How Many Votes Does a Co-op Need to Convert to a Condo?

Where does your own number come from?

Two sets of documents decide it together. Your bylaws and your proprietary lease say what share of the ownership has to approve a conversion plan and how that approval is taken; your state's statutes say what the corporation itself must satisfy to dissolve. Neither one governs alone, and neither one is the same in every state, which is why a figure that was correct for a building you know may be wrong for yours. Reading both is work your own counsel can do now, and it is the first thing we settle when we look at a building.

What are your shareholders actually being asked to approve?

Not a sale, and not a move. Your shareholders approve the dissolution of the cooperative corporation through a plan under which each of them receives their pro-rata share of the co-op's assets, and their share is their own unit, now held by deed. That is the whole of the question on the ballot. Your board keeps the authority to execute and approve every final document and plan after the shares are counted.

Does a shareholder who stays home count as a no?

Yes. An abstention counts against the plan under the two-thirds share-weighted standard, which is the part boards most often get wrong when they count heads in advance. A shareholder who is quietly in favor and does not return a ballot has voted no. Most of the work before a vote is spent turning quiet approval into a ballot in the box.

Can your board approve this on its own?

No. Your board's job is to review the options and put the question to the owners; the shareholders decide whether they wish to convert. Board members are usually resident shareholders themselves, with the same interest in the answer as the people they represent, and they vote as shareholders when the time comes.

What makes a vote like this carry?

Every conversion we have conducted after that approval has been completed. The reason sits in the months before the ballot. We meet your shareholders in large and small groups near the property or on the premises, we sit down one-on-one with anyone who asks, and each household is given its own report showing what the conversion does to that unit's value and to its monthly cash flow. A shareholder holding their own numbers votes differently from one holding a rumor.

What if the shares are not there the first time?

We try again. Where the required shares are not reached, we come back, and a co-op that never approves the plan is never billed for the attempts. A first vote that falls short is information about which shareholders were never reached, and that is a fixable problem.

What can your board know before it calls a meeting?

Your threshold, your share weighting and the mechanics your documents require for calling and counting the vote can all be established now, months before anyone is asked for a ballot. A board that walks into its own meeting knowing the number it has to reach, and roughly where its shareholders stand against it, is not gambling on the outcome.

Having us read your governing documents for the approval a conversion here would require costs your co-op nothing and commits it to nothing. When it is finished, the number on this page stops being a general answer and becomes yours.