Apartments you rent, Apartments you buy, Condos, Co-ops (New York, York: fit in, real estate)

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

What is the differance between all these things in New York City area? I have never heard of people buying an apartment and yet it seems that you can do that in your area. If you buy an apartment, and then rent it out to someone what would yoiu call it? If you did that would the tenent pay the rent to you or the building owner? When you see a building can you tell if it has rented apartments, owned apartment units, co-ops, condos or anyother kind of living arangement? What is the thing that defrentiated the differant segments of living space?

I ask because in my part of the world it is easy to see what is an apartment (Rental and never owned.) and a condo. have not seen a co-op unit in California before, although we do have duplexes and tri plexes, many times each unit is individually owned.

[Viralmd]

In a condominium you own the physical apartment. In a co-op you own shares in the building corporation and have a proprietary lease to your apartment. The condominium typically doesn't require a financial statement and board approval prior to purchase, but with harder financial times, this has been changing in NYC, with restrictions being more commonly placed on the purchase.

In addition, typically you can sublet a condominium without board approval, which is required for a co-op to be sublet, but this, too is starting to change in the current climate.

In these times there are more troubles in condominiums, precisely BECAUSE they don't vet their owners: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/re...ref=realestate

[clevedark]

You usually can't tell from the outside of a building whether it's a coop, condos or rentals. An exception might be a big rental tower that's well known. I always think of condos as being newer than coops. But that's just me.

[Caro257]

here you can read up about the difference btw. coop and condo
Legal Assistant: Coop v. Condo

as to the how to recognize the two you would need to be more familiar with real estate in NY. You can visit Acris ACRIS Main Options
go to find address and parcels, type in the address of the building you have in mind and than do the search by Borough, block and lot. Thank you can see if the apartments were bought with the same lot (which would be a coop) or different unit lots which mostly signifies a condo. A realtor would be the best bet in your situation.

[bmwguydc]

Co-ops are rare in Los Angeles, but they do exist. UCLA has a student housing co-op and then there's the eco-village which started in the 1990s that is an apartment community. Avenel in Silver Lake used to be a cooperative, but it was converted to condominiums a while back, and it was as small modernist project.

There was an interesting article on Avenel a few years ago in the LA Times. A living legacy endures - Los Angeles Times

Few cities approach New York when it comes to co-ops and their impact on real estate. Some of the boards, or board memebers, wield enormous influence over their buildings/communities, whereas others are more friendly in nature.

[bluedog2]

Clevedark is right to a great degree.Most of the coops in New York are in older buildings that were built as or converted to cooperative ownership many many years before anyone ever heard of a condominium.I am not sure exactly when the first ones started but I know of some buildings that began as coops in the 1920's and there might be some older than that.

In the last couple of decades there have been more and more buildings built or converted to condos because people didn't like the restrictions ( as described by viralmd) that come with cooperative ownership.Some coops won't let you have pets,some won't let you rent out,some won't let you finance your purchase so you have to have all cash. The coops boards can reject you as a buyer for almost any reason and they don't have to say why.They might just not think that you will "fit in."

It will be interesting to see whether the problems that seem to be developing in some condos because of the downturn and the lack of oversight by other owners in a building will lead to a turn back to more coops in the future.The problem is that if a number of owners go under and other owners are just squeaking by and cannot pick up the slack, everyone can go under.This might be especially true in more recent developments where almost everyone has paid top dollar and might have huge mortgages hanging over them.

[Viralmd]

Read the NY Times article to which I posted the link: condos ARE starting to have troubles.

[clevedark]

That's one of the reasons why it's very risky to pick up one of those cheap condos in South Florida--what's going to happen to the association when too many people can't pay their mortgages?

[Henna]

Originally Posted by bluedog2

Clevedark is right to a great degree.Most of the coops in New York are in older buildings that were built as or converted to cooperative ownership many many years before anyone ever heard of a condominium.I am not sure exactly when the first ones started but I know of some buildings that began as coops in the 1920's and there might be some older than that.

In the last couple of decades there have been more and more buildings built or converted to condos because people didn't like the restrictions ( as described by viralmd) that come with cooperative ownership.Some coops won't let you have pets,some won't let you rent out,some won't let you finance your purchase so you have to have all cash. The coops boards can reject you as a buyer for almost any reason and they don't have to say why.They might just not think that you will "fit in."

It will be interesting to see whether the problems that seem to be developing in some condos because of the downturn and the lack of oversight by other owners in a building will lead to a turn back to more coops in the future.The problem is that if a number of owners go under and other owners are just squeaking by and cannot pick up the slack, everyone can go under.This might be especially true in more recent developments where almost everyone has paid top dollar and might have huge mortgages hanging over them.

According to the article posted, the real estate lawyers who deal with defaults are seeing just as many problems in coops as in condos, however, there is a difference in terms of what this means for the building's health (coops stay healthier than condos even with defaults).

"While lawyers are reporting a similar rash of defaults among co-op owners, the risk to the building (and by extension to the defaulter’s neighbors) is slight by comparison. That’s because a co-op building is entitled to its share before the bank can claim anything in the event of foreclosure (the ultimate consequence of nonpayment of maintenance charges).

But in condo foreclosures, the debt priorities are reversed. After a foreclosure process that these days can take two years — during which unpaid common charges proliferate — the building gets its due only after the bank is paid in full. And many condo owners have little equity in their apartments."

[mathjak107]

the pricing structure is usually very different to as a co-op usually has a mortgage on the building too thats paid thru maintaince...

if you take 2 identical buildings , one is co-op the other condo , and go how much?

the condo may be priced at 300,000 with a minimal amount of common charges...the co-op may be 200,000 in your personal mortgage and 100,000 in the buildings mortgage and that may run 1,000.00 a month in maintainance...

they both work out the same but they are structured differently