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One of the reasons why condos appear to be so much less than CO OPs is because there is no underlying mortgage on the building itself.So the price you pay for your condo is the full amount of your purchase price. With Co OPs you are also purchasing shares in a corporation that owns the building and the building usually has a mortgage on it . So you are paying the purchase price of the unit and you are also assuming the responsibility for a share of the underlying indebtedness of the corporation.
The amount of this "extra" debt can be figured out by dividing the total number of shares of the corporation into the amount of the underlying mortgage to get a per/share amount and then multiplying that number by the number of shares allocated to your apartment.A certain part of your apartment maintenance goes to pay the underling mortgage and then you get a tax deduction for that amount .It sounds confusing but really isn't.
All of this is why it is important to investigate the finances of co ops to make sure that any underlying mortgage is not totally out of line and doesn't have any weird terms.
This is a good explanation.
A related point is that in a coop, the maintenance includes real estate tax. In a condo, you have to pay your real estate tax yourself (separately from maintenance fee).
There are so many issues to understand about coops that there is a book written about it - called something like "The NY Coop Bible." I suggest reading it before proceeding.
One of the reasons why condos appear to be so much less than CO OPs is because there is no underlying mortgage on the building itself.So the price you pay for your condo is the full amount of your purchase price.
From what I've seen the prices of condos are substantially more than the prices of coops. Are you saying in the long-term, because of the mortgage, that the coops appear more?
Thank you everyone for the links and the book recommendation, I will definitely check that out.
a co-op's price consists of your personal mortgage and the part of the morgage the building holds.. you pay that in the maintaince. a condo has no other mortgage. if your building payed off the mortgage it would cost as much as the condo version.
A condo-op has two ownerships within the same building, bascially, as I understand it, as if there were a demarkation between properties within the building itself. Here's a good explanation from an article in The Times: YOUR HOME - YOUR HOME - Condop - Part Co-op, Part Condo - NYTimes.com
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All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
~William Shakespeare (As You Like It Act II, Scene VII)
I've also heard condo-op used to refer to co-ops that function more like condos (no board approval for renovations, easy sublet policy, etc.).
As many posters have pointed out, the NYC real estate market is insanely complicated. Research. Research. Research.
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