New York's condo boards must delete discriminatory covenants by June 2027. Buyers have no right to know they're there.

New York Real Property Law §327-a, enacted as S3178-A / A1820 and effective June 3, 2026, requires the board of managers of a condominium, the board of directors of a cooperative apartment corporation, and any homeowners association to delete or amend every unlawful restriction in their recorded governing documents within one year: by June 3, 2027. The law states that those deletions "shall not be subject to the approval of property owners." Real Property Law §461 still excludes condominium units and cooperative apartments from New York's Property Condition Disclosure Act. No seller is required to tell a buyer that discriminatory covenants exist in the building's governing documents before the buyer signs a contract.

What unlawful restrictions look like in NYC condo declarations.

From the 1920s through the early 1960s, developers and homeowners associations inserted racial, religious, and ethnic restrictions into deeds, declarations, and subdivision plats. A provision in a 1940s-era declaration might restrict sale or occupancy to "members of the Caucasian race," exclude persons of particular national origins, or limit ownership to those of a specified religious affiliation. The Supreme Court held these covenants judicially unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948). The Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §3604, enacted in 1968, made housing discrimination on these bases unlawful regardless of what any governing document says.

Legally void is not textually absent. When a building converted from rental to co-op in 1975 and the sponsor's lawyer drafted new bylaws from template language, some of that language may have incorporated restrictions from earlier recorded documents. The sponsor who drafted a condo declaration in 1982 was not required to certify that the document contained no discriminatory covenants. The Attorney General's Real Estate Finance Bureau reviewed the offering plan for financial disclosure, not for equal-housing covenant compliance.

What RPL §327-a requires, and by when.

The law operates on two tracks. First, sellers: before any transfer of real property, a seller must submit a "restrictive covenant modification document" to the county clerk if any recorded document affecting the property contains an unlawful restriction. Second, governing bodies: the board of managers of a condominium, the board of directors of a cooperative apartment corporation, or an HOA board must delete or amend unlawful restrictions in their recorded governing documents within one year of June 3, 2026. The deadline is June 3, 2027.

That is nine months from today. The seller-side obligation has applied to every condo and co-op sale since June 3, 2026. If a seller closed after that date without filing the modification document, the statute was technically violated. What a buyer can do about that violation is not specified. The law names no private right of action and no agency to receive a complaint.

The seller disclosure gap this law does not close.

New York's Property Condition Disclosure Act requires sellers to answer questions about physical conditions before a residential sale. Section 461 of the Real Property Law explicitly excludes cooperatives and condominiums. The statute does not apply to condo or co-op sales, so the operative question on such a transaction is never asked: does the governing declaration contain any restriction on use or occupancy?

A buyer who wants to know what is in a building's declaration before signing a contract must ask the seller or the board. Neither is required to hand it over. RPL §339-w, the Condominium Act's records-access provision, gives unit owners the right to inspect receipts and expenditures at convenient weekday hours. That is a post-purchase right. Nothing in Article 9-B creates a pre-sale buyer's right to inspect governing documents. The offering-plan disclosure requirement enforced by the AG's Real Estate Finance Bureau applies to the sponsor's initial sale, not to resales between unit owners.

The consequence: a buyer who purchases a condo unit today may learn from the RPL §327-a modification document, if one is filed at closing, that the building's declaration once contained a racial or ethnic restriction. They will not learn anything else from that document about the declaration's current terms. Whether the house rules include provisions the buyer would find objectionable, whether the common charge formula changed last year, or what the board's reserve balance is: none of that is disclosed. As this site has documented, New York has no pre-sale disclosure requirement for condo or co-op resales beyond what the parties negotiate privately.

The board amendment power the law creates.

Amending a condominium's declaration normally requires a vote of unit owners: the percentage specified in the declaration itself, commonly two-thirds or 75 percent. RPL §339-n requires each declaration to include its amendment procedure. That supermajority requirement is the unit-owner check on unilateral board action with respect to recorded governing documents.

RPL §327-a creates a statutory exception. For the specific purpose of removing unlawful restrictions, no unit owner vote is required. The board can delete covenant language, file the modification document with the county clerk, and the amendment is done. The rationale is defensible: discriminatory covenants are unenforceable already, and waiting for a 75-percent supermajority to formalize that fact would leave void language in the public record indefinitely.

The law also establishes a precedent: a board can amend governing documents when a statute authorizes the action without owner consent. That authority is, as of now, limited to unlawful restrictions. RPL §327-a does not extend it to insurance provisions, common charge formulas, or alteration approval procedures. But it marks the statutory architecture as one in which owner-vote requirements are subject to legislative override, and the board acts without asking.

What enforcement looks like.

The board-side obligation has a June 3, 2027 deadline. The text of RPL §327-a, as reviewed for this post, identifies no penalty for a board that misses it. A discriminatory covenant that remains in a recorded governing document after June 3, 2027, continues to be legally unenforceable: that was true before the statute as well. The only change is that the board will have failed a statutory obligation without a named consequence.

No agency currently holds authority to compel a condo or co-op board to amend its governing documents on a compliance schedule. As this site has documented, the AG's Real Estate Finance Bureau is structurally limited to the Martin Act's offering-plan territory, not post-offering-plan governance. HPD administers Local Law 58 of 2026's co-op application timeline requirements and can fine boards for non-compliance. No equivalent enforcer is named in RPL §327-a. A unit owner or a buyer who discovers a non-compliant declaration after June 2027 would need to go to court.

This is the pattern: new statutory obligations on condo and co-op boards arrive without an enforcement mechanism directed at boards that ignore them. Florida's 2022 and 2024 reserve reform statutes added criminal penalties for specified board officer misconduct. New York's reserve study legislation, introduced repeatedly in Albany, received no floor vote before the legislature adjourned in June 2026. The same structural gap that characterizes managing-agent oversight characterizes the RPL §327-a deadline: the obligation is clear, and what happens when it is not met is not.

Bottom line.

RPL §327-a removes legally void but textually present discriminatory language from the public property record. That is worth doing. Giving boards a path to complete the amendment without a unit-owner supermajority vote is practical drafting. Nine months remain before the June 3, 2027 deadline.

What the law does not change is the information gap between what a building's governing documents contain and what a buyer is entitled to receive before signing. If a seller files the RPL §327-a modification document at closing, the buyer will learn that a discriminatory covenant existed in the declaration. The buyer will learn nothing else: not the current terms of the declaration, not the proprietary lease, not the house rules, not the reserve balance. Asking for those documents is not a statutory right. Receiving them before contract is not a condition any law imposes on the seller.

The issue page on mandatory pre-sale disclosure tracks the broader gap. RPL §327-a adds one more item to the list of things that may have changed in a building's governing documents since the offering plan, and that sellers are not required to mention before a buyer signs.

Primary sources:
S3178-A / A1820 (NY Senate legislation page)  ·  NY RPL §461 — Property Condition Disclosure Act exclusion  ·  NY RPL Article 9-B — Condominium Act (§§327-a, 339-w, 339-x)  ·  Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)  ·  Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §3604

Companion resources: NYC gave co-op buyers a deadline. It did not give them the books.  ·  Issue: No mandatory pre-sale disclosure to buyers  ·  Issue: Sponsor control period abuses  ·  Why the NY AG can't help with most condo governance disputes  ·  File a complaint with the AG's REFB  ·  Write to your state rep