Alteration of Limited Common Element

Typically, outdoor space is valued differently (lower) than indoor space when it comes to assigning shares/percentage ownership.

It seems expected that your common charges would go up, and that some form of payment would need to be made to the condo for selling you the right to have additional indoor space.

$100k does seem steep to me. I would expect $100 to $500 per square foot. Could you and/or the condo hire an appraiser to value the space? Vanderbilt, Mitchell Maxwell & Jackson, and Miller Samuel are the big three.

I am surprised a condo would try to pull this as opposed to a coop. The cost of unimproved buildable square feet is nothing like the value of NYC real estate square footage. And, this is not even buildable, as it has no value to the condo. So this is worth materially less that vacant land. This is a stick-up. When I combined two apartments into one and took over the hallway that once served the two units, I received a perpetual, royalty-free lease to the space, subject to a full indemnity, release of Condo's obligation to maintain the space, etc. The latter would be a very significant concession in your situation because maintaining a balcony can be expensive, and impractical for a single unit owner.

An eearlier interpretation from DOB did not consider balcony enclosures to take away from FAR (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/downloads/pdf/bb2.pdf), but to the extent you're taking over *any* general common element the condo could choose to charge you. You could offer to release the Condo from their obligation to maintain the wall you're taking over (with the risk that you're on the hook for big $$ if there's a hidden structural problem). Or maybe the condo just wants to charge a big fee for enclosing a balcony and making the building ugly. (In my opinion most enclosures look terrible. Even the higher end ones (I'll hold up balconies at Imperial House as an example) still look cheap.

What do the by-laws of your condo say? That will answer your first question.

I'm going to speculate here: You by-laws are silent on the subject of enclosing balconies, unfortunately, but they do say the board can assess fees for modifications of common elements.

The board is hitting you with the highest fee they think they can get away with if sued because, as Aaron points out, all such enclosures look like hell. They don't want you to do this.

Also, I seem to recall seeing a report somewhere that the City is going after existing enclosed balconies (conditioned spaces) because so many were built without approval. I would not assume that the City will approve your plans. Have you spoken to an architect yet? I actually would start there.

Thank you for all the replies. How can we calculate a fair value for such air/development rights?