Co-op of the Day: 214 Carlton Avenue, #5

NO FREAKIN' WAY. I rented in this building for a year when I first moved to NYC. It must have been seriously cleaned up and renovated since I was there if the owner of this unit it attempting to get that kind of price.

BE VERY WARY OF THIS COOP. Check the coop papers and board minutes very carefully. And be wary of buying into a coop controlled by a couple that used to be married to each other (assuming similar ownership to the way things looked when I lived there, which may or may not be the case). You could be stuck between two potentially uncooperative parties with a small share and unable to get anything done.

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 12:58 PM

The lights used to go out in the hallway because the coop didn't pay the common electric bill. The electricity in our unit was turned off once because the building is wired all wrong and our bills were getting confused with some deadbeat upstairs. Took a couple of days to get it turned back on. My landlord (the owner of some of the units), ex-spouse was the owner of the others) was a perfectly pleasant person, but it was clear that the two owners were not particularly cooperative.

But I have a lot of happy memories from that building. I proposed to my wife in that apartment, over a bottle of Dom after a delicious homemade dinner, and whisked her off to Finland the next say (we'll always have Helsinki). Does anyone remember Liquors, the restaurant on DeKalb? I was there almost any weeknight that I didn't have to work late. And then there was the Alibi, that little dive bar a little further up the street on DeKalb. I didn't have a TV that year so when the attacks of September 11, 2001 happened I spend most of the next two weeks in the Alibi glued to their TV.

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 1:09 PM

DIBS, the parlor floor was my place. I remember those bars well.

When I moved in I was almost completely broke because I had just graduated from law school and had spent almost all of the money that was supposed to get me through the summer. But there were these enormous windows and nothing to cover them, so I went down to the super low end stores on Fulton Street with my then girlfriend (now wife) and got a whole bunch of curtains. Set me back almost 300 bucks, which basically maxed out my card. I ended up borrowing some money from my girlfriend to get me through a few days before work started. But then the first day of work was September 10, 2001. We were supposed to get these salary advances on the second day of work, but as you can imagine that never happened. So there I was, in this new city, after 9/11, broke, and glued to the TV set at the Alibi because I didn't have a TV. Good times.

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 1:14 PM

Maybe that Coo is required because, even though legally a coop, the owners don't live there and rent out all the units.

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 1:45 PM

It's definitely a coop, at least all evidence I saw as a resident points in that direction (mail would be delivered in the name of 212-214 Dekalb Corporation or something like that, and the common electric bill (the one that sometimes didn't get paid) was in that name. Also, the owner of my unit told me it's a coop, and I have no reason to think the owner would lie about something like that, or anything for that matter. But's of course none of that is to say that the conversion was done properly, or any of the relevant filings have been made or formalities have been followed, etc. -- which gets back to my original point that buyers should be very wary of this coop.

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 2:12 PM

mksk: Sounds familiar.

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 2:22 PM

This is the coop: http://appsext8.dos.state.ny.us/corp_public/CORPSEARCH.ENTITY_INFORMATION?p_nameid=935589&p_corpid=841473&p_entity_name=%32%31%32%2D%32%31%34&p_name_type=%41&p_search_type=%42%45%47%49%4E%53&p_srch_results_page=0

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 2:37 PM

Same link, but tiny: http://tinyurl.com/ko5ra7

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 2:38 PM

And if you search ACRIS for that corporate name you can see the transfer of the property from the couple to the coop. (I won't provide a link out of some sense of respect for their privacy but if you are handy with ACRIS it should be easy).

Posted by: lechacal at August 11, 2009 2:46 PM