Going Co-Op or Splitting Duplexes, Tris and Quads?

[Robert Whitelaw]

Howdy all,

I was reading Risk Game by Francis Greenburger last week and I got to thinking about the strategy that really started him off to becoming a real estate investing billionaire. He took multis and turned them into co-ops/condos.

So that got me wondering about doing that today - he did it with great success in the '70s and '80s in New York. Perhaps even just the process of turning a duplex into two zero lot line/attached SFR properties. I have no idea what the costs/process is so I thought I would check here to see if anyone has done it.

My interest is focused on how to get it done in California, but insights into any part of the country would be helpful.

Just to be clear, my goal here is to buy a multi unit property, then sell the units off individually. This is not a question about converting a duplex into a single SFR property - which is a topic discussed in some other areas here on BP.

Cheers,

R

PS: I have done some googling on the subject without much success. There are mentions of wanting to do it, but not any firm "This is how it works" style stuff. For those of you in San Francisco - there are some interesting rules on this: http://www.andysirkin.com/HTMLArticle.cfm?Article=...