Financially qualified cooperative buyer’s applications are being rejected by boards of directors solely on the basis that the purchase price is too low. Besides causing wasted time, money and distress between the individual parties, the buyer and seller and the real estate brokers, these rejections adversely affect and create an artificial market, as the seller is forced to put the unit on the market at a price that does not reflect its true value.

The inflated board-demanded prices will appear as the first entry of a Google search for building comparables or past sales, which can adversely affect prices throughout the building. Brokers fail to show, and buyers fail to view, any lower priced selling units. This artificial market may work when a market is hot and a unit has been priced poorly, but that has not been the experience in the several cases we have been involved in.