Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Right of First Refusal

[Patricia Lautner (lautnerp]

We rely heavily on our Right of First Refusal clause in our docs to govern
resales. I couldn’t imagine how we’d manage without! We’ve dealt with 2
families-after-death and both yielded fairly stressfree transfers of units
to people off our contact list.

Patti
Jamaica Plain Cohousing, Boston MA

On Sat, Dec 9, 2023 at 6:50 PM Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> > On Dec 8, 2023, at 10:41 PM, Sunny Sabbini <oneshinysun [at] sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > Here at FrogSong, some community members are interested in the potential
> benefits of adding a Right of First Refusal to our CC&Rs.
>
> We have had a right of first refusal since 1999 and never had to use it.
> It has been used as a reason why a seller needs to work with the community
> when selling a unit.
>
> There were two cases in which it might have been invoked but explaining it
> led to not having to use it. In one case an owner died and left her unit to
> family members who did not live here. There was a fairly tense process of
> explaining to them that they couldn’t just use it as a pied-a-terre in the
> city for friends and family. They were also unreasonable about their
> expectations of a sales price which complicated things in other ways. But
> eventually, they understood that this was not like selling or owning
> another condo and all was well.
>
> In another instance, owners had been renting their unit for three years
> and planned to sell it to the renters. Unfortunately, the renters had been
> uninvolved in the community. In this instance, three members were ready to
> purchase the unit in the name of the community if necessary so the renters
> wouldn’t become permanent residents. But when this was explained to the
> owner, they agreed not to sell to those renters.
>
> So push has never come to shove and the existence of the Right may have
> been important in negotiations.
>
> Personally, I don’t like to have bylaws that are not enforced or are
> enforceable or may or may not be enforced. The way the sales process
> communications are now held between the owners, purchasers, resale team,
> and the board, the rest of the community may not even know a unit is up for
> sale until it is a done deal. This has rarely happened but it happens in a
> way that we couldn’t enforce the Right unless you were a  part of that
> process. I prefer a governance system that includes full information for
> all owners, not just those on the board or a certain team.
>
> But in fact, what we do has worked so far.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
>
>
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