Real Estate Transactions Attorney in Chicago, Illinois

If my condominium is going through a Section 15 deconversion, do I have to cooperate if I don’t want to sell?

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well um you don’t have to cooperate but

the law requires that you do cooperate

so yes

if 75 of the unit owners in

a building that a given individual lives

in

approve a section 15 sale and there are

holdouts that don’t want to sale i don’t

want to sell and don’t understand how

could i possibly be required

involuntarily to sell my property the

answer is you have no choice

and there’s pretty

good supreme court case law

in illinois that really emanated out of

florida

which was the pioneer of condominiums

that basically says

when you purchase a condominium unit

in a condominium building

you buy it with the knowledge that there

is a condominium declaration that

encumbers your unit

and you buy it with the knowledge that

there is the illinois property

condominium act which is a law that says

what you can and cannot do

and so if you don’t like

the condominium declaration or you don’t

like the statute

don’t buy a condominium by a single

family home

and that’s essentially what the case law

says to unit owners that don’t like the

results here because it’s clear that

section 15 is part of the statute

and if a unit owner had researched the

statute before they bought their

condominium

they should have known that that was a

risk now i will say that when

when a given developer is

creating a condominium or doing a new

development and recording a new

condominium declaration

the original developer or even the unit

owners after a condominium building is

turned over to the unit owners have the

ability to amend the condominium

declaration

and the unit owners could amend a

declaration they need a super majority

in order to amend a condominium

declaration

but the condominium declaration could

provide a higher percentage than the 75

percent which is required under the

statute

so if if a given association

made the decision

that they didn’t want to run this risk

they could vote to increase the

percentage in their condominium

declaration so they could provide that

you need a hundred percent of the unit

owners to vote 90

they can’t go less than the threshold in

the statute but they can go higher

Chicago, IL business attorney Glenn L. Udell discusses your obligation to sell if your condominium is going through a Section 15 deconversion.

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