Suppose you’re an older couple planning on the peaceful retirement life in a maintenance-free neighborhood. You take your entire nest egg and pay off the mortgage. Your new townhome, condo or single family residence is now yours….forever.
Oopsie! You learn that a developer wants to tear the whole thing down and build something new. You don’t want to move from your retirement home, but the developer gets a ‘majority’ of the residents to take his low ball offer to clear out. Not you. You want him to pay you fair market value. But because a ‘majority’ of your neighbors have moved out, what’s your fair market value now? It’s a heck-of-a-low lower than the others were paid. In fact, your quarter million dollar retirement home is worth ten cents on the dollar. Now the developer can get you tossed out by the courts and pay you nothing.
Think it can’t happen?
(yes, it can happen…it happens all over)
So the “overwhelming majority” of owners are interested in selling. But what about the significant minority?
And I wonder about the majority that want to sell. How long have they owned condos? Do they own more than one condo and rent them out to tenants?
A majority in an Association refers to the voting interests, not to actual people. A few people can hold an “overwhelming majority” of the voting interests!