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Investigations, explainers, and alerts for NYC condo and co-op buyers and owners. Every claim linked to primary sources. No speculation. No spin. Just the data.
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California required balcony inspection disclosure at sale. New York hasn't.
California's SB 326 mandated engineer inspections of condo balconies beginning January 2025. SB 410, effective January 1, 2026, added a seller-disclosure requirement: the most recent report must be in the pre-contract package. New York has no equivalent at resale. S7541 passed the Senate 58-1; the Assembly companion did not advance.
Read article →The AG published proposed condo conversion rules. The comment window closes July 12.
The NY AG's Real Estate Finance Bureau published proposed rules on May 13, 2026 updating 13 NYCRR Parts 18 and 23, which govern how landlords convert occupied NYC rental buildings to co-op or condo ownership. The rules implement HSTPA 2019 and a 2022 amendment that have sat uncodified for years. The 60-day public comment period ends July 12, 2026.
Read article →Three 2025 laws rewrote FISP. The shed clock is now 90 days.
Local Laws 48, 49, and 51 of 2025 collectively change the FISP program. LL48 limits shed permits to 90-day renewals. LL51 adds $5,000-$20,000 fines for owners with active sheds and no repair plan. LL49 extends the inspection cycle from 5 years to 6-12 years, effective October 2026. Boards should read all three before assuming the cycle extension is relief.
Read article →The 467-a abatement expires June 30. The DOF crackdown came first.
NYC's partial tax abatement for co-op and condo owner-occupants under RPTL §467-a expires June 30, 2026. The Mamdani administration sent primary-residency enforcement letters in April, targeting $13 million in cuts. The program has been extended eight times since 1996. No ninth renewal has been signed into law.
Read article →Every NYC condo loan goes to full review on August 3. Is your building ready?
Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03 eliminates the limited review process for established condos on August 3, 2026. Every mortgage on a NYC condo in a project with more than 10 units now requires full underwriting review. If unfunded critical-component repairs exceed $10,000 per unit, the building loses conventional financing eligibility.
Read article →NY's condo transparency bill: 58-1 Senate, Assembly sponsor withdrew it
NY Senate Bill S7541 passed the NY Senate 58-1 in June 2025. The bill would have required condo and co-op boards to disclose engineering reports and inspection records to buyers at contract signing. Florida enacted the equivalent reform first. The Assembly bill's sponsor withdrew before a floor vote. A8337 sits in the Housing Committee.
Read article →The AG secured $230,000 from a condo sponsor. The structural gap remains.
The AG's May 2026 settlement with 135 Carlton Ventures, LLC secured $200,000 in restitution after the Fort Greene condo sponsor misrepresented the building as new construction and concealed structural foundation defects. What the Martin Act can reach, and what it leaves behind for unit owners.
Read article →NYC just made managing agents liable. They still need no license.
Local Law 58 of 2026 takes effect July 28, 2026. It establishes mandatory timelines for co-op boards reviewing purchase applications, defines 'cooperative corporation' to include the managing agent, and creates direct HPD enforcement with fines starting at $1,000. S.71, the managing-agent licensure bill, has not moved.
Read article →Hudson Yards: What $5.6 Billion in Public Money Actually Built
The popular Hudson Yards story is approximately right and specifically wrong. The agency that produced the headline figure is not the IBO; it is SCEPA at The New School. The number is $5.6 billion, not $6 billion. Phase 2 is not paused; it broke ground in June 2025. The verified mechanics matter because the same public-bond-to-private-windfall structure is sitting in active proposals across NYC right now.
Read article →The Pied-à-Terre Tax Just Made Your Co-op Board a State Tax Collector
New York's 2026-2027 budget added a pied-à-terre surcharge that takes effect July 1. Co-op and condo units are taxed starting at $1 million and several times higher than single-family homes. And the statute makes the co-op corporation collect it from shareholders, with the building's tax lien as the backstop.
Read article →The J-51 Abatement Just Came Back for Ten Years. Here's Who Qualifies.
New York renewed the J-51 property tax abatement through 2036 as part of the FY 2026 budget, raised the benefit cap to 100% of certified rehabilitation cost, and lifted the per-unit assessed value ceiling for co-op and condo eligibility. The headline is the duration. The story is the eligibility floor.
Read article →Florida Fixed Condo Transparency After Surfside. New York Hasn't.
After 98 people died at Surfside, Florida passed HB 913 — a statewide cloud database every condo association must register and file into. New York has nothing equivalent. The same gaps that triggered Florida's reform exist here, today, untouched.
Read article →S.71 Is the NY Managing-Agent Licensure Bill Nobody's Talking About
NY Senate Bill S.71 (Kavanagh) and companion A.4954 would require condo and co-op managing agents to register with the Department of State. The bill sits in committee. Industry insider David Kuperberg calls the current regime 'dinosaur age.'
Read article →What's Actually in a Forensic Building Audit (Sample Walkthrough)
Walk through the structure of our Level 2 Buyer Brief and Level 3 Forensic Audit using a sample building. Section by section, what arrives in the PDF, where the data comes from, and how to read it.
Read article →Ten Reform Bills. Zero Enacted. The NY Condo Legislative Graveyard.
Reform is not absent because nobody tried. Reform is absent because every attempt died at the committee level — usually without a recorded vote. Ten bills. Thirty combined sessions. Zero enacted.
Read article →The NY LLC Transparency Act Took Effect — Sponsor Disclosure Looks Different Now
Effective January 1, 2026, every NY LLC — including condo and co-op sponsor LLCs — must file beneficial-ownership information with the Department of State. Public access is limited; civil discovery has a target for the first time.
Read article →How We Built the Tier Carrying Burden Framework for 421-a Phase-Out
When a 421-a tax abatement expires, the building's tax bill reverts to full Class 2. Affordable-tier owners face a permanent carrying-cost cliff. Here's the formula, the threshold bands, the condo-tier-fragility lesson, and the live calculator.
Read article →How to Write an AG REFB Complaint That Doesn't Get Ignored
The NY Attorney General's Real Estate Finance Bureau has approximately five lawyers and receives hundreds of complaints per year. A well-structured complaint with primary-source citations is substantially more likely to get a written response. Six-part structure.
Read article →The 14,062-Building NYC Condo + Co-op Universe: What's In It and What's Missing
There is no canonical public list of every NYC condo and co-op. We built one from PLUTO. The total is 14,062 buildings — 10,882 condos and 3,180 co-ops. Methodology, what's public, what's paid, and the known gaps.
Read article →Your Home Is Not an Investment. It's a Point of Extraction.
When you stop seeing your NYC condo or co-op as an investment and start seeing it as a node in an extraction network, every regulatory gap, every absent oversight body, every missing enforcement mechanism stops looking like a failure and starts looking like a feature.
Read article →The NYC Local Law Extraction Stack: Every Mandate, Every Dollar
A master index of every NYC local law imposing compliance costs on condo and co-op buildings — with estimated annual citywide extraction, primary beneficiaries, and an honest assessment of safety benefit. Start here.
Read article →Local Law 97: The $25 Billion Carbon Penalty Hanging Over NYC Condos
LL97 caps carbon emissions from NYC buildings over 25,000 sf. Penalties of $268 per metric ton over the cap began in 2024 and tighten sharply in 2030. Retrofit costs can run $50-$200 per square foot.
Read article →Local Laws 84, 87, 88: The NYC Energy Compliance Bundle
Benchmarking, 10-year audits, retro-commissioning, lighting upgrades, sub-metering. Fifteen years of the 2009 energy laws have produced lots of reports and modest energy reductions. We break down who gets paid.
Read article →Local Law 126: The Next Local Law 11 (But for Parking Garages)
LL126/2021 requires 6-year structural inspections of every NYC parking structure. Triggered by the 2023 Ann Street collapse. Repair costs range from $200K to $5M+ per building — with every one of LL11's extraction dynamics baked in.
Read article →Local Law 152: The Gas Piping Inspection Every Four Years
Born from the 2014 East Harlem gas explosion, LL152 requires licensed master plumbers to inspect gas piping every four years. Strong safety case; tight plumber-expediter bottleneck on the compliance side.
Read article →Local Law 147: Cooling Towers, Legionella Testing, and the 2015 Outbreak
After the South Bronx Legionnaires' outbreak killed 12 in 2015, NYC built one of the tightest quarterly-testing regimes in the country. The safety case is strongest in the entire local-law stack; the vendor-lab-remediator integration is the cost problem.
Read article →Local Law 31: XRF Lead Testing and the Abatement Economy
Every pre-1960 NYC apartment had to be tested with an EPA-certified XRF instrument by August 2025. Buildings that missed the deadline face cascading HPD exposure. Per-unit abatement runs $2K-$15K.
Read article →Local Law 55: Indoor Allergens, Annual Inspections, HPD Exposure
The Asthma-Free Housing Act requires annual inspection for mold, pests, and indoor allergens, with tenant notices and remediation. Cheap when done in-house; escalates quickly once HPD violations land.
Read article →Local Law 196: The 40-Hour SST Card and the Construction Labor Toll
You won't see it on a maintenance bill, but every LL11, LL97, and LL126 project at your building is 3-7% more expensive because of Site Safety Training compliance. How the labor toll flows through to unit owners.
Read article →NYC Elevator Laws: CAT1, CAT5, LL64 Door Locks, 2027 Deadline
Four firms control nearly all NYC elevator service. LL64 door-lock monitoring retrofits are due January 1, 2027. Annual CAT1 and five-year CAT5 tests, plus the most oligopolistic service market condos and co-ops face.
Read article →Local Law 111: Annual Boiler Inspections and Combustion Tests
NYC low-pressure boilers require annual inspection and triennial combustion efficiency testing. Defensible safety regime; the cost problem is the inspector-as-repair-contractor pipeline and expediter toll on DOB NOW filings.
Read article →Why We Built CondosCoopsNYC
A barber needs a state license. A cosmetologist needs a state license. The person managing your $200M residential building needs nothing. We bought a condo, got blindsided, and decided to build the registry the state refuses to maintain.
Read article →Your 421-a Tax Abatement Is Expiring — Here's What It Will Cost You
Thousands of NYC condos built between 2005 and 2020 have 421-a tax abatements that are expiring between 2025 and 2035. When your abatement expires, your property tax bill can triple. Here is how to check if your building has one and what it will cost.
Read article →What Is Local Law 11 and Why It Could Cost You $50,000
Every NYC building over six stories must pass a facade inspection every five years. If yours fails, the repair bill can reach $20,000 to $80,000 per unit — with no cap, no competitive bidding requirement, and no independent cost review.
Read article →STAY INFORMED
More investigations coming.
We are building the definitive database of NYC condo and co-op failures. New articles publish as we uncover new patterns, new data, and new gaps.