Brookside Senior Citizens Cooperative Community, Inc.
What is a Resident Owned Community? How is it Different?
How does our resident owned community work?
In a resident owned community, homeowners form a not-for-profit business
called a cooperative. Each household is a shareholder of the cooperative, which
owns the land and manages the business that is the community. Shareholders
own their own homes individually and a share in the
corporation that owns the land beneath the entire neighborhood. In our
corporate structure we are described as a limited equity cooperative (LEC)
this is a home-ownership model in which residents purchase a share in a
development (rather than an individual unit). It is an arrangement that
maintains affordability at purchase and over the long term.
Shareholders have a say in the way Brookside is run, and major decisions
are made by democratic vote. Shareholders elect a board of directors,
which appoints committees to carry out various tasks and manage the
day-to-day operations of the organization. Any shareholder in good
standing can run for a position on the board of directors.
What does my common fee cover?
Part of the monthly fee covers your share of the principal and interest
for the master mortgage. It's typically insured by the Office of Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) on a 40-year note at a competitive interest
rate.
The rest of your monthly fee goes toward:
- Property taxes on the land
- Water and sewer service
- Trash and recycling removal
- Lawn care, landscaping, and snow removal
- Road maintenance
- Management services
- Access to shared spaces and amenities
- Fund reserve
What isn't covered by my common fee?
There are a few things you pay separately:
- Tax that you pay on your individual housing unit. This tax is
paid by Brookside in full when taxes are due and then gets billed
to you in smaller monthly payments.
- Utilities: electricity, cable TV, telephone etc. - These are
privately contracted between you and the service provider you
choose.
What happens if I want to move out?
Planning to move somewhere else? If you decide to sell, the co-op must
approve the new buyer and manage the closing. The cooperative
retains the first option to buy. You will be selling your mobile home at a
price that you determine including the value of the share, but you do not
include the land under your mobile home when assessing its value. The
share you purchased is just that, a share in the corporation that owns the
land beneath the entire neighborhood. Whether the cooperative or a new
resident buys, you receive your agreed upon price minus any fees from the
sale.
A mobile home sale in the state of New York is very simple. It is not
like a real property sale, it is more like an automobile sale and the
instrument of transfer is a bill of sale, and for newer homes a title, not
a deed. There is no tax on the transaction. Most sales are completed
without lawyers in attendance.
