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Updating Prop. Lease and Other Governing Documents?Dec 01, 2015

I'm in a large (+ 300 units) co-op. The building went co-op in the early 1990s, but the Prop. Lease, By-Laws and other documents look like they were drafted in the 1890s. Not only are they confusing and poorly organized, but they (possibly) fail to reflect current law and in many ways hand-cuff the Board's ability to manage the Building effectively.

I've read a bunch of articles about updating a co-op's governing documents. I'm curious what experiences people have had with this? Are shareholders (who will have to approve the changes) generally cooperative? Have people experienced a backlash -- i.e., the Board wants to move the documents in one direction, but the shareholders (or a sub-set) take the opportunity to move them in another direction? Is it a matter of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

Join the Conversation Comments (1)
it's a challenge - co-op_owner Dec 09, 2015

i feel your pain. it took us 3 tries to update our proprietary lease to allow for Fedex or UPS to be acceptable shipping method (rather than certified mail).

issue is not always the people who are against it - issue may be those who don't bother to vote. any updates require a supermajority of the total number of shares (check your lease to see if you are 66 or 75%). so if you have 100,000 shares total and 55,000 vote for, 10,000 vote against and 40,000 don't vote, you lose.

in our case, the first time around we had 55% yes votes, 1% no votes and 44% who didn't vote. so frustrating.

my suggestion would be to have a live meeting to discuss the issues at hand and from there determine if it's worthwhile to move forward.

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