Resident Shareholders, Unite!

I actually went to this meeting a couple of weeks ago and it was quite interesting. Many of the co-ops represented complained about their sponsor/management company failing to hold annual shareholder meetings, still holding control of the board, blatantly stealing from the co-op's coffers, failing to timely pay bills, refusing to sell apartments, failure to be responsive to serious maintenance problems, etc. It was ridiculous!

On the other hand, I live in a building (960 Sterling Place) that is still majority sponsor-owned and the management company and sponsor are affiliates, but we have had a very different experience than many of the co-ops that were in attendance at the meeting. We have annual shareholder meetings, resident shareholders control the board, and the management company sends the shareholders audited financial statements. Moreover, our sponsor is actually contributing money to the building for various improvements to the common areas (with no strings attached) and seems to be committed to selling units as they become available.

In fact, the value of the units in our building has consistently been going up since conversion. Without exception, the units are selling for more in this very tight real estate market than they were at the height of the market (the most recent sale being this past Friday), which bodes very well. So -- that is to say -- not all sponsor-controlled buildings are created alike.

If you do have concerns about your building, I would definitely reach out to the Flatbush Development Corporation, the entity that organized the "Resident Shareholders Unit" meeting. They were able to mobilize a large number of shareholders and co-ops and really seem like they are going to go to bat for this cause!

Yes, my building is a Maxx building. In fact, there were two other Maxx buildings at the meeting -- both I believe were in Flatbush and both had relatively good things to say about Maxx (relative to the horror stories we were hearing).

One of the co-ops has over 75% resident shareholders, they have annual meetings, the resident shareholders control the board and units in the building are selling for top dollar (e.g. two-bedrooms are selling for $500,000). The other Maxx building -- I do not recall their complaints, if any, but I remember generally thinking that Maxx did not seem so bad.

One thing I will say is that a building's experience with Maxx seems to depend on who the point persons are. When I first moved here a little over a year ago, we had a co-op manager and property manager who were do-nothings. The property manager in particular would say he was going to fix this or attend to that and absolutely nothing would happen. Then there was some internal restructuring at Maxx and now our new co-op and property managers now are awesome. Knowledgeable, responsive and on top of things.

Hope this gives you some comfort!