One-time reduction in # of shares

Hello, I noticed that nyc10023 recently posted a comment related to a high maintenance apartment and it triggered a question. I own a classic six in a pre-war building, converted to co-op in 1980s. Way back when, my apartment (and I believe a few others that retained their original floor plans and detailing) was given a disproportionately large number of shares per square foot in comparison to the... [more]

Hello, I noticed that nyc10023 recently posted a comment related to a high maintenance apartment and it triggered a question. I own a classic six in a pre-war building, converted to co-op in 1980s. Way back when, my apartment (and I believe a few others that retained their original floor plans and detailing) was given a disproportionately large number of shares per square foot in comparison to the apartments that were broken up into smaller units during hard times. As a result, these original apartments have a higher maintenance per square foot than other same-sized apartments that were broken up but have since been recombined. The maintenance isn't off-the-charts crazy, but it's definitely on the high side -- about $2.15 sq/foot -- whereas other apartments in the building are significantly lower per square foot. I assumed that there was nothing to be done about this, that we got an attractive price when we purchased and that similarly if we ever sold (which we don't plan to do), we would sell at some discount reflective of the maintenance. There is nothing wrong with the finances of the building, no land-lease or other problems, it's simply this rather odd distribution of shares. Not unhappy -- this was a good choice for us, love the apartment, building, etc., and were fully aware of this issue when signing on. But NYC10023's comment made me think: Are other people aware of a co-op granting a request by the owner of one apartment (or a small number of apartments) to reduce their shares in exchange for an one-time payment? How would this work? How would one calculate an appropriate price? Since I must assume that no non-affected shareholders would be willing to correspondingly increase their shares, would that mean that the total number of shares of the corporation would be reduced? Are there any legal issues? Thanks! [less]