There Are Limits to a Co-op Board's Power Over Parking Spaces

Q: A shareholder in a Bronx co-op has lived in the building for 19 years and was awarded a coveted parking space 10 years ago. The co-op's new management company recently distributed an 18-page lease agreement stating that the co-op can revoke a parking spot for any reason or no reason. Is this legal?

A: Don’t sign that lease agreement yet, advises the Ask Real Estate column in The New York Times. First, check the building’s existing governing documents to learn what your rights are when it comes to parking spaces.

Read over the co-op’s proprietary lease, offering plan and bylaws, as well as any parking agreements that preceded this new agreement. Do they outline the process for obtaining a garage space, or retaining one? You have rights under those documents, and the co-op must negotiate with you to change the terms. It can’t just change them midway through the contract.

It’s possible, however, that the documents do not outline parking rights. “It’s not uncommon for a co-op to say, 'That's a license, not a lease, and we can terminate it at will,'" says Catharine Grad, a partner at the law firm Himmelstein McConnell Gribben & Joseph.

If the existing agreement is actually a license, your building’s management might have the right to replace it, says Adam Leitman Bailey, head of his eponymous law firm. But, this right would apply only if the co-op board has approved this action in a resolution, and only if the bylaws allow the board to approve it without a vote of the shareholders. (On a related note, there are laws requiring managers of multifamily housing to make these spaces available to people with physical disabilities.)

Read the new agreement to see if the management company has acted outside the bounds of its authority, or if the co-op board has improperly ceded any of its authority to the management company.

“If so," Bailey says, "there may be grounds to challenge management’s right to act without proper authority from the co-op shareholders as a whole.”