Price floors for NY coops: how to get around them?

[bigjake54]

Originally Posted by Kefir King

Preserving artificial price supports so that your apartment LOOKS like it is worth more than market price is NEVER done "in good faith."

I'm not saying that it's honorable, but it's no doubt an effort to preserve value in tough times. All prices are artificial, to some degree. This isn't the stock market, where prices have to rise or fall daily, until someone buys.

Originally Posted by Kefir King

Preventing someone who needs DESPERATELY to sell from selling does not represent "good faith" but rather good old fashioned bad faith greed.

I don't know how DESPERATE these people actually are. Perhaps the article is slanted. It does mention that sub-leasing is easily approved. Why must the Board permit panic sales in a down market? Must these people cash out now? Someone bought these units, under the existing resale conditions. I know people, who are having problems selling in age-restricted communities, due to a lack of older people with ready cash. Should that restriction be modified or dropped, because some are DESPERATE to sell?

Originally Posted by Kefir King

Good faith would be "I don't want to sell at that price." BAD FAITH is "I won't let YOU sell at that price."

NYC is crazy anyway, as far as real estate is concerned. This is just another aspect of it.

Originally Posted by Kefir King

All these maneuvers do is to make sure the market is not allowed to operate, to keep Supply and Demand from getting houses sold at the market price.

A free market is in short supply in NYC anyway, especially where apts., condos, & co-ops are concerned. Rent control, rent stabilzation, Mitchell-Lama, NYCHA, Board approval, tax-avoidance gimmicks, etc.

Originally Posted by Kefir King

I wonder if these provisions have been tested in Court?

The article states that the policy is legal. That suggests judicial review & approval, despite the lawyer in the article trolling for clients. I return to my previous comment: Setting the floor at actual sales prices, even peak ones, shows good faith, from a legal standpoint, even if you disapprove.

[Kefir King]

Your arguments are specious, more excuses than arguments. I maintain the co-op is acting in BAD FAITH but then our disagreement might stem from our having two different versions of the phrase.

To my mind, operating solely to maintain monetary advantage is NOT a sign of "good faith," but rather, usually just the opposite. Changing the commonest interpretation of a buy-sell relationship so that some others can preserve an illusion of greater wealth is amost on it's face, a sign of bad faith.

Selling a co-op is in actuality selling the shares you hold in a corporation. Suppose GE decreed that it's stock, currently at 19.75, could not be sold for less than 25? How laugable would that be? Yet how close to the preposterous co-op floor price concept is it?

I would have no problem if the co-ops said "You can sell at whatever you wish but we retain the option of first-refusal at any offered price." Then if the co-op actually BELIEVED the apartments were worth MORE than the low offers they could make a killing. That would be called "putting their money where their mouth is."


You called the co-op's requirements "in good faith." I am curious what is the evidence of "good faith?" They want to prop up their apartment prices higher than the market will allow by penalizing a particular resident or group of residents? Does this seem like "good faith" to you or anyone? Besides this, are there any demonstrations of good faith? How would a co-op demonstrate "bad faith?"

I'm curious even how this would WORK? Would someone on the board annually decree a price for which every apartment may be sold, a price that would leave most owners smiling when they went to bed every night? Or is it some proviso that nobody may sell at less than they PAID?
Or is the price set on a decade-wide basis? How bizarrely goofy?

You proposed that these shenanigans allowed a higher than real evaluation when residents approach a bank for a refinancing. This is generally called BANK FRAUD, an illegal high appraisal of the kind that brought down the financial system? Refinancing is SUPPOSED be done on real value. Seeking to HIDE the real value seem like the WORST kind of bad faith...criminal bad faith at that.

I do NOT see this standing up in court and I doubt that it will last very long, even GIVEN that the City and the Courts try to give as much sway to goofy co-op regualtions as possible within the realm of sanity because they are not PUBLIC corporations. But when the begin to look like they are defrauding BANKS then they come up against FAR more powerful interests.

[bigjake54]

Originally Posted by Kefir King

operating solely to maintain monetary advantage is NOT a sign of "good faith,"

In what popcorn box did you find your law license?
"Acting in good faith" means that the action taken is based on some legitimate reasoning, in this case the value of the remaining apartments. No one has to meet your personal definition of good faith.

Originally Posted by Kefir King

Selling a co-op is in actuality selling the shares you hold in a corporation. Suppose GE decreed that it's stock, currently at 19.75, could not be sold for less than 25?

That's 'its', by the way.
Did you find your stockbroker's license in the same popcorn box?
GE is listed on the NYSE, which requires that a certain amount of shares be sold daily. A co-op is completely different.

Originally Posted by Kefir King

You called the co-op's requirements "in good faith." I am curious what is the evidence of "good faith?" They want to prop up their apartment prices higher than the market will allow by penalizing a particular resident or group of residents? Does this seem like "good faith" to you or anyone? Besides this, are there any demonstrations of good faith? How would a co-op demonstrate "bad faith?"

Again, you fail to understand the use of the phrase. The Board is legally permitted to set a floor. The owners knew this, when they bought in. They have no right to demand a change in the rules.

Originally Posted by Kefir King

I'm curious even how this would WORK?

The price is based on prior sales.

Originally Posted by Kefir King

You proposed that these shenanigans allowed a higher than real evaluation when residents approach a bank for a refinancing. This is generally called BANK FRAUD, an illegal high appraisal of the kind that brought down the financial system? Refinancing is SUPPOSED be done on real value. Seeking to HIDE the real value seem like the WORST kind of bad faith...criminal bad faith at that.

You've already demonstrated your lack of knowledge of the law and the stock market. Why expand to banking?

Originally Posted by Kefir King

I do NOT see this standing up in court and I doubt that it will last very long

The article itself stated that the practice is legal. So, it has stood up in court.

[mathjak107]

price floors are certainly legal and have been for years but as the article points ,anyone can ask as high a price as they like however two things have to happen to sell:

you need a buyer at the inflated price which isnt happening .

you need a bank appraisel and they wont lend the buyer money at an inflated price.

there is no bank fraud, the banks just wont lend.

as you read the folks at windsor oak are being held hostage because they have no takers at those inflated prices.

private stock not publicly traded on an exchange has no comparison to rules and regulations governing public companies. i have a un-traded reit which has price levels set by the reit management and their own set of rules. i can tell you this , the value of the reit will be very different and lower than the statement value we get when it comes time for the reit to break up and sell at the end of the 7 year holding period.

but non the less non traded stock holdings not on a public exchange are free to march to their own set of valuations.

they just claim no one knows the actual value until its sold so they make the prices look as good as they can but once they interface with the real world down the road when they try to sell it doesnt matter what they put on our statements, the markets determine the selling price.

[Kefir King]

"Acting in good faith" means that the action taken is based on some legitimate reasoning, in this case the value of the remaining apartments. No one has to meet your personal definition of good faith.

If achieving monetary advantage in your little popcorn box world is the only requirement for "good faith," then an armed robbery is a good faith effort. How dimwitted.
Not only are you RUDE, you are preposterous.
Stick to then pre-teen boards where there are no such things as manners and no need for logical thought.