Hi everyone...I am a bit confused about how to levy a special assessment. Does that assessment have to be done on a percentage basis per shareholder or can it be a sum that all shareholders pay equally? I am in NYC; our prospectus does not make that very clear. Thanks.

the bank that was within our area was changed to a bank out on long island, we are in Westchester.
the auto debit form that was mailed out to people who wished to continue using it and to encourage new payments via this direct method seemed a bit shady to me. The spaces for the bank name and all identifying information of this bank in long island were left blank, with instructions that the management company will fill it out. There was no mention on this form where the bank was or the bank name or account.
However on the monthly maint bill there was an account # and po box in long island, but no bank name. The maint bills for the last 25 plus years had the bank name and account number.
i asked my electronic check writing service to see which bank cancelled the check, they said there was no bank name just an account number.
I told them this seemed weird, They said they couldn't tell me anymore info, all they had was an account number. i forget how i did it, but i found out the bank name, i must have used a web search. i found out that this bank has offices in Westchester, it is a commercial bank.
The board president lives on long island, in violation of the proprietary lease for shareowners.
so this seemed something that i had to look into, especially after the mortgage bs, where the coop president was an investor in the mortgage bank and the managing company owner was on the board of directors of the bank. They swore that it was perfectly legal, even did so in the annual minutes, because i raised the question. however i posted the circumstances to the cooperator magazine and they printed my poorly worded question, and stated, no/negative, that this was not proper and could even be worse.
the key issue was whether he recused himself from the dealings. since i had asked other board members what was going on with the new mortgage a couple weeks before, they stated they knew zero, even though they were the treasure.
So the whole loan was worked out by the president/investor, from the bank that the managing company owner sat on the board.
The president is super controlling and refuses to fill in the other BOD on what is going on until it is ready for a vote, no due diligence here, but the BOD is ?, i did ask a couple BOD members why the bank was transferred to long island, what the name of the bank was , and who had check signing powers.
They said they didnt know and even said they didnt see any reason why there was a need to know.
The president and managing company{investor relatioship} disregarding the by-laws, changed the voting method that had been in place for over 15 years. It was the voting where you could get a opposition member in by having supporters give all their voted to this one person, and not vote for any other members running or vacant spaces. I dont want to quote the incorrect name, since it gets confusing, and i know and have the bylaws. the one or two other owner occupiers from day 1/vote 1 , remember the old way, and too wonder how this happened. i asked this question at last years annual meeting and the managing agent said they would look into it. nada since, not in minutes, and the managing agent refuses to digital or tape record minutes of annual meeting, even though i brought up a bunch of discrepancy, obvious they like the untracked method.
The topper is that the BOD has allowed the building to become about 50/50 owner occupied, so i cant find anyone to take an interest.
The people that are interested and see the wrongs, are like me, too old, too many other issues, too sick, to get involved with becoming a board member, and the few new owners that actually live here, i guess are planning on moving as soon as they can. I am thinking of doing the same , since this is not how i want to be spending my time,especially without any support. However i still am going to look out for fraud and make a paper trail of violations .

I'm a shareholder residing in a coop within Westchester County. I was made aware, through a friend in law enforcement, that a NYS registered sex offender is residing in the cooperative for some time now. This came as a complete shock to not only myself but to other shareholders in the building. What made it more surprising is that the mother of the offender is on the Board of Directors.

My question is does the Board have a LEGAL obligation to inform the shareholders that a NYS registered sex offender is residing in the building? If so, is there any recourse, by means of a shareholder vote, to determine if the offender is allowed to reside in the cooperative? Shouldn't the shareholders have been notified before he took residence in the coop? Any assistance or guidance from anyone is appreciated. Thanks in advance!!

anyone know whar ratio the banks will accept for co-op owner occupied for a mortgage?
it used to be around 80%. Our board has let it drop from 80% to around 50%. i don't know if they are falsifying records to the banks on the couple sales we had, or it is 50%

How do you recommend getting shareholders to become interested in serving on their board?

Is it fair to charge shareholders the tax credit assessment when they are told that they do not qualify for the credit since they purchased from the sponsor? It just seems unfair to do so since the spirit of the assessment is that it's not supposed to be felt "out-of-pocket."

I am a shareholder in a coop where the management and the sponsor are frauding financials and violating the proprietary lease by invoking fines to shareholders; raising maintenance without discussing it with the shareholders; raising the sublet fees without having a sublet shareholder on the board of directors. Also, the sponsor added a $300,000 mortgage to the underlying mortgage without the shareholders knowing about it. I need somedoby to tell me what actions to take to stop the corruption.

Thank you.

We are not a full board yet, but only 3 resident board members, what are our duties?

I am struggling with the topic of the U.S. Government Debt ceiling and my co-op’s investments. We currently invest in two funds: a short term (“ST”) treasury fund and a money market (“MM”) fund (Vanguard’s VSGBX / VSGDX & VMMXX, respectively). The ST bond fund is 100% invested in short term U.S. government bonds and earns about 1%. The MM fund is about 60% invested in the same only with a short duration and earns about 0.6%.

If Congress and the President can not agree on raising the debt ceiling, the ST bonds & bills would be affected first. Since both our Vanguard funds are ST in nature, they and funds like them, would also be impacted. I can only believe that the impact would be, if it happened at all, brief in nature but would impact the liquidity of our co-op’s funds (delaying our ability to access the funds), even to perhaps the breaking the buck of the MM funds.

So I am wrestling with what to do. The safe bet is to hold all of our reserve funds as cash (regular bank account, not in MM funds). The other option is to leave them as they are (knowing the risk of liquidity impairment). We have monthly cash needs from the reserve funds for capital projects and the like.

My fiscal responsibility side is leaning towards holding everything as cash.

What are other co-op and condo boards considering?

The sponsor is refusing to answer the board's request to know if we have a rent to own policy implemented in our condo building