Thank you all for your responses!!! I do appreciate it.. We have tried a few times but we were told that there is no law that obligates them to release the minutes to third parties. They gladly offered us their financial statements. Since this is a co-op I am more concern of any future maintenance increase. However, we sent a long questionnaire including questions related to the boards? minutes. I know for a fact that maintenance fee has not been change since last 2 years (I know I can get ?lucky? this year right?) and there are no plans to renovate windows/roofs of anything like that.. They already did it 3 yr ago.
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I was just a little skeptical as I read on the net that if you don?t get the minutes, it is because some fishy is going on, and honestly they only thing fishy that I like is my tank.. nothing else..lol.. but it seems that some co-ops will release their minutes and others won?t.
No, there isn't anything "fishy" going on. I can tell you that my board does not release the minutes to anyone outside of the board. Think about it, they have to deal with things like employee salaries, people not paying their maintenance fees, issues with coop members, etc. This is not public information and really shouldn't even be shared amongst members.
Maintenance increases and assessments are part of the coop process. If you are trying to sell your apartment, you'd rather that the roof gets fixed and the interiors of the building have recently been renovated. Something happens almost every year. What you want to know is this:
In the past 5 years, how many maintenance increases have there been?
In the past 5 years, how many special assessments have been made?
When was the last time they had to completely redo the interior, exterior brick pointing, roof, boiler.
Check the last few years of financials and see how well their books add up. Do they have extra money at the end of the year that they use for improvements? Do they take additional loans, credit lines, or major refinancing of the overall mortgage? Also, if the building has a super and/or other employees, find out how long they have been working there, do they have a union, do they get retirement/pension?
