Ask yourself these questions before placing offer on a new home If you?re on the hunt to buy an apartment, one thing is crucial before beginning your search: decide if a condo and cooperative is right for you.
?Working with a client, it?s important to immediately define the difference,? says Brian Lewis, an agent with Halstead?s New York office. Because the ownership structures of condos and co-ops are vastly different, all the financial and legal matters of buying one will dramatically differ, too.
But first, get to know what makes these two ownership structures vary in the first place. Condos are pretty simple. In owning a condominium, your apartment and a percentage of the building?s common areas (known as the ?common elements?) belong to you. Though a board is in place to run the building?s condo association and manage the property, the board is fairly hands off when it comes to what you do with your property?renting it out, for instance, or putting it on the market and selling to whomever you?d like. Then there?s the cooperative. Consider the cooperative a multi-unit apartment building, where each resident has an interest in the entire building. A lease?which you could consider a contract, or share of stock?enables an owner to occupy a particular apartment unit there.
The co-op owner, also referred to as a shareholder, doesn?t own their particular unit?they?re more like a tenant of the building. It?s actually the co-op association, comprised of all the shareho...