Your contractor is ready. Your board has no deadline to approve the permit.

On January 26, 2026, the New York City Department of Buildings reinstated a rule that makes co-op and condo boards formal stakeholders on renovation permit applications filed by their own unit owners and shareholders. The board's representative must complete an attestation in DOB NOW before DOB will process the application. There is no statute that sets a deadline for when that attestation must be submitted.

What the DOB NOW board attestation does.

Before January 26, 2026, unit owners and shareholders in NYC co-ops and condos filed for renovation permits directly in DOB NOW. The board's approval might be required under the building's proprietary lease or house rules, but the Department of Buildings processed permit applications without waiting for formal board confirmation.

The Department changed that with its January 8, 2026 service notice, effective January 26. When a filing is submitted through DOB NOW and the owner type is identified as "Condo Unit Owner" or "Co-Op Tenant-Shareholder," the system automatically adds the building's board as a stakeholder on the job. The board's designated representative receives notification and must navigate to the Statements & Signatures tab in DOB NOW, locate the Condo/Co-Op Board Attestation section, read the attestation language, and check a box confirming that the board has authorized the applicant to file. Until that step is completed, DOB treats the application as incomplete and will not process it.

DOB describes this as a reinstatement. A similar requirement existed in the legacy system before DOB NOW was introduced and was not carried over in the initial platform transition. The January 2026 update restores the requirement in the current digital workflow and adds formal routing to the board's account. For unit owners who had not encountered the old process, the change is new in every practical sense.

Who actually executes it: the managing agent problem.

In most NYC co-ops and condos, the managing agent handles day-to-day administrative work on behalf of the board, including maintaining the building's account in DOB NOW. In practice, the person who logs into DOB NOW and completes the board attestation is typically a managing agent employee, not a board director.

This matters because of a well-documented gap in New York law. A barber in this state needs a license. The person managing a $200 million residential building, logging into a city regulatory portal, attesting to permit applications, and coordinating vendor contracts for that building needs nothing. New York has no managing agent licensure requirement. S.71, Senator Kavanagh's bill that would require managing agents to register with the Department of State and maintain certification through an approved organization, was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2025 and did not advance during the 2025-2026 session, which closed June 18, 2026. CCNYC has covered the S.71 gap since this site launched.

The DOB NOW attestation process does not require the person completing it to hold any credential. It requires a login to the building's DOB NOW account and a click in the correct tab. An unlicensed agent with full account access can delay, misroute, or fail to complete a unit owner's permit attestation, and no professional standard of care in New York law governs that conduct.

The gap in plain terms: no statutory deadline on the gatekeeper.

In January 2026, the same month DOB rolled out the board attestation change, New York City enacted a separate law with a deliberate opposite structure. Local Law 58 of 2026 (Intro 1120-B) gives co-op boards a 15-day window to acknowledge a purchase application in writing, a 45-day window to approve or reject it, and civil penalties starting at $1,000 per violation for boards that miss either deadline. The law even extends direct liability to managing agents: it defines "cooperative corporation" to include the managing agent, closing the avenue of agents pointing to the board to escape accountability.

No equivalent rule governs the DOB NOW alteration permit attestation. A board has no statutory obligation to respond to a pending attestation request within any number of days. If the building is between management companies, if a key account holder is unreachable, if the board disputes the scope of work but has not formally denied it through its own governance process, the permit application can sit incomplete in DOB NOW with no legal mechanism forcing a response.

Contractors and expeditors working on NYC renovations report the attestation step adds two to four weeks to permit timelines when it runs without friction. When the managing agent is slow, unresponsive, or mid-transition, that range is open-ended. A general contractor's bid is typically valid for 30 to 60 days. An indefinite attestation delay can push a project past the validity window of its cost estimates, requiring re-pricing before work even begins.

How to navigate the process before your contractor starts billing.

For unit owners planning a renovation that requires a DOB permit, the January 26 change adds a specific dependency to manage before filing. Getting ahead of it reduces the risk of the permit sitting incomplete in the DOB queue.

• Before filing anything in DOB NOW, contact the managing agent and confirm who holds the building's DOB NOW account and who has authority to execute the board attestation. Get the name and contact in writing.
• Obtain written board approval for the scope of work through whatever process your proprietary lease or bylaws require. Verbal approval from a board member is not the same as a completed DOB NOW attestation. The person clicking the box in the system may be different from the board member you spoke with.
• Give the managing agent advance notice of your intended filing date. An attestation request that arrives without warning is more likely to sit than one the agent was briefed to expect.
• After filing, log back into DOB NOW within two to three business days and confirm that the Condo/Co-Op Board Attestation section in Statements & Signatures shows the attestation as submitted. If it does not, follow up directly with the managing agent. Do not wait for a DOB notification.
• If the managing agent or board is unresponsive beyond what your project timeline can absorb, review your proprietary lease or bylaws for any internal escalation mechanism. In condos, the bylaws may specify a response window for alteration requests even if DOB's regulations do not.

Why the licensure gap makes this structural.

A one-time administrative inconvenience is not a structural problem. The DOB NOW attestation creates a structural problem because it installs an unlicensed gatekeeper into a formal city regulatory process with no accountability mechanism attached to that gatekeeper.

The Department of Buildings issues a permit after it receives an attestation. That attestation becomes part of the regulatory record. If the attestation is submitted incorrectly, is submitted by someone without actual board authority, or is used to pressure a unit owner into unrelated concessions before it is completed, the Department has no mechanism to flag that conduct. The managing agent who submitted the attestation holds no license that could be suspended, no bond that could be claimed against, no certification that could be revoked. The absence of any public managing agent registry means a unit owner cannot verify through any public database whether the person handling the attestation has a history of complaints or regulatory action.

Florida requires community association managers to hold a state license (LCAM): 16 hours of pre-licensure education, a state exam administered by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, a background check, and biennial continuing education. New York has no equivalent. The same gap that lets an untrained agent mismanage reserve funds, as documented in the case that led to this site being built, also lets that agent control the timeline of a unit owner's renovation permit with no professional accountability in state law.

Bottom line.

The DOB NOW board attestation requirement adds a concrete procedural step to any NYC co-op or condo renovation that requires a permit. The board's representative must complete a sign-off in DOB NOW before DOB will process the application. That step can add weeks to the timeline even when it works correctly. When the managing agent handling the attestation is slow or unreachable, the delay is uncapped: no statute sets a response deadline for alteration permit attestations the way Local Law 58 does for purchase applications. The managing agent executing the attestation needs no license, no registration, and no minimum qualification under New York law. The gap between what DOB's new process requires and what the state's absent licensure standard provides is not incidental. It is the same structural gap that shapes every managing agent interaction in this state.

Primary sources: NYC DOB Service Notice, January 8, 2026 · NY Senate Bill S.71, Kavanagh (2025-2026) · Fox Rothschild LLP client alert, February 10, 2026

Companion resources: No public managing agent registry · S.71: the managing agent licensure bill · Local Law 58: liability without a license · Why the AG can't help with most governance disputes · Albany adjourned without passing S.71