Any way to change your monthly coop fees?

Not a problem, whatever you need, just let us know.

newmove1, you might not quite get what a co-op or condo is. You own x% of the shares or the building, so you pay x% of the monthly expense.

To reduce your share of the maintenance, the co-op would have to reallocate the shares among all the shareholders. That is, for you to pay less, others would have to agree to pay more. That is not going to happen.

NWT, now that you are grey, you don't need to have such a "can't do" attitude. Think positive. You have more freedom when you are an outcast.

Baby steps in adjusting to grey status. It's quite a wrench.

You are viewing it the wrong way.

Take w67thstreet and inoitall: grey vs non-grey. Both have the same point of view in pretty much all materials respects.
w67, offensive, colorful, interesting, thoughtful, someone you find amusing or you hate, someone driven by real life experiences and personal pain.
inoitall, boring, nothing new to say, half of his personality is genuflecting towards w67thstreet anyway, bought Apple at a higher price than w67thstreet, never bought Sprint, not as smart as somewhereelse, personality is mainly driven by the fact that wears an old t-shirt at home and that his guests don't have to tip his doorman.

You probably live on a much higher floor than these luckier neighbors of yours. Many buildings change share allocations by height also.

Care to the link to where NWT drove off the reservation?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3OgoirimuIQJ:https://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/33956-you-can-now-go-to-jail-for-defying-board%3Fpage%3D2+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

I've been following the various legal battles of She Whose Name Cannot Be Mentioned, and posted links to those cases' public court records. SWNCBM is suing StreetEasy. Those posts and whole threads have been removed, and I've been greyed.

NWT is now greyed? OY! 2014 does not bode well. Of course since Zillow has gutted StreetEasy . . .

Newmove, although the comments above are generally correct, they are not necessarily taking your individual circumstances into account. Are there instances where co-op share reallocation can occur? Although rare, yes. Generally the factors one is looking for is gross misallocation, unjustness or some type of sponsor fraud. Why don't you lay the facts on the table so we can at least give you an informed lay opinion.

ANagin- it's not sponsor fraud. It's a prewar co-op, and the unit is a one bedroom, fairly high floor. Other units in the building including 2 bedrooms and even some 3 bedroom units which are significantly larger in size, have monthly fees which are either lower or comparable to our 1 bedroom unit. Just seems that the monthly fees are not justifiable based upon size and which floor the unit is on. I realize we should have noted this discrepancy prior to purchasing the unit.

Can anyone give me a hint as to what I should google to find these law suits? This is the first I heard of this .. Interesting

NWT: You've been greyed for posting links to SWNC(N)BM's legal(which is public information).
So what? Do you lose sleep over your being "greyed" and do you wake up concerned each morning in the real world?

I have a private investigator and attorney who have a file of streeteasy discussion threads.
Discussions and comments in which I was trolled, defamed and threatened by the AR bully team; deleted by streeteasy because ar bragged about her ability to freely use her attorney husband's office Lex Nex to research any person who she did not like (and how she and her husband sit around and "laugh" at what she found there.)
They were printed-out before streeteasy deleted them.

You have not trolled, threatened nor defamed any comment poster on streeteasy, neither did I.
So just have a happy New Year and continue posting (as you have) your comments.

How does one find this public information ....? I missed this development somehow

reallynow: if your spouse is a lawyer who just wants to keep you busy and out of his/her hair;
they could let you do research on their legal firm's office Lex Nex.
If your spouse's law firm finds out that your spouse has allowed you to use the office's Lex Nex to
entertain yourself and then post false information, defamatory comments and threats against the person he/she was researching on the firm's Lex Nex:
your spouse will then have in-house problems at the law firm.

Um, where is the publicly available information ; what is the name of at least one party to the litigation

The name and address of at least one party to the litigation is needed for the "research".
A public internet forum which allows such a commenter to post with malice is also part and party.

If A is suing B, and there are public documents involved, merely referring to how to see those public docs or giving the name if A or B is not actionable behavior .

reallynow: ?

Nwt, Happy new year! What a loss for the board and streeteasy by greying you?

NWT, it's been a while since I've posted (mainly because of changes due to the Zillow takeover), but you being grayed out is one of the most egregious (not to mention cowardly) moves I've seen on this website. Aside from the obvious agenda we're seeing here, it seems as if this is becoming more and more common. I wouldn't be surprised if, after a while, ALL of the outspoken contributors are grayed out. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see the whole database wiped, and a new "Zillow-fied" message board is started fresh.

Still, with all of the outspoken, "in-the-know" members grayed (not talking about the trolls and noise-makers... you know who you are!;) potentially in the future, could this mean that being gray marks you as in the camp of "old and wise" instead of the intended "annoying and not worth seeing" camp? Hmmm...

I cannot for the life of me understand why *I* am greyed out!

It's possible to "ungrey" NWT by clicking on the left under his/handle "stop ignoring this person."

To get back to the OP's question, it's conceivable that the sponsor, at time of conversion, decided to sell a bunch of high-floor one-bedrooms and to keep a bunch of lower-floor two-bedrooms, and so set up share allocation to hit the higher floors with larger share allocations (and therefore higher maintenance costs).

However, presumably the buyer knew what he/she was getting into when he/she bought (I'm an agent, not an attorney, but boilerplate contracts for the sale of co-ops include spaces for both shares and maintenance charges) so it's tough to imagine a co-op board being sympathetic to the "hey, my costs seem unfair to me" point.

Happy New Year, all.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Why don't you look at the original prospectus and check whether your apartment's relative maintenance? That would check out front_porch's theory about the conversion. Maintenance increases after that have to be documented each year, including any proportional changes.

so help me understand this - you bought your apt for $X - The reason it was $X and not let say $2x is that the common charges are high . . . now after you bought it you want to have your common charges reduced -
have you been drinking?

Rent_or_Buy. They are disproportionately high compared to other apartments. Which word exactly do you have trouble understanding?

First, make sure the managing agent hasn't made a mistake in calculating your maintenance. The bills are being cranked out from a spreadsheet or database, and your apartment's number of shares could've been keyed in wrong when the managing agent took over from the previous one. That's unlikely, as the total sharecount would be off, too, but doesn't hurt to check.

Then double-check the numbers. Get the per-share-per-annum dollar amount from the managing agent or from your latest maintenance-increase letter from the board, do the multiplication and division, and check against your monthly statement.

If the calculations are OK, then analyze the list of apartments and their sharecounts. You'll see the pattern used by the co-op's sponsor. If your apartment doesn't fall in the pattern for its line, e.g. if it's on the ground floor or on a high floor where setbacks change the size of the line, you'll see it, and can figure out what it was that made the sponsor allocate more shares to your apartment or your line.

Keep in mind that the allocation was done at the time of conversion, and there might've been factors back then that don't apply now. E.g., if you're a mid-rise building that was surrounded by low-rise buildings back then, there might be a jump in shares for floors that had a more open exposure. Or you could have two lines the same size, etc., but one is south-facing and the other north-facing.

and after all that, you'll still be paying the same amount.

NWT, thanks for the helpful comments. I'll report back when I check out everything you suggested.

>and after all that, you'll still be paying the same amount.

Agree.

GB: are you trying to be helpful? Like the new handle.

More aliases? Predictable.

Newmove, again I ask you to lay the facts on the table. Point blank, how much per month do you pay in maintenance. How much does a comparable unit pay. If it is 2X or 3X as much you might have something. It is quite common for higher floor units to pay more proportionally in maintenance even thought the units are in the same line in the building, X1.5 and I am doubtful you can do anything. Maybe 40 years ago the difference was $ 25 p/mo versus $ 45 p/mo so it seemed reasonable at that time, but now it is $1,500 versus $ 2,850! NWT & Jelj's comments were also on point that you should check the offering plan to make sure your share allocation and the way the managing agent is applying it wasn't botched. As a shareholder you have a right to check the calculations and to see the offering plan and most buildings are cooperative in presenting same, the managing agent may charge a service fee to produce the documents, many are also posted on the AG's website and TitleVest's database.

Sonya_D, happy anniversary!

is there some lawsuit involving participant (s) in this forum...and if so can someone provide a link????...just wondering (is that why ar is not on here...or at least didn't notice her in last couple times I looked)?

Is your unit a combination or recombination by any chance? If, for example, two smaller units were combined after conversion to create one larger apartment then the maintenance fees would likely be higher than those of a similar-sized unit that had never been combined.

This is also often seen in prewar co-ops where original classic 8s and the like were chopped up at conversion, allotted appropriate shares, then recombined by subsequent shareholders interested in restoring the original floor plan by purchasing surrounding apartments. The maintenance for combos/recombos like these would actually wind up being higher than if the original apartment had never been split up.