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We are a 10-unit coop and one of our longtime shareholders wishes to buy a second apartment and create a duplex for his growing family. We are concerned about the lending guideline that states that no more than 10% of shares are to be held by "one entity." In this case, the husband will own one unit and the wife the other. Will this be a problem for banks lending to owners/prospective owners in the future? (This shareholder will be buying for cash and will not need financing.) I have been told that the 10% guideline mostly is aimed at instances of investors snapping up a lot of apartments--that sort of thing. Not a resident shareholder owning more than one living space. Advice is urgently needed on this since if we do not approve this plan, the shareholder needs to move to a larger apartment before baby #3 arrives.

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whats involved with coop to condo conversion ? we have a small mortgage. definitely under 20% LTV.

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The building that's now the http://streeteasy.com/nyc/building/m-at-beekman condo used to be a co-op.

The shareholders decided to sell out to a developer. To do that, they did this:

-- They formed a condo in 2004, with the co-op as Declarant. (Block 1343, lots 1201-1234.)
-- The co-op deeded each apartment to its occupant.

That was simple, since the co-op had no mortgage and the shareholders had no share loans. Then,

-- Each occupant sold her apartment to the developer. (Those the sales you see for $327,250 each.)

Once the developer owned every unit, he dissolved the condo, formed a new one (lots 1401-1434) and proceeded to rebuild the building.

I don't know why the co-op didn't just sell the whole thing to the developer, skipping the condo stage, and then divvy up the proceeds among its shareholders. Maybe some tax issues.

Oops, the new condo is lots 1401-1423.

What % of the shares would the seller own?

I'm in a building of seven units with shares of 18%, 17%, 17%, 16%, 13%, 9.5%, and 9.5%. We have never had problems with anyone getting share loans or with qualifying for an underlying mortgage.

That said, I think we would probably reject any combination that left one shareholder with more than 33% of the shares, as it then gives that one shareholder veto power over everything requiring a shareholder vote.

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Looked at a coop building in Brooklyn - a single sponsor owns 67 of 205 shares (32.7%) - 18 of 59 apartments. Was very uneasy about this and walked away from a deal. Was I over anxious?

lad: the combination unit would own 20% of the shares...actually one unit will be owned by the wife and one by the husband separately, so each of them would have 10%....converting to condo would not make any difference because the 10% thing also applies to condos...

I dont know why anyone suggested changing the co-op to a condo....thats dumb and just makes the lawyers money.

Firstly having gone through this recently here is some actual real world feedback......

In 2008 we purchased 2 units in an 8 units brownstone, the bank gave us a form that said please list anyone in the building who owns more than 10%..... I replied this is dumb....everyone owns more than 10% (eg 12.5%) and our purchase is going to take us to 25% (eg 2 units of the 8), the bank said oh yeh....lets ignore that part...and they moved on.

its irrelevant how much the co-op owns in the underlying mortgage or what the LTV ratio is, just get your bank to waive it and no one will care.

ljr, seems low risk for # of shares.

I would recommend talking to an attorney about allowing two separate people to each own half of a combined unit. Seems like there could be some potential risk to the co-op. Not as much risk as if there were debt on the unit, but still.

You will be able to get competitive rates from portfolio lenders as this 10% rule does not apply to them.There are a number of buildings in the city that fail to meet the new banking requirements, Park West Village is one. Another thing to discuss with a mortgage broker/banker would be whether an owner/occupant owning more than 10% of the shares is treated the same as a non-occupant investor (such as the former sponsor which is usually the case in these scenarios).

Keith Burkhardt
TBG

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