because some owners have difficulty operating the windows. The owners of each apartment must provide access to the windows, which means removing and reinstalling all window treatments and, in our case, custom built-in furniture around the windows. This will be costly and inconvenient…. Are we permitted to opt out of the replacement project? Our existing windows are fine." Kaysen explains that windows are a bigger deal than they may seem to this particular building resident. "When buildings want new ones," she writes back, "they invariably want to change them all for reasons of energy efficiency but also to maintain a uniform appearance. A patchwork of different window styles could look odd…. If you were to refuse to let the co-op replace the windows, the co-op could sue you, potentially leaving you on the hook for both the building's legal fees and your own."