Albany is about to require public listings for home sellers. Condo and co-op buyer disclosure did not move.

For a decade, Albany has considered bills that would give condo and co-op buyers a right to see engineering reports, inspection records, board minutes, and audited financials before signing a contract. None have reached a governor's desk. In the same 2025-2026 session, a bill regulating how brokers market residential listings moved through both chambers on a straight path and was transmitted to Governor Hochul this month. The state chose whose information gap to close.

What the Fair and Transparent Real Estate Listings Act requires.

The bill amends Article 12-A of the New York Real Property Law, which governs licensed real estate brokers and salespersons. Its operative rule: within one calendar day of executing a listing agreement, the listing must be posted to a platform accessible to the general public. Whisper listings, pocket listings, and office-exclusive networks all fall inside the rule. A seller who wants to keep a listing off-market can still do so, but only by executing a state-prescribed disclosure form directing the broker to withhold public marketing.

The broker must retain the signed opt-out form for at least three years and produce it to the Department of State Division of Licensing Services on request. Enforcement runs through DOS. The sanction is broker license discipline under RPL §441-c, which authorizes suspension or revocation for demonstrated untrustworthiness or incompetency. The bill takes effect 180 days after the governor signs.

The disclosure runs from broker to seller, not from seller to buyer.

The word "disclosure" in the bill's title describes what the seller is told by the licensed broker before the seller signs the listing agreement. It does not describe what the buyer is told about the property before signing a contract to purchase. According to the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors summary, the state's opt-out form requires the seller to initial acknowledgments including reduced visibility to buyers, limited online exposure, and fewer offers with a possible impact on price and timing.

The document warns the seller about a market-exposure decision the seller is making. It does not contain building financials, reserve status, engineering reports, or capital-plan history. A buyer looking at the eventual public listing under the new rule learns that the listing exists. The buyer learns nothing new about what is behind the door.

The bills that would have moved disclosure to the buyer.

Real Property Law §461 excludes cooperative apartments and condominium units from the Property Condition Disclosure Act. Every session for the last decade, Albany has taken up bills that would create a parallel buyer-facing disclosure obligation for condo and co-op sales. In the 2025-2026 session the ones that moved farthest ended where they had ended before.

The bill that reached the governor's desk regulates how brokers market properties. The bills that would have given buyers substantive information about the property itself, its structural condition, its reserves, its complaint history, and its financing status, stayed in committee.

DOS licenses brokers. It does not license managing agents.

FTRELA's enforcement works because New York has licensed real estate brokers under RPL Article 12-A since 1922. The Department of State can suspend or revoke a broker's license, and the industry's compliance systems are already built around that fact. New York does not license the person managing the building's finances, capital plan, insurance, and daily operations. Senate Bill S.71 (Kavanagh) has proposed to change that for ten consecutive sessions and has received no committee hearing.

When a managing agent's decisions produce a special assessment, a Fannie Mae unavailable determination, or a Local Law 97 penalty, DOS has no jurisdiction to act. The FTRELA reinforces an asymmetry it does not create: the person selling a neighboring apartment is state-regulated, and the person running the building is not. Industry veteran David Kuperberg has called the current New York regime "dinosaur age" for that reason. The bill that closes the listing gap without closing the management gap widens the distance between the two.

What a condo or co-op buyer can and cannot demand today.

Until Albany moves a buyer-facing disclosure statute, no state law compels a condo or co-op seller to hand over building financials, board minutes, reserve studies, or engineering reports before a contract signing. Two doors remain open, and both require the buyer to open them.

• For any building where sponsor units remain unsold, the AG-approved offering plan and every filed amendment are public through the Attorney General's Real Estate Finance Bureau. For older buildings where the sponsor has fully exited, the offering plan is still on file at the AG and typically accessible through the managing agent for a fee.
• The seller has leverage the seller can choose to spend. A condo or co-op seller can voluntarily provide the last three years of audited financials, the last board election results, the last engineering report, and a copy of the reserve study. A buyer can make the purchase offer conditional on receiving them. New York does not require the disclosure. The buyer's contract does the work the state has not done.

After purchase, Business Corporation Law §624 and Real Property Law §339-w give co-op shareholders and condo unit owners a right to inspect the corporation's or association's books. The right is enforceable only in court. A prior CCNYC post walks through what owners can legally demand from the board and where that demand runs out of state-agency support.

Bottom line.

The state can move a disclosure bill when the disclosure runs to the seller and the enforcement runs through licensed brokers. Delivered to the governor in August 2026, the Fair and Transparent Real Estate Listings Act is that bill. The disclosures that would run to the buyer for a condo or co-op sale, and the regulator that would license the person operating the building on the other side of that sale, are still in committee. A statute that closes the listing-transparency gap without touching the building-transparency gap widens the distance a New York buyer must cover on their own.

Companion resources: Senate passage of S.7541 and Assembly withdrawal, the PCDA §461 exclusion for co-op and condo sales, the LL58 co-op deadline without a right to the books, the four reform bills that received no floor vote in 2026, the CCNYC issue page on buyer disclosure, the CCNYC issue page on managing-agent licensure, the letter-to-your-representative tool.