Co-op buyers now have a 45-day application clock. Condo buyers don't.

On July 28, 2026, Local Law 2026/058 (Int 1120-B), enacted after the City Council overrode the mayor's veto on January 29, takes effect for every cooperative building with 10 or more units in New York City. The law sets a 15-day clock for the board to acknowledge a purchase application and a 45-day clock to reach a decision — backed by HPD enforcement and fines starting at $1,000 per violation. Not one provision of the statute applies to condominiums. The governance framework for condominiums, Real Property Law Article 9-B, permits each building's declaration to include a right-of-first-refusal provision, but no state statute and no provision of the NYC Administrative Code sets a deadline by which a condo board must exercise or waive that right. When a condo board sits on an application for 60 or 90 days, a buyer's practical options are to wait, negotiate, or terminate and walk away.

What Int 1120-B requires of co-op boards.

The law adds a new subchapter to the NYC Administrative Code governing transfer approvals in cooperative buildings with 10 or more residential units. Once a prospective buyer submits a purchase application, the board has 15 days to either acknowledge receipt or identify what documents are missing. Once the application is deemed complete, the board has 45 days to notify the applicant whether the transfer is approved, approved with conditions, or denied. A denial must come in writing, and the board must give reasons. The board may take one 14-day extension as of right; any further extension requires the applicant's written consent. Boards may also adopt a formal summer recess policy that tolls both clocks during July and August, but that policy must be adopted and communicated to shareholders before the effective date. Buildings with fewer than 10 residential units are exempt. So are Housing Development Fund Companies incorporated under Article XI of the Private Housing Finance Law, and cooperatives where transfers require approval by a government housing agency, such as Mitchell-Lama developments. The law covers applications submitted on or after July 28, 2026; applications already in process before that date are not covered.

How the condo right of first refusal works without a clock.

Under Real Property Law §339-v(2)(a), a condominium's declaration may include a right of first refusal, giving the board (or unit owners collectively) the right to purchase a unit on the same price and terms offered to a prospective third-party buyer before the sale closes. Most NYC condo declarations include this provision. In practice, condo boards almost always waive the right (purchasing a unit at market price is rarely in the building's financial interest), but the waiver process can take weeks, and no city statute sets a ceiling on how long that may take. The timeline is governed by whatever the individual building's declaration or bylaws specify, often 30 days from contract signing, and that provision is enforceable only through a contract lawsuit between the seller and the board. If a condo board does not respond at all within its bylaw-specified window, the buyer's attorney must decide whether to send a formal demand letter, declare time of the essence, or advise the client to terminate. There is no HPD complaint to file. There is no $1,000 fine waiting on the other side. A condo board that takes 90 days to issue a waiver and a condo board that turns one around in a week are both in full legal compliance with New York City law.

Why the gap is structural, not accidental.

The legislative history of co-op board transparency in New York City runs through decades of concern about discriminatory rejections. Co-op boards historically rejected buyers without explanation and without any deadline, and that pattern generated HUD complaints, litigation, and advocacy from fair-housing organizations going back to the 1980s. The result is a growing body of city law addressed at co-op board conduct: the Fair Chance Housing Act (Int 2046-A, effective January 2025) added criminal-background-check sequencing rules for both co-op and condo boards, requiring boards to complete financial review before running a background check. But the timeline mandate in Local Law 2026/058 covers cooperatives only. The City Council's legislative findings frame the problem in terms of the cooperative corporation's authority over share transfers. That authority has no equivalent in condominium law. Under RPL Article 9-B, a condo unit is real property conveyed by deed. The board's right of first refusal is a contractual carve-out in the building's declaration, not a governance power over who may own property in the building. The legal distinction is accurate. The policy consequence is that condo buyers carry the same practical exposure (a board that delays, demands documentation the bylaws do not require, or simply does not respond) without any of the new statutory protection that co-op buyers will have starting July 28.

What the HPD enforcement process looks like under the new law.

A co-op buyer who believes the board missed the 15-day acknowledgment deadline or the 45-day decision deadline may file a complaint with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. HPD refers violations to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) for adjudication. The penalty schedule is $1,000 for a first violation, $1,500 for a second, and $2,000 for a third or subsequent violation. The law holds the cooperative corporation and the managing agent jointly and directly liable. That allocation of liability matters in practice: it is typically the managing agent who receives purchase applications, logs receipt dates, routes packages to the board, and sends written decisions back to applicants. A managing agent that does not build deadline-tracking into its workflow before July 28 faces direct financial exposure even if the board never made a deliberate decision to delay. On the co-op side, then, the arrival of Local Law 2026/058 creates a concrete incentive for professional administration of the transfer process. Nothing comparable exists for condo buildings, where managing agents face no equivalent penalty for a delayed or absent ROFR waiver, and no equivalent city agency has jurisdiction over how long that process takes.

What a condo buyer can do when a board goes silent.

Without a statutory clock, a condo buyer's leverage is almost entirely contractual. A well-negotiated purchase contract should specify the number of days the board has to deliver a ROFR waiver and make that waiver a condition of closing, with a mechanism for termination and return of deposit if the deadline passes without a board response. Courts in New York have upheld buyers' rights to terminate contracts when condo boards exceeded bylaw-specified ROFR deadlines, but the outcome depends on how precisely the contract was drafted and how clearly the board's non-response can be documented. The Smith, Gambrell & Russell analysis of condo ROFR litigation describes the variance in outcomes when building declarations are ambiguous about timing. Enforcing a condo ROFR timeline requires a real estate attorney, careful contract drafting before signing, and potentially a court proceeding afterward. There is no administrative complaint path. There is no agency with jurisdiction over the timeline. A buyer whose attorney did not build a hard waiver deadline into the contract has very little recourse if the board goes quiet for 90 days. That is a different legal situation from a co-op buyer, who, starting July 28, can point to a specific statute, a specific deadline, and a specific HPD complaint process. The gap is not about the frequency of board misbehavior. It is about who bears the cost when misbehavior occurs.

Bottom line.

Local Law 2026/058 is a genuine improvement for co-op buyers in New York City. A board that ignores or delays a purchase application now faces financial consequences enforceable by a city agency. That is the correct direction. But the 10,882 condominium buildings in this city operate under no equivalent protection. The condo board that delays a right-of-first-refusal waiver for three months is not violating any city law. The buyer's options are to wait, negotiate, or litigate. This site's core argument is that every gap in NYC residential real estate oversight functions as a feature for the entities that benefit from delay and opacity. On that reading, the exclusion of condominiums from Local Law 2026/058 is not a drafting oversight. It is a predictable result of a legislative tradition that has addressed co-op board accountability without building a parallel track for condominium buyers. A buyer in a 10-unit co-op will have a clock, a complaint form, and a penalty on the other side of a missed deadline. A buyer in a 100-unit condo has none of those things, and no bill currently before the City Council would change that.

Primary sources: Local Law 2026/058 (Int 1120-B), NYC City Council veto override, February 2026 · RPL §339-v(2)(a), NY Condominium Act, NYSenate.gov · RPL Article 9-B, NY Condominium Act, NYSenate.gov

Companion resources: NYC just made managing agents liable. They still need no license. · What NYC condo and co-op owners can legally demand from the board · Why the NY AG can't help with most condo governance disputes · Your contractor is ready. Your board has no deadline to approve the permit. · All regulatory gaps →