Buying an apartment in a coop is cheaper than buying the same type of apartment in a condo, but unfortunately in the coop there are many restrictions to which you have to subject. Fortunately though not all coops are so “severe”: just do a little more thorough research and discuss with your real estate agent what your needs are and voilà, will jump out several friendly building to be taken into consideration at the time of purchase.
The most welcoming palaces usually have common qualities, let’s see which are the most frequent.
The most important indicator of a friendly building is the percentage of funding allowed to turn on a mortgage. If a building approves a mortgage of up to 80%, this must be read as an excellent indicator of a fairly quiet building. This is not a parameter to be underestimated: let us remember that most of the buildings east of Madison Ave, for example Park Ave and Fifth Ave, or in the Midtown and Sutton Place area, do not accept mortgages above 50%, while many coops on the Fifth Ave or on Central Park West accept only new shareholders (I remember that if you buy a coop you buy shares and not the naked property) that they buy cash and that they have in the same digitline.
Returning to our parameters, if a building allows to take a mortgage and does not require that one or two years of condominium and mortgage charges are present on the current account after purchase (post purchase liquidity), you are already on horseback.
Other signs of a “friendly coop” are the fact that it allows pets, therefore it is a pet friendly building, or that you can buy the apartment as a pied-à-terre, that is not as a main residence but as a house for the weekend; or that parents can buy the apartment for their children or vice versa, or still co-purchasing, that is the parent who turns on a mortgage together with the child or daughter who has a reduced income.
In the case of renovation, it is a great signal if the board ( assembly formed by the shareholders of the building) does not force to do the work only in the three summer months, when all the other tenants are at the Hamptons, but allows the renovations during any period of the year.
In case you are forced to rent the apartment, it is a good signal if the board gives its own blessing even before the two canonical years in which usually the owner should prove to have lived himself in the apartment.
Let’s say that these parameters are the most common ones that will make life easier even at the time of resale of the apartment. Good research!
L’articolo A guide to buying an apartment in a coop proviene da IlNewyorkese.
