[HN Gopher] Their Retirement Plan Did Not Include Being Forced t...
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Their Retirement Plan Did Not Include Being Forced to Sell Their
Condo
Author : mikhael
Score : 23 points
Date : 2023-02-25 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Despite the inkling that the investor might want him out, Mr.
| Fellman, 57, was confident that things would be fine, since he
| legally owned the property, and the condo declaration required
| that 100 percent of owners would need to be on board for the
| condominium to be terminated.
|
| > But the Scully Company didn't stop there. Since it owned all
| the other units, it was able to take over majority control of the
| condo board, and it voted to lower the threshold of owners
| required to terminate down to 80 percent. Then, in February 2021,
| the Scully Company voted to terminate the condominium, which
| meant the Fellmans would be legally obligated to sell their unit
| to the company.
|
| That must be so stressful to deal with. Is that legal to lower
| the threshold like that?
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| If the state condo laws say it is, then yes. This is in
| Florida, not exactly known for such a great body of condo law.
| But even in places like New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, etc -
| with a long, long history of condominiums, this is going to be
| allowed.
|
| All the condo units but one were owned by the company. That's a
| huge red flag, to the point that you'd never be able to get a
| federally-insured loan to buy in this building. Generally
| anything less than 50% owner-occupied can't be financed - you'd
| have to pay cash, your real estate attorney will tell you to
| run away, etc.
| [deleted]
| swalling wrote:
| Condos are yet another example of how being poor in America is
| expensive.
|
| While condos are attractive for people who can't afford regular
| homes, mortgages are harder to get for them. Even if you have a
| perfect credit score and 20% down, there is a whole category of
| condo called "nonwarrantable", which makes them ineligible with
| any lender who sells direct to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One of
| the laundry list of stipulations is that no single person or
| entity owns more than 10% of all condo units in the building or
| development.
|
| Condo buyers are living with risks like the article describes,
| and they're paying more for it to the bank for the privilege.
| It's a cruel joke that the people who can't afford single family
| home mortgages are given fewer protections and subject to a
| litany of HOA payments, special assessments, fees, and fines that
| can result in the condo being foreclosed on even if you own it
| free and clear.
|
| There is a great novel "Condominium" by John D. MacDonald that
| lays bare the skeezy nature of condo developments. It's from
| 1977, and here we are 40-50 years later, still letting people get
| conned and maybe even die
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse)
| thanks to the numerous messed up incentives in condo development.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to their plight, and wish them to get a good
| payout, but this is the basic contract of a Condo - You don't own
| the building, you own a slice of it, and if everyone else wants
| out you're gonna have to agree. They never owned their home. They
| owned a share in a compact that owned their home.
|
| Where to draw the line between the rights of the majority to
| implement rules and the rights of the minority to refuse them is
| one of the central problems of civics, and there's no one right
| answer.
| pram wrote:
| Sometimes it's even worse than that. I had a condo and then I
| discovered all the units were on land that was just a 99 year
| leasehold. The whole thing had an expiry date no matter what
| lol
| grugagag wrote:
| I think it should be illegal to not disclose that info when
| you buy. But I guess it worked out for you when you passed
| the buck and sold it to somebody else...
| kwere wrote:
| In Europe you own a property inside a building and the condo is
| represented only by its own hoa that manages common spaces and
| handle simpler stuffs, nobody can force on you something more
| serious than cutting noises at 10 pm
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The thing is, efficient use of population and better housing
| supply relies on one thing: building vertically, and the
| "condo" building is a core entity for doing so.
|
| Hammering out good and fair law to underpin this is important
| for many environmental and sustainable reasons.
|
| The bylaws may technically allow this, but should it legally
| stand given basic rights?
|
| The key thing here is to draaaaaggggg this out. Their desired
| state: stay in the condo. If they can drag it out a decade or
| so, it'll cost the investment people money as well. Time is on
| their side, if they can get it.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Here, owning the condo flat means being first-class property
| owner, registered in public real estate cadastre, like any
| other real estate, while a homeowner association manages
| common/external parts of the building, it does not own them,
| and has limited authority to tasks strictly defined by law. It
| seems strange to me that condo ownership in US is so much
| weaker.
|
| > They never owned their home. They owned a share in a compact
| that owned their home
|
| That is pretty much housing cooperatives works here, while
| condos provides much higher legal certainty by registering
| members as individual flat owners.
| powera wrote:
| More "entitlement culture" being glamourized by the New York
| Times.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://archive.is/HH9iI
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(page generated 2023-02-25 23:02 UTC)