Your building's energy grade posts publicly October 31. New York gives sellers no disclosure duty.

Local Law 33 of 2018 requires every NYC building above 25,000 square feet to post an ENERGY STAR-based letter grade at each public entrance between October 1 and October 31 each year. Extensions granted in 2025 do not carry over. In the most recent full reporting cycle, more than half of large NYC buildings received a C, D, or F. New York Real Property Law § 461 explicitly excludes condominium units and cooperative apartments from the Property Condition Disclosure Act. A building with a D or F grade generates no seller disclosure obligation before a buyer signs a contract.

What Local Law 33 requires boards to post, and when.

Local Law 33 (NYC Administrative Code § 28-309.12) converts a building's ENERGY STAR score into a letter grade and requires that grade to be posted at every public entrance between October 1 and October 31 each year. The grade runs from A (ENERGY STAR score of 85 or above) through D (below 55) and F (benchmarking data not filed). The label comes from Local Law 84 benchmarking data, which buildings above 25,000 square feet are already required to submit to the City each May. There is no separate energy audit for the label itself. The building owner retrieves the label from the DOB NOW portal once DOB has processed the LL84 benchmarking submission, then posts it at every entrance by October 31.

The NYC Department of Buildings has confirmed that deadline extensions issued during the 2025 cycle do not apply to the 2026 posting requirement. Buildings that posted a label in 2025 must retrieve and post an updated label reflecting 2025 benchmarking data. Buildings that fail to post, post an incorrect label, or post an outdated version face civil penalties under the Administrative Code. The same grade data appears on the NYC Energy and Water Data Disclosure open data portal, where any buyer, lender, or broker can retrieve a building's score history going back to 2011 without any disclosure from a seller.

Why most NYC condos and co-ops score in the bottom half.

The ENERGY STAR score for multifamily buildings compares a property's energy use per square foot against similar buildings nationally, then converts that percentile to a 1-to-100 scale. A score of 50 means exactly average for the national building stock of the same type. Because many NYC condos and co-ops are older masonry buildings with steam heat systems, they tend to consume more energy per square foot than the national median, which skews toward newer, better-insulated construction in warmer climates. Buildings also score lower when their LL84 submission reflects only common-area energy use rather than whole-building consumption.

For condominium buildings with separately metered units, benchmarking may capture only shared-system energy unless the board has requested whole-building utility aggregation from Con Edison through its Multi-Family Energy Portal. A board that has not requested that aggregation may be reporting an incomplete picture, receiving a worse grade than the building would earn with full data. The error is common and correctable before October 1. A managing agent who files without checking whether whole-building data is available has effectively left points on the table, points that now appear on a public-facing label.

What a D or F grade signals about a building's Local Law 97 exposure.

A D grade on the LL33 label is not by itself a Local Law 97 violation. But both laws share an input: a building's annual greenhouse gas emissions per square foot. A building that scores poorly under LL84 benchmarking is more likely to exceed its LL97 cap. Beginning with the 2025 compliance year, buildings over their cap owe $268 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent above the limit, and that fine accrues annually for as long as the building remains over cap.

The NYC Department of Buildings reported in April 2026 that approximately 1,400 buildings covered by LL97 had not submitted compliance reports for the 2025 year, and DOB attorneys were preparing case filings at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) against buildings remaining out of compliance after a 60-day notice period. A condo or co-op board that posts a D label in October without an active LL97 compliance plan has publicly signaled a deferred capital liability. That liability will eventually land as a special assessment on unit owners.

Fannie Mae's full project review now looks at deferred capital.

Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03, effective August 3, 2026, eliminated the limited review pathway for established condominiums. Every mortgage on a condo unit in a building with more than ten units now requires full project review. That review includes an assessment of whether unfunded critical-component repairs exceed $10,000 per unit. LL97 decarbonization projects are capital repairs in the same category as facade work or elevator modernization: they are foreseeable, cost-estimable, and deferrable only at the price of accumulating fines.

A lender completing a full project review has access to the NYC benchmarking open data portal and can retrieve a building's energy grade history independently of what the board discloses. A building with a D grade, a deferred LL97 compliance plan, and reserves below the current Fannie Mae 10 percent reserve floor presents a lender with a layered ineligibility argument: inadequate reserves for a known capital event. The lender can independently conclude the building is ineligible without the project appearing on Fannie Mae's formal unavailable list. That judgment stops the transaction without any public record showing the reason.

New York has no seller disclosure requirement for what the grade shows.

New York Real Property Law § 461 requires sellers of residential real property to complete a property condition disclosure form before a sale closes. The statute explicitly excludes cooperative apartments and condominium units. A seller of a condo unit in a building with an F energy grade (meaning the board never filed LL84 benchmarking data, which is itself a violation) is under no state duty to mention that fact before a buyer signs a contract. An attorney reviewing the contract has no mandatory disclosure to review.

The disconnect between what the City publishes and what sellers must say is the same gap the CCNYC post on flood disclosure identified: New York posts risk data in agency databases while exempting the sellers who know the building best from any duty to surface it at the transaction. For buyers executing contracts in August and September, before the October labels go up at the entrance, the relevant grade data is already available on the benchmarking open data portal. No party to the transaction is legally required to point them there.

What boards must do before October 1.

The label is retrieved from the DOB NOW portal once DOB has processed the building's LL84 benchmarking submission. Boards should confirm the following before October 1, leaving time to identify and correct data errors before the posting deadline:

• The building's calendar year 2025 LL84 submission was filed by the May 2026 deadline and accepted by DOB NOW without error or rejection flags.
• Whole-building utility aggregation was requested from Con Edison through its Multi-Family Energy Portal, if the building has separately metered units. Without it, the ENERGY STAR score reflects only common-area systems.
• The resulting grade has been retrieved in DOB NOW before October 1. If a D or F appears, there is time to identify whether a data error contributed and whether a corrected submission can be filed before the posting deadline.
• Physical posting logistics are arranged across all public entrances, not just the main lobby. A building with a secondary entrance off an alley or garage must post at that entrance as well.

Boards with a D in any of the last three years should also cross-reference against their LL97 status before the label goes up. Posting a D label without a compliance plan on file is not a violation. But it is the kind of public disclosure that prompts buyer inquiries, and buyers who ask have access to four years of benchmarking history on the open data portal before they sign.

Bottom line.

By October 31, 2026, every large NYC condo and co-op building will display its energy grade at the front door. More than half will display a C, D, or F. That grade appears on a public database that Fannie Mae lenders and buyer attorneys can pull independently. LL97 enforcement proceedings are underway for non-filers. And New York Real Property Law § 461 gives condo and co-op sellers no duty to mention any of it before a buyer signs a contract. The label comes from benchmarking data already on file. Boards that retrieve and review their grade now, before October, retain the most options. Boards that learn the grade in October retain the fewest.

Primary sources: NYC Administrative Code § 28-309.12 (Local Law 33 of 2018); NYC DOB Local Law 33 energy grading page; NYC Energy and Water Data Disclosure open data portal; Fannie Mae Lender Letter LL-2026-03; New York Real Property Law § 461 (Property Condition Disclosure Act); NYC DOB press release, April 22, 2026 (LL97 compliance enforcement data).

Companion resources: LL84/87/88: The NYC energy compliance bundle · Local Law 97: The $20 billion carbon penalty · LL97 grace period expired: what buildings owe · Fannie Mae full review: what it means for your building · Fannie Mae 15% reserve floor arrives January 2027 · New York's seller disclosure gap · NYC local law extraction stack