Condo Conversion & Ownership Percentages

[Danielle Zimmerman]

Hello! 

I purchased a historic, 21 unit, apartment building that had been vacant since the 80's. The project is a complete gut! I have owned it for about 2 years now and have gone through zoning and development, half of historic tax credit application, environmental remediation and have brought the project to rough in. Because of the budgets, it makes more sense for me to sell the individual units off to recoup some of our costs. I'm hoping I can hold a few units as rentals, but we will see. In order to sell off units, I need to get a new zoning variance to allow for condo building use, not an apartment building. I'm at a stage now with the attorneys creating the HOA Declarations where we need to decide on ownership percentages per unit. The new layout has 19 units total ranging from studios to two-bedrooms. The studios are obviously the smallest, then the one-bedrooms, leaving the two-bedrooms as the largest units. Common spaces include: hallways, staircases, coin operated laundry, storage locker area, common entertaining space, and a rooftop deck.

My question is, is it better to divide ownership equally among the units so each owner has equal say, or is it better to divide ownership shares proportionate to their unit size?