With the end of the period of general meetings of co-ownership, BFM Immo tells you some juicy anecdotes that happened between neighbors during these sometimes explosive meetings.
It’s a unique moment, during which anything (or almost anything) can happen. It’s the big night for rule-addicts, troublemakers, cheapskates… A closed session that sometimes reveals the worst side of your personality. We drag our feet there, because we know we’ll be spending two hours there after work.
But after all, two hours is not a lot. Maybe that’s what these people were saying. co-owners arriving at the general assembly of their Parisian building. In fact, they remained there for more than 7 hours.
And don’t even think about going out for a break. “We did it all at once, with only bathroom breaks,” says Christophe Buey, president of the union council of BFM Immo. No one left before the 88 resolutions were voted on.
Fortunately, everyone left as good friends. This is not always the case. In Lyon, the general assembly of a building met to vote on the roof work. A co-owner in disagreement, he gets angry: he says he can’t pay.
“He violently expressed his opposition, even threatening to kill him in public,” says a witness at the scene. If only he had stuck to that. “He allowed himself to show up at the first meeting on site armed with a hunting rifle, but he did not carry out his words,” says the witness in a story published on the site condominiums untold storieswhich organizes an annual competition for the best anecdotes experienced in the body.
What Cyrano Thought He Was
Fortunately, cases of violence remain rare and some prefer to use humor to express their discontent. Thus a co-owner of a seaside town recalls the entrance, to say the least, of a participant at an annual general meeting.
The burly man arrived with “a bright orange, well-inflated, deep-sea life jacket with a CO2 cartridge,” he recalls.
Thus dressed, the co-owner greets the curator’s boss, signs the attendance sheet and sits down, his chest out in his vest. While “ten pairs of eyes are fixed on him,” he declares: “Since the curator has guided me since my arrival, I have equipped myself accordingly!”
As long as the participants have a bit of banter, the General Assembly can become very funny. This was the case in this Parisian building. While a neighbor complains about the smells emanating from the restaurant located on the ground floor, another is surprised by his observation: the smell does not bother him (and he has become friends with the manager).
The first responds with a personal attack on “his nasal capacity which does not seem to conform to the prominence of his appendix (the nose),” according to Christophe’s story, also published on the co-owned site with unpublished stories.
It was then that the co-owner, who was also a member of the Comédie Française, launched into the famous nose invective, from the comedy Cyrano de Bergerac: “Ah! no! It’s a bit short, young man. We could say… Oh God!… so many things… Varying the tone, for example (…) Description: ‘It’s a rock, it’s a cape! ..it’s a peninsula!'”
She concluded by telling him: “But, my dear sir, I beg you to accept that at the time of your acquisition, which has obscured all co-ownership, you knew that this honest man was already managing his affairs.” Christophe, hilariously, “had taken out the popcorn.”
The dog in depression
If some GAs turn into a spectacle, others end up worse. To the point of endangering neighborly relations. Caroline got along very well with her neighbors, until their aggressive dog started causing problems. “He almost got to the point of attacking the children in the building, it was really dangerous,” she tells BFM Immo.
When the subject is broached in AG, the dog owner becomes angry, explaining that her pet is sick. “She said we were just doing it to annoy her,” Caroline testifies.
“He had tears in his eyes, he literally showed us the dog’s medical certificate stating that he was depressed, then we said to ourselves that it was getting to proportions…”
Without going that far, some owners leave their neighbors perplexed. Just before the AGM, a newcomer to the company asks the oldest member of the building his voting intentions on the matter. global diagnostic technique. Much to his surprise, she replies that she will simply follow the majority of votes.
“I watched her throughout the meeting and she actually followed the majority in all the resolutions… Strange strategy all the same,” he exclaims to BFM Immo.
A 30-year long revenge
In some cases, grudges persist for years. When Michel goes to his first general meeting, he does not expect to witness this low blow. A little less than 30 years ago, a tenant (who systematically has the power of the landlord), sent a letter to claim ownership of a small green space between two houses. Knowing that after 30 years without receiving a response, the land would rightfully return to him. So he waited, year after year, no doubt hoping that the curator had forgotten his request.
In fact, the union “having found this request completely incongruous, carefully kept the mail”, without saying anything. “The successive presidents gave instructions to give a negative response only a few days before the date of the thirty-year statute of limitations”, says Christophe, astonished.
“As a result, this person saw his plan fail, after nearly 30 years of waiting.”
But co-owners who are so close don’t always have to fight among themselves. Edouard remembers with emotion this General Assembly during which all the participants defended their 70-year-old neighbor. Just below his window, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, a pizzeria has been set up.
“She smelled of pizza from morning to night, she is a lady who often stays at home, it bothered her a lot, she wasn’t happy,” the young man told BFM Immo.
“When he explained it to the meeting he was on the verge of tears. Everyone sided with him, even the owners of the other properties, there was a very strong solidarity,” he concludes. So not all body stories end badly.