Co-ops in small buildings may face stormy seas

(Flickr photo by Steve Babb)

There are many advantages to buying a co-op in a small building, among them:

• Being well acquainted with your neighbors;
• Generally low maintenance fees;
• Scale that is desirable to many of its residents;
• Numerous opportunities to participate meaningfully as a volunteer in a diminutive community;
• Application procedures that may be less onerous than in larger buildings.

However, some buyers see the disadvantageous side of the coin:

Pimps are not the only procurers in town

(Flickr photo by RedMorris)

There’s a phrase in the real estate industry that you hear in most housing markets outside of New York City.  It is “procuring cause,” and so arrested is my development that the words make me want to giggle.

But procuring cause is no laughing matter.

Nor is it as arcane as you might imagine.  Yet the only reference I could find in my 390-page text on New York real estate was its definition in the glossary:

The basis for a direct action that results in successfully completing an objective.

In common parlance relating to real estate, the phrase implies

The High Road: Yes, it’s okay to talk about commissions

 

The Times loves to skewer sacred cows (get it?), and regular readers know that I have a healthy appetite for doing so as well. (Flickr photo by turbotoddi)

The New York Times has forced my hand.  The newspaper’s lead story in Sunday’s Real Estate section–which quotes Charles Rutenberg co-founder Kathy Braddock, among others–maintains that sellers can negotiate broker commissions successfully.

Ironically, I had been musing about commissions since a lively discussion that several members of the REwrite group of real estate bloggers enjoyed at a meet-up that I organized last Thursday night.  More about that in a bit.

As the Times noted,